It would be difficult enough to unsnarl or repair the vital control wires by day; by night it might well prove impossible.
"Is there nothing you can do, Lukor, to free the wire?"
He shook his head grimly.
"I have been working the pedals, hoping to dislodge the quarrel, but to no avail," he said.
"What is it? What has gone wrong?" Darloona asked suddenly. We had been conversing, Lukor and I, in terse whispers, to avoid spreading panic. The girl, sunk in a brooding melancholy, had not been aware of our dangerous plight. But she must have overheard us talking, for now she turned a questioning gaze on our pilot, the old Swordmaster. He explained the problem in swift, economical terms.
"Every second is carrying us farther south at a frightful speed," he concluded. "We are many korads into the Grand Kumala by now, and traveling yet deeper with every moment that passes. Unless I can somehow free the aileron and turn the flying contraption about and to the east, we shall end up at the pole!"
"Is there nothing you can do?" solemn-faced Koja inquired in his harsh, expressionless voice.
"Nothing," Lukor said with grim finality. "I fear to use the pedals again, for any further attempt may snap them. The quarrel from the crossbow has them snarled and they may well be frayed by this time, from rubbing against its edges. But they are most certainly not broken. Neither does the aileron seem to have been pierced by the bolt. The shaft seems merely to have lodged itself in the slit between the inner surface of the aileron and the rear surface of the wing. But unless we can manage to remove the obstruction, we are helpless, and will be carried hundreds of korads off course, for my city of Ganatol is far behind us by now, and to the east."
I bitterly regretted the untimely arrival of darkness in that it would make all the more difficult the feat I knew I must now attempt.
With a swift word to Lukor, advising him to adjust the balance of the ornithopter as best he could in order to compensate for the shift in weight, I climbed out of the cockpit and put one leg over the side.
"Jandar―what are you trying to do?" Darloona shrieked as the flying machine swung giddily to port under my weight. I forced a careless laugh, although it was somewhat difficult to do as my heart was in my mouth at the time.
"Tut, Princess," I said gaily. "If the aileron control wire is fouled there is nothing to be done but to clear it. Steady as you go, now, Lukor―"
And I climbed out onto the wing.
I am not really a particularly brave man, although the necessities of chance and fate have occasionally forced me into the role of one. Hence, in all candor, I must admit I was frightened. I was acutely aware that we were hurtling through the night at something under a hundred miles an hour in a flimsy craft made of baked and compressed paper.
I was also terribly conscious of the fact that we were flying at something like fifteen hundred feet above one of the thickest of all jungles, and that the slightest misstep would hurl me to a swift and certain death.
The wind whipped past me, clutching at my body with invisible fingers. My eyes teared from the blast of stinging air until I was almost blind. My hair and my garments whipped about me with such force that
it was all that I could do to keep my hold on the edge of the cockpit.
If I lost my grip I would be torn loose like a leaf in a hurricane, and the wind would whip me away to hurl me like a human bomb down through the thick branches far below. I recall once reading an adventure story by Lin Carter in which his hero is marooned on the narrow ledge of a mountain peak, high above a deep lake. When at length the hero could retain his balance no longer and sprang into the air, he fell like a stone into the lake―but lived, because he fell at just the precisely correct angle so that his body met the surface of the lake with a minimum impact.* But there was no lake below me, and, alas, I had no solicitous Author watching over my fortunes, ready to bring a bit of aerodynamic hocus-pocus to my rescue, had I fallen!
Bracing myself against the terrific force of the gale, I strove to reach the tightly lodged crossbow bolt. But my arms were not long enough―my fingers brushed the hullward edge of the aileron but fell several inches short of where the quarrel was wedged.
There was nothing else to do, then, but to climb outside the wing, and stand on the pontoon-like undercarriage. This undercarriage, which I mentioned somewhat earlier, consisted of two long pontoons, one to either side of the hull, filled with the compressed levitant gas that rendered the contraption airworthy. Had it not been for them, there would have been no way I could have reached the snarled wire, for of course the wing itself could not bear my weight.
With infinite care, still clinging with both hands to the cowling of my cockpit, I lowered first one leg and then the other, until at last I was standing on the portside pontoon. It was braced by narrow struts to the pontoon on the starboard side, and both were attached to keel and to the base of the wings by yet more struts. I sincerely hoped that these members were strong enough to bear my weight. If they were not, then we were in real trouble!
Now, standing sidewise on the gas-filled pontoon, I removed my grip from the cowling of my cockpit, and transferred my grip to the edge of the wing itself. This I did in agonizing slow motion, because I was terribly afraid that the wind would tear me loose and whirl me away into the night.
Looking up, I caught a glance at Darloona. She was staring at me with awe and terror in her enormous eyes. Her face was pale, and one hand lifted so that her knuckles were pressed tightly against her lips.
Suddenly I felt recklessly heroic! It was delightful to discover that someone aboard this flying deathtrap was even more frightened than I!
I wondered if the beautiful Princess of Shondakor still considered me a weakling and a coward. Doubtless she was convinced by this death-defying feat that I was a lionhearted hero. I could have laughed out loud at the thought. Actually, I was so terrified my knees were trembling.
Now I was clinging with both hands to the edge of the wing, my feet resting one in front of the other on the pontoon. Again I strove to reach the lodged bolt, but I simply could not.
Well, there was nothing else to do, so I sat down on the pontoon, straddling it uncomfortably, my legs hanging over either side, my hands above me, holding onto the edge of the wing.
Now, slowly and with enormous care, I transferred the grip of each hand from wing edge to the struts which held the pontoon fastened beneath the portside wing.
I breathed a silent prayer that the Sky Pirates of Zanadar had built the strongest paper airplanes known to the universe!
Now I released the strut with my left hand, and leaned far out to the side, groping for the underside of the aileron.
By tilting myself at a sickening forty-five-degree angle, I finally managed to reach the damned crossbow bolt. My fingers were numb with the cold wind, but I could feel the pointed tip of the quarrel where it was thrust through the slit between aileron and wing surface.
Gripping it between the tips of my fingers, hanging almost face down over the jungles that rushed by at a nauseating velocity beneath me, I began working the head of the quarrel back and forth, back and forth, gradually working it loose.
When, after an infinity of time that was probably only two minutes in duration, I had worked it so loose that it trembled at a touch, I reached up around the aileron and felt along the shaft of the quarrel to see if it was entangled with the guy-wire.
To do this I had to stretch from my place until most of my body was hanging over empty space. I retained hold of the pontoon with my right leg alone, which was hooked over it, while my left leg hung free.
My fingers were trembling with the strain. My wrist and forearm were numb and taut. With infinite care I felt the tangle of the wires and, wriggling the crossbow bolt between my fingers, I managed to draw it free of the wire a fraction of an inch at a time.