Reith sailed directly out to sea. Zap 210 sat huddled in the center of the boat.
Finally she made a dispirited protest. "Is it wise to go so far from the land?"
"Very wise. Otherwise the Khors might follow along the shore and kill us when we put into land."
"I have never known such openness. It is exposed-frightfully so."
"On the other hand, our condition is better than it was yesterday at this time.
Are you hungry?"
"Yes."
"See what's in that caddy yonder. We may be in luck."
Zap 210 climbed forward to the locker in the bow, where among scraps of rope and gear, spare sails, a lantern, she found a jug of water and a sack of dry pilgrim-pod cakes.
With the shore at last a blur, Reith swung the boat into the northwest, trimming the ungainly sail to the wind.
All day the fair wind blew. Reith held a course ten miles offshore, well beyond the scope of Khor vision. Headlands appeared in the murk of distance, loomed off the beam, slowly dwindled and disappeared.
As the afternoon waned the wind increased, sending whitecaps chasing over the dark sea. The rigging creaked, the sails bulged, the boat threw up a bow-wave, the wake gurgled, and Reith rejoiced at every mile so swiftly put astern.
Carina 4269 sank behind the mainland hills; the wind died and the boat lost way.
Darkness came; Zap 210 crouched fearfully on the center seat, oppressed by the expanse of the sky. Reith lost patience with her fears. He lowered the yard halfway down the mast, lashed the rudder, made himself as comfortable as possible and slept.
A cool early morning breeze awoke him. Stumbling about in the pre-dawn gloom he managed to hoist the yard; then went aft to the tiller, where he steered half-dozing until the sun arose.
About noon a finger of land thrust forth into the sea; Reith landed the boat on a dismal gray beach and went out foraging. He found a brackish stream, a thicket of dark red dragon berries, a supply of the ubiquitous pilgrim-pod. In the stream he noticed a number of crustacean-like creatures, but could not bring himself to catch them.
During the middle afternoon they once again put out to sea, Reith using the sweeps to pull the boat away from the beach. They rounded the headland to find a changed landscape shoreward. The gray beaches and mud flats had become a narrow fringe of shingle; beyond were barren red cliffs, and Reith, wary of the lee shore, put well out to sea.
An hour before sunset a long low vessel appeared over the northeast horizon, faring on a course parallel to their own. With the sun low in the northwest Reith hoped to evade the attention of those aboard the ship, which held a sinister resemblance to the pirate galleys of the Draschade. Hoping to draw away, he altered course to the south. The ship likewise altered course, coincidentally or not Reith could not be sure. He swung the boat directly toward the shore, now about ten miles distant; the ship again seemed to alter course.
With a sinking heart Reith saw that they must surely be overtaken. Zap 210 watched with sagging shoulders; Reith wondered what he should do if the galley in fact overtook them. She had no knowledge of what to expect: now was hardly the time to explain to her. Reith decided that he would kill her in the event that capture became certain. Then he changed his mind: they would plunge over the side of the boat and drown together ... Equally impractical; while there was life there was hope.
The sun settled upon the horizon; the wind, as on the previous evening, lessened. Sunset brought a dead calm with the boats rolling helplessly on the waves.
Reith shipped the sweeps. As twilight settled over the ocean he pulled away from the becalmed pirate ship toward shore. He rowed on through the night. The pink moon rose and then the blue moon, to project tremulous trails across the water.
Ahead, one of the trails ended at a mass of dead black: the shore. Reith stopped his rowing. Far to the west he saw a flickering light; to sea all was dark. He threw out the anchor and lowered the sail. The two made a meal on berries and pilgrim-pod, then lay down to sleep on the sails in the bottom of the boat.
With morning came a breeze from the east. The boat lay at anchor a hundred yards offshore, in water barely three feet deep. The pirate galley, if such it was, could no longer be seen. Reith pulled up the anchor and hoisted the sail; the boat moved jauntily off through the water.
Made cautious by the events of the previous afternoon, Reith sailed only a quarter of a mile offshore, until the wind died, halfway through the afternoon.
In the north a bank of clouds gave portent of a storm; taking up the sweeps, Reith worked the boat into a lagoon at the mouth of a sluggish river. To the side of the lagoon floated a raft of dried reeds, upon which two boys sat fishing. After an initial stir they watched the approach of the boat in attitudes of indifference.
Reith paused in his rowing to consider the situation. The unconcern of the boys seemed unnatural. On Tschai unusual events almost always presaged danger. Reith cautiously rowed the boat to within conversational distance. A hundred feet distant on the bank sat three men, also fishing. They seemed to be Grays: a people short and stocky, with strongly-featured faces, sparse brownish hair and grayish skin. At least, thought Reith, they were not Khors, and not automatically hostile.
Reith let the boat drift forward. He called out: "Is there a town nearby?"
One of the boys pointed across the reeds to a grove of purple ouinga trees.
"Yonder."
"What town is it?"
"Zsafathra."
"Is there an inn or a tavern where we can find accommodation?"
"Speak to the men ashore."
Reith urged the boat toward the bank. One of the men called out in irritation:
"Easy with the tumult! You'll drive off every gobbulch in the lagoon."
"Sorry," said Reith. "Can we find accommodation in your town?"
The men regarded him with impersonal curiosity. "What do you here, along this coast?"
"We are travelers, from the south of Kislovan, now returning home."
"You have traveled a remarkable distance in so small a craft," remarked one of the men in a mildly skeptical voice.
"One which strongly resembles the craft of the Khors," noted another
"For a fact," Reith agreed, "it does look like a Khor boat. But all this aside, what of lodging?"
"Anything is available to folk with sequins."
"We can pay reasonable charges."
The oldest of the men on the bank rose to his feet. "If nothing else," he stated, "we are reasonable people." He signaled Reith to approach. As the boat nosed into the reeds he jumped aboard. "So, then: you claim to be Khors?"
"Quite the reverse. We claim not to be Khors."
"What of the boat, then?"
Reith made an ambiguous gesture. "It is not as good as some, but better than others; it has brought us this far."
A wintry grin crossed the man's face. "Proceed through the channel yonder. Bear to the right."
For half an hour Reith rowed this way and that through a maze of channels with the ouinga trees always behind islands of black reeds. Reich presently understood that the Zsafathran either was having a joke or sought to confuse him. He said, "I am tired; you row the rest of the way."
"No, no," declared the old man. "We are now there, just left through yonder channel, and toward the ouingas."
"Odd," said Reith. "We have gone back and forth past that channel a dozen times."
"One channel looks much like another. And here we are."
The boat floated into a placid pond, surrounded by reed-thatched cottages on stilts under the ouinga trees. At the far end of the pond stood a larger, more elaborate structure. The poles were purple ouinga wood; the thatch was woven in a complicated pattern of black, brown and gray.