Zarfo pointed here and there across the control panel; Thadzei nodded doubtfully, thrust at a set of pressure pads. The ship shuddered and heaved; Reith felt acceleration underfoot. He was departing Tschai! Thadzei made adjustments; the ship pitched. Reith reached for a stanchion; the Wankh stumbled and fell upon the settee, where it remained. From elsewhere about the ship came full-throated Lokhar curses.
Reith made his way to the bridge, to stand beside Thadzei, who desperately worked the controls, testing first one pad, then another. Reith asked: "Is there an automatic pilot?"
"Bound to be, somewhere. I can't locate the engagement. These are by no means standard controls."
"Do you know what you are doing?"
"No."
Reith looked down at the dark face of Tschai. "So long as we are going up and not down, we're in good shape."
"If I had an hour, a single hour," moaned Thadzei, "I could trace out the circuits."
Jag Jaganig came into the saloon to make a querulous protest. Thadzei called back: "I'm doing the best I can!"
"It's not good enough! We'll crash!"
"Not yet," said Thadzei grimly. "I see a lever I haven't tried." He pulled the lever; the ship skidded alarmingly and thrust off at great speed to the east.
Once more the Lokhars gave a series of anguished cries. Thadzei moved the lever back to its original position. The ship came to a trembling stasis. Thadzei gave a great tremulous sigh, peering back and forth across the panel. "Like none I have ever seen!"
Reith looked out the port but saw nothing but darkness. Zarfo spoke in a calm voice: "Our altitude is not quite a thousand feet ... Now it is nine hundred..."
Thadzei desperately worked the controls. Once again the ship lurched and fled eastward. "Up, up!" screamed Zarfo. "We're diving into the ground!"
Thadzei brought the ship back to a halt. "Well then, this toggle will surely activate the repulsors." He gave it a twitch. From aft came a sinister crackle, a muffled explosion. The Lokhars yelled mournfully. Zarfo read the altimeter.
"Five hundred ... Four hundred ... Three ... Two ... One..."
Contact: a splash, a bobbing and pitching, then silence. The ship was afloat, apparently undamaged, in an unknown body of water. The Parapan? The Schanizade?
Reith threw up his hands in fatalistic despair. Back once more in Tschai.
Reith jumped down to the saloon. The Wankh stood like a statue. Whatever its emotions, none were evident.
Reith went aft to the engine room, where Jag Jaganig and Belje looked disconsolately at a smoldering panel. "An overload," said Belje. "Circuits and nodes are certainly melted."
"Can we make repairs?"
Belje made a glum sound. "If tools and parts are aboard."
"If time is given to us," said Jag Jaganig.
Reith returned to the saloon. He threw himself down upon a settee and stared bleakly at the Wankh. The plan had succeeded ... almost. He leaned back, sodden with fatigue. The others must be feeling the same. No useful purpose could be served by going longer without rest. He got to his feet, called the group together. Two-man watches were set; the others slumped upon settees to sleep as best they could.
The night passed. Az raced across the sky, followed by Braz. Dawn revealed a placid expanse which Zarfo identified as Lake Falas. "And never has it served a more useful purpose!"
Reith went out on the top surface of the hull, and searched the horizons through his scanscope. Hazy water stretched to south, east and west. To the north was a low shore toward which the ship was drifting, propelled by a gentle breeze from the south. Reith went back into the ship. The Lokhars had detached a panel and were unenthusiastically discussing the damage. Their attitudes gave Reith all the information he needed.
In the saloon he found Anacho and Traz gnawing on spheres of black paste encased in a hard white rind which they had taken from a locker. Reith offered one of the spheres to the Wankh, who paid no heed. Reith ate the sphere himself, finding it similar to cheese. Zarfo presently joined him and verified what Reith already had guessed. "Repairs are not feasible. A whole bank of crystals is destroyed. There are no spares aboard."
Reith gave a gloomy nod. "As I expected."
"What next?" demanded Zarfo.
"As soon as the wind blows us ashore we disembark and return to Ao Hidis for another try."
Zargo grunted. "What of the Wankh?"
"We'll have to let him go his own way. I certainly don't plan to murder him."
"A mistake," sniffed Anacho. "Best kill the repulsive beast."
"For your information," said Zarfo, "the main Wankh citadel Ao Khaha is situated on Lake Falas. It will not be far distant."
Reith went back out on the foredeck. The first tussocks of the shore were only half a mile distant; beyond lay quagmire. To ground at the edge of such a morass would be highly inconvenient, and Reith was glad to see that the wind, shifting to the east, seemed to be moving the ship slowly to the west, perhaps aided by a sluggish current. Turning the scanscope along the shore Reith was able to distinguish a set of irregular juts and promontories far to the west.
From within came the sound of expostulation, followed by the thud of heavy footsteps. Out on the foredeck came the Wankh, followed by Anacho and Traz. The Wankh fixed Reith for half a second with its flicking vision, long enough to register an image, then turned by slow degrees to look around the horizon.
Before Reith could prevent it, even were he able to do so, the Wankh stepped forward, ran with its peculiar lurching gait down the side of the ship and plunged into the water. Reith caught a glimpse of wet black hide, then the creature was gone into the depths.
Reith searched the surface for a period but saw no more of the Wankh. An hour later, checking the progress of the vessel, he once more turned the scanscope on the western shore. To his cold dismay he saw that the shapes he had thought to be crags were the black glass towers of an extensive Wankh fortress city.
Wordlessly Reith examined the swamp to the north with a new interest born of desperation.
Tussocks of white grass protruded like hairy wens from fields of black slime and stagnant ponds. Reith went below to seek material for a raft, but found nothing.
The padding of the settee was welded to the structure and came away in shreds and chunks. There was no lifeboat aboard. Reith returned to the deck and wondered what his next move should be. The Lokhars joined him: disconsolate figures in wheatcolored smocks, wind blowing the white hair back from their craggy black faces.
Reith spoke to Zarfo: "Do you know the place yonder?"
"It must be Ao Khaha."
"If we are taken, what can we expect?"
"Death."
The morning passed; the sun climbing toward noon dissolved the haze which shrouded the horizons, and the towers of Ao Khaha stood distinct.
The ship was noted. On the water under the city appeared a barge, which surged across the water leaving a ribbon of white wake. Reith studied it through the scanscope. Wankhmen stood on the deck, perhaps a dozen, curiously alike; slender men with death-pale skins, saturnine or, in some instances, ascetic features.
Reith considered resistance: perhaps a desperate attempt to seize the barge? He decided against such a trial, which almost certainly could not succeed.
The Wankhmen scrambled aboard the ship. Ignoring Reith, Traz and Anacho, they addressed the Lokhars. "All down to the barge. Do you carry weapons?"
"No," grunted Zarfo.
"Quick then." Now they noticed Anacho. "What is this? A Dirdirman?" And they gave chuckles of soft surprise. They inspected Reith. "And what sort is that one? A motley crew, to be sure! Now then, all down to the barge!"