I admitted the unlikelihood. "Find me a coin, then. Any coin.' They are all made of meta, aren't they?"
"Of course, sire. What else? But surely you know - Otto the Black controlled all coinage - even the Queen had few coins - how am I to find a coin among slaves? It is impossible. I myself have not possessed a meta coin in years. And as I was about to say, sire, when you switched the talk to coins, I - "
I leveled a finger at him - remember to clean your nails, Blade - and said, "As you are not about to say, Polonius, get the hell out of here and find me a coin. You have four hundred ex-slaves to search. Surely one of them somehow and somewhere, will have concealed a coin. Look for it. Don't come back until you find it."
When I get that tone in my voice Pelops knows I mean it, But he stopped at the cabin door and looked at me. "Polonius? I am Pelops, as you well know. Why did you call me by another name? Who is Polonius?"
It was hard to keep from laughing, but I managed. "A very great man in the literature of my own land," I told him. "Very wise. Of the finest character. A fount of good advice and much looked up to. He only had one failing."
Pelops, all smiles now, mollified, was bowing and smirking at me. "His failing, sire? What was it?"
"HE TALKED TOO DAMNED MUCH. OUT - OUT! FIND ME A COIN!"
When he was gone I examined the chunk of raw meta again. I forced my memory back to a class I had attended at the Naval School in Greenwich. J had made me go.
Just suppose, I thought to myself. Symbol U or UR. AT. no., 92 AT. wt., 238.07.
It all came slipping back into my mind. Possible? Hell - I was in Sarma! Who would have thought that possible before Lord L came up with his master computer?
Just before dark Pelops came back with a small square coin. He had washed it well, he explained, because one of the former slaves had had it concealed up his anus. I did not ask how Pelops had come by it.
I examined the coin with the crude telescope I had inherited. Not very satisfactory, but good enough. I scratched it with a knife. Heavy, dense, nickellike. Very hard. It could just be.
That night, before the cabin lamp was lit, I lay on the bunk and studied the chunk of raw meta. After staring at it for a long time I had to call in Pelops and Ixion for their opinions. I was beginning to doubt my own eyes.
They saw it, too. A faint glow in the dark, just a hint of fluorescence, a barely seen nimbus around the chunk of meta.
Pitchblende.
For the first time in four trips out into Dimension X I had found a treasure that could really be called a treasure. In Sarma there were whole mountain ranges of pitchblende. Chephron had radiation sores.
I have decided to have a special pocket made in my clothes for the piece of meta and the coin. Recompense the man for his coin.
All the above is written in retrospect, long after the fact, for the simple reason that I have just gotten back to this log. A hell of a lot has happened since I identified that chunk of meta ay pitchblende. Most all of it bad. Some good, though. I have found Zeena again!
Not that finding her turned out to be such a good thing. It really wasn't. But none of that, because I can't bring myself to write about it. The biggest trouble is that I now have another woman on my hands. The two of them are driving me crazy.
Let me see. It is hard to pick up a log like this after so much time and so many events - so I will just say that I was lying there thinking about the pitchblende and wondering if Lord L could ever invent teleportation so we could get the stuff back to H Dimension, when Ixion came in with bad news. I am trying to remember just how he put it. I do remember that he still had a bandage around his neck and was very pale. Ixion was a good man and a fine seaman. If it were not for Ixion I wouldn't be writing in this log again.
Ixion said, "There is weather making, Captain Blade. Looks like one of the Purple storms that come this time of year. We had best get off the land as far as we can."
We had been coasting south.
I wasn't particularly worried, I remember. I did my time in the Navy and I've been around boats most of my life. And he was right, of course. I didn't want to fool around with a lee shore.
I can remember distinctly that I was sleepy. I must have yawned. And said, "So take her out, Ixion. We'll heave to, rig a sea anchor, and ride out the weather. No problem."
Ixion frowned. He wasn't having any of my cheerfulness. I did not, it seemed, understand much about the purple Sea. He took a leather chart out of a case and showed me.
The thing about the Purple Sea was that it was so narrow. I hadn't actually realized. Ixion put his finger on the chart and showed me - the Purple Sea was only about fifty miles across at the widest point. Most of it was much narrower than that. Directly across from us now was Tyranna. I sure as hell didn't want to go there. Neither did I want to hang around Sarma.
To the north were uncharted waters - as far as Ixion knew the sea stretched out to infinity. No sailor had ever reached the end of it. I wasn't about to try.
Ixion said the Purple storms blew for days, even weeks. Even with sea anchors and bare poles we were sure to be driven. To east or west we would be driven aground. To the north were uncharted waters. That left the south, where lay the Burning Land, where I wanted to go anyway. I thought it solved the problem. Run before the storm, always to the south. Ixion left the cabin shaking his head - the Captain Blade had never been in a Purple storm. I would see.
I saw, all right. As I write this I can still see those waves. Mast high. Higher. It was like being in a valley surrounded by purple-black mountains. The wind was at least typhoon strength - by H Dimension standards - and it never let up. Kept shifting from quarter to quarter, shrilling and screaming and blowing the tops off the huge waves.
We lost four rudders in two days. I lost a dozen men overboard in the first hour before we got life lines rigged. I had myself lashed to the tiller and took the worst beating of my life, but I managed to keep her from broaching too badly. We bailed all the time. They were working for their lives and they knew it and they bailed. How they bailed! It wasn't enough. The Pphira was tight enough but we kept shipping tons of water with every wave. And the waves never stopped.
By the end of the third day I knew we were licked. Pphira was low in the water and getting ready to sink any minute. Then we got a miracle. The storm passed.
I will put this in quotes, too, in an effort to get it down just as it happened. The storm let up suddenly and I grabbed Ixion's speaking grumpet and let them hear me good.
"Bail, you misbegotten bastards! Get this ship dry. You cooks start your fires again - we'll all be better with hot food in our bellies. You bo'suns" - for I had Pphira organized down to the lowest rating - "you bo'suns get your crews to clearing up the wreckage. Everything we can't use goes over the side. Check the drinking water. And remember that it's rationed! Any man caught stealing water goes over the side. Empty and clean the latrines. All sick or injured men report to Pelops immediately."
I kept bellowing, sounding as tough and cheerful as I could to put some heart in them. They needed it. So did I. I hadn't been off my feet in two days and the ropes that bound me to the tiller had rubbed me raw. I was about at the end of my tether but I couldn't let them see it.
Pelops was in worse shape. Along with everything else he had been sea sick - I've never seen a worse case - and he spent most of the time in my cabin, hiding under the bunk and throwing up. Those mountainous waves had taken all the strut out of him. I didn't blame him much, but now I had to roust him a little.
"You've got sick call to look to," I told him. "Get down there and get those men patched up and dosed."