The apartment was hexagonal and quite small, lighted by a single window, and the only furnishings were a single hexagonal table and six chairs. King Prad was already seated opposite the window and by his side were the princes Leddravohr and Chakkell, all of them informally attired in loose silks. Prad’s sole mark of distinction was a large blue jewel which was suspended from his neck by a glass chain. Toller, who had a strong desire for the occasion to pass off smoothly for the sake of his brother and Lord Glo, avoided looking in Leddravohr’s direction. He kept his eyes down until the King signalled for Glo and Lain to be seated, then he gave all his attention to getting Glo into a chair with a minimum of creaking from his frame.
“I apologise for this delay, Majesty,” Glo said when finally at ease, speaking in high Kolcorronian. “Do you wish my attendant to retire?”
Prad shook his head. “He may remain for your comfort, Lord Glo — I had not appreciated the extent of your incapacity.”
“A certain recalcitrance of the… hmm… limbs, that is all,” Glo replied stoically.
“Nevertheless, I am grateful for the effort you made to be here. As you can see, I am dispensing with all formality so that we may have an unimpeded exchange of ideas. The circumstances of our last meeting were hardly conducive to free discussion, were they?”
Toller, who had positioned himself behind Glo’s chair, was surprised by the King’s amiable and reasonable tones. It seemed as though his own pessimism had been ill-founded and that Glo was to be spared fresh humiliation. He looked directly across the table for the first time and saw that Prad’s expression was indeed as reassuring as it could be on features that were dominated by one inhuman, marble-white eye. Toller’s gaze, without his conscious bidding, swung towards Leddravohr and he experienced a keen psychic shock as he realised that the prince’s eyes had been drilling into him all the while, projecting unmistakable malice and contempt.
I’m a different person, Toller told himself, checking the reflexive defiant spreading of his shoulders. Glo and Lain are not going to be harmed in any way by association with me.
He lowered his head, but not before he had glimpsed Leddravohr’s smile flick into being, the effortless snake-fast twitch of his upper lip. Toller was unable to decide on a course of action or inaction. It appeared that all the things they whispered about Leddravohr were true, that he had an excellent memory for faces and an even better one for insults. The immediate difficulty for Toller lay in that, determined though he was not to cross Leddravohr, it was out of the question for him to stand with his head lowered for perhaps the whole foreday. Could he find a pretext to leave the room, perhaps something to do with…?
“I want to talk about flying to Overland,” the King said, his words a conceptual bomb-blast which blew everything else out of Toller’s consciousness. “Are you, in your official capacity as Lord Philosopher, stating that it can be done?”
“I am, Majesty.” Glo glanced at Leddravohr and the dark-jowled Chakkell as though daring them to object. “We can fly to Overland.”
“How?”
“By means of very large hot air balloons, Majesty.”
“Goon.”
“Their lifting power would have to be augmented by gas jets — but it is providential that in the region where the balloons would practically cease to function the jets would be their most effective.” Glo was speaking strongly and without hesitations, as he could sometimes do when inspired. “The jets would also serve to turn the balloons over at the midpoint of the flight, thus enabling them to descend in the normal manner.
“I repeat, Majesty — we can fly to Overland.”
Glo’s words were followed by an air-whispering silence during which Toller, bemused with wonder, looked down at his brother to see if — as before — the talk of flying to Overland had come as a shock to him. Lain appeared nervous and ill at ease, but not at all surprised. He and Glo must have been in collaboration, and if Lain believed that the flight could be made — then it could be made! Toller felt a stealthy coolness spread down his spine to the accompaniment of what for him was a totally new intellectual and emotional experience. I have a future, he thought. I have discovered why I am here…
“Tell us more, Lord Glo,” the King said. “This hot air balloon you speak of — has it been designed?”
“Not only has it been designed, Majesty — the archives show that an example was actually fabricated in the year 2187. It was successfully flown several times that year by a philosopher called Usader, and it is believed — although the records are… hmm… vague on this point — that in 2188 he actually attempted the Overland flight.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was never heard of again.”
“That hardly inspires confidence,” Chakkell put in, speaking for the first time. “It’s hardly a record of achievement.”
“That depends on one’s viewpoint.” Glo refused to be discouraged. “Had Usader returned a few days later one might be entitled to describe his flight as a failure. The fact that he did not return could indicate that he had succeeded.”
Chakkell snorted. “More likely that he died!”
“I’m not claiming that such an ascent would be easy or without its share of… hmm… risks. My contention is that our increased scientific knowledge could reduce the risks to an acceptable level. Given sufficient determination — and the proper financial and material resources — we can produce ships capable of flying to Overland.”
Prince Leddravohr sighed audibly and shifted in his chair, but refrained from speaking. Toller guessed that the King had placed powerful restraints on him before the meeting began.
“You make it all sound rather like an aftday jaunt,” King Prad said. “But isn’t it a fact that Land and Overland are almost five-thousand miles apart?”
“The best triangulations give a figure of 4,650 miles, Majesty. Surface to surface, that is.”
“How long would it take to fly that distance?”
“I regret I cannot give a definite answer to that question at this stage.”
“It’s an important question, isn’t it?”
“Undoubtedly! The speed of ascent of the balloon is of fundamental importance, Majesty, but there are many variables to be… hmm… considered.” Glo signalled for Lain to open his roll of paper. “My chief scientist, who is a better mathematician than I, has been working on the preliminary calculations. With your consent, he will explain the problem.”
Lain spread out a chart with trembling hands, and Toller was relieved to see that he had had the foresight to draw it on a limp cloth-based paper which quickly lay flat. Part of it was taken up by a scale diagram which illustrated the sister worlds and their spatial relationships; the remainder was given over to detailed sketches of pear-shaped balloons and complicated gondolas. Lain swallowed with difficulty a couple of times and Toller grew tense, fearing that his brother was unable to speak.
“This circle represents our own world… with its diameter of 4,100 miles,” Lain finally articulated. “The other, smaller circle represents Overland, whose diameter is generally accepted as being 3,220 miles, at its fixed point above our equator on the zero meridian, which passed through Ro-Atabri.”
“I think we all learned that much basic astronomy in our infancy,” Prad said. “Why can’t you say how long the journey from the one to the other will take?”