“In that case, see what you can do about a meal.” Toller knew the order would be particulary welcome because for more than a day the crew had opted to go without food or drink to obviate the indignity, discomfort and sheer unpleasantness of using the toilet facilities in virtual weightlessness.
He watched benignly as Flenn pushed the carble back into its warm sanctuary inside his clothing and untied himself from his chair. The little man was obviously struggling for breath as he swung his way into the galley, but the black cabochons of his eyes were glinting with good humour. He reappeared just long enough to hand Toller the single small flask of brandy which had been included in the ship’s provisions, then there followed a long period during which he could be heard working with the cooking equipment, panting and swearing all the time. Toller took a sip of the brandy and had given the flask to Zavotle when it dawned on him that Flenn was trying to prepare a hot meal.
“You don’t need to heat anything,” he called out. “Cold jerky and bread will be enough.”
“It’s all right, captain,” came Flenn’s breathless reply. “The charcoal is still lit… and it’s only a matter of… fanning it hard enough. I’m going to serve you… a veritable banquet. A man needs a good… Hell!”
Concurrent with the last word there was a clattering sound. Toller turned towards the galley in time to see a burning piece of firewood rise vertically into the air from behind the partition. Lazily spinning, wrapped in pale yellow flame, it sailed upwards and glanced off a sloping lower panel of the balloon. Just when it seemed that it had been deflected harmlessly away into the blue it was caught by an air current which directed it into the narrowing gap between an acceleration strut and the envelope. It lodged in the juncture of the two, still burning.
“It’s mine!” Flenn shouted. “I’ll get it!”
He appeared on the gondola wall at the corner, unhooking his tether, and went up the strut at speed, using only his hands in a curious weightless scramble. Toller’s heart and mind froze over as he saw brownish smoke puff out from the varnished fabric of the balloon. Flenn reached the burning stick and grasped it with a gloved hand. He hurled the stick away with a lateral sweep of his arm and suddenly he too was separated from the ship, tumbling in thin air. Hands clawing vainly towards the strut, he floated slowly outwards.
Toller’s consciousness was sundered by two focuses of terror. Fear of personal annihilation kept his gaze centred on the smoking patch of fabric until he saw that the flame had extinguished itself, but all the while he was filled with a silent-shrieking awareness of the bright void between Flenn and the balloon growing wider.
Flenn’s initial impetus had not been great, but he had drifted outwards for some thirty yards before air resistance brought him to a halt. He hung in the blue emptiness, glowing in the sunlight which the balloon screened from the gondola, scarcely recognisable as a human being in his ragged swaddling of sackcloth.
Toller went to the side and cupped his hands around his mouth to aim a shout. “Flenn! Are you all right?”
“Don’t worry about me, captain.” Flenn waved an arm and, incredibly, he was able to sound almost cheerful. “I can see the envelope well from here. There’s a scorched area all around the strut attachment, but the fabric isn’t holed.”
“We’re going to bring you in.” Toller turned to Zavotle and Rillomyner. “He isn’t lost. We need to throw him a line.”
Rillomyner was doubled in his chair. “Can’t do it, captain,” he mumbled. “I can’t look out there.”
“You’re going to look and you’re going to work,” Toller assured him grimly.
“I can help,” Zavotle said, leaving his chair. He opened the rigger’s locker and brought out several coils of rope. Toller, impatient to effect a rescue, snatched one of the ropes. He secured one end of it and flung the coil out towards Flenn, but as he did so his feet rose clear of the deck, and what he had intended as a powerful throw proved to be feeble and misdirected. The rope unfurled for only part of its length and froze uselessly, still retaining its undulations.
Toller drew the rope in and while he was coiling it again Zavotle threw his line with similar lack of success. Rillomyner, who was moaning faintly with every breath, hurled out a thinner line of glasscord. It extended fully in roughly the right direction, but stopped too short.
“Good for nothing!” Flenn jeered, seemingly undaunted by the thousands of miles of vacancy yawning below him. “Your old grandmother could do better, Rillo.”
Toller removed his gloves and made a fresh attempt to bridge the void, but even though he had braced himself against a partition the cold-stiffened rope again failed to unwind properly. It was while he was retrieving it that he noticed an unnerving fact. At the beginning of the rescue effort Flenn had been considerably higher in relation to the ship, level with the upper end of the acceleration strut — but now he was only slightly above the rim of the gondola.
A moment’s reflection told Toller that Flenn was falling. The ship was also falling, but as long as there was warmth inside the balloon it would retain some degree of buoyancy and would descend more slowly than a solid object. This close to the midpoint the relative speeds were negligible, but Flenn was nonetheless in the grip of Overland’s gravity, and had begun the long plunge to the surface.
“Have you noticed what’s happening?” Toller said to Zavotle in a low voice. “We’re running out of time.”
Zavotle assessed the situation. “Is there any point in using the laterals?”
“We’d only start cartwheeling.”
“This is serious,” Zavotle said. “First of all Flenn damages the balloon — then he puts himself in a position where he can’t repair it.”
“I doubt if he did that on purpose.” Toller wheeled on Rillomyner. “The cannon! Find a weight that will go into the cannon. Maybe we can fire a line.”
At that moment Flenn, who had been quiescent, appeared to notice his gradual change of position relative to the ship and to draw the appropriate conclusions. He began struggling and squirming, then made exaggerated swimming movements which in other circumstances might have been comic. Discovering that nothing was having any good effect he again became still, except for an involuntary movement of his hands when Zavotle’s second throw of the rope failed to reach him.
“I’m getting scared, captain.” Although Flenn was shouting his voice seemed faint, its energies leaching away into the surrounding immensities. “You’ve got to bring me home.”
“We’ll bring you in. There’s.…” Toller allowed the sentence to tail off. He had been going to assure Flenn there was plenty of time, but his voice would have lacked conviction. It was becoming apparent that not only was Flenn falling past the gondola, but that — in keeping with the immutable laws of physics — he was gaining speed. The acceleration was almost imperceptible, but its effects were cumulative. Cumulative and lethal.…
Rillomyner touched Toller’s arm. “There’s nothing that will fit in the cannon, captain, but I joined two bits of glasscord and tied it to this.” He proffered a hammer with a large brakka head. “I think it will reach him.”
“Good man,” Toller said, appreciative of the way the mechanic was overcoming his acrophobia in the emergency. He moved aside to let Rillomyner make the throw. The mechanic tied the free end of the glasscord to the rail, judged the distances and hurled the hammer out into space.
Toller saw at once that he had made the mistake of aiming high, compensating for a full-gravity drop that was not going to occur. The hammer dragged the cord out behind it and came to a halt in the air a tantalising few yards above Flenn, who was galvanised into windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to reach it. Rillomyner jiggled the cord in an effort to move the hammer downwards, but only succeeded in drawing it a short distance back towards the ship.