“That’s no good,” Toller snapped. “Pull it in fast and throw straight at him next time.” He was trying to suppress a growing sense of panic and despair. Flenn was now visibly sinking below the level of the gondola, and the hammer was less likely to reach him as the range increased and the angles became less conducive to accurate throwing. What Flenn desperately needed was a means of reducing the distance separating him from the gondola, and that was impossible unless… unless.…
A familiar voice spoke inside Toller’s head. Action and reaction, Lain was saying. That’s the universal principle…
“Flenn, you can bring yourself closer,” Toller shouted. “Use the carble! Throw it straight away from the ship, as hard as you can. That will drift you in this direction.”
There was a pause before Flenn responded. “I couldn’t do that, captain.”
“This is an order,” Toller bellowed. “Throw the carble, and throw it right now! We’re running out of time.”
There was a further pounding delay, then Flenn was seen to be fumbling with the coverings on his chest. Sunlight flared on the lower surfaces of his body as he slowly produced the green-striped animal.
Toller swore in frustration. “Hurry, hurry! We’re going to lose you.”
“You’ve already lost me, captain.” Flenn’s voice was resigned. “But I want you to take Tinny home with you.”
There was a sudden sweeping movement of his arm and he went tumbling backwards as the carble sailed towards the ship. It was travelling too low. Toller watched numbly as the terrified animal, mewing and clawing at the air, passed out of sight below the gondola. Its yellow eyes had seemed to be boring into his own. Flenn receded a short distance before he stabilised himself by spreading his arms and legs. He came to rest in the attitude of a drowned man, floating face-down on an invisible ocean, his gaze directed towards Overland — thousands of miles below — which had taken him in its gravitational arms.
“You stupid little midget,” Rillomyner sobbed as~he again sent the hammer snaking towards Flenn. It stopped short and a little to one side of its target. Flenn, body and limbs rigid, continued to sink with gathering speed.
“He’ll be falling for maybe a day,” Zavotle whispered. “Just think of it… a whole day… falling… I wonder if he’ll still be alive when he hits the ground.”
“I’ve got other things to think about,” Toller said harshly, turning away from the gondola wall, unable to watch Flenn dwindling out of sight.
His brief required him to abort the flight in the event of losing a crew member or sustaining some serious structural damage to the ship. Nobody could have foreseen both circumstances arising as a result of one trivial-seeming accident with the galley stove, but he felt no less responsible — and it remained to be seen if the S.E.S. administrators would also regard him as culpable.
“Switch us back to jet power,” he said to Rillomyner. “We’re going home.”
PART III
Region of Strangeness
Chapter 16
The cave was in the side of a ragged hill, in an area of broken terrain where numerous gullies, rocky projections and a profusion of spiky scrub made the going difficult for man or beast.
Lain Maraquine was content to let the bluehorn pick its own way around the various obstacles, giving it only an occasional nudge to keep it heading for the orange flag which marked the cave’s position. The four mounted soldiers of his personal guard, obligatory for any senior official of the S.E.S., followed a short distance behind, the murmur of their conversation blending with the heavy drone of insects. Littlenight was not long past and the high sun was baking the ground, clothing the horizon in tremulous purple-tinted blankets of hot air.
Lain felt unusually relaxed, appreciating the opportunity to get away from the skyship base and turn his mind to matters which had nothing to do with world crises and interplanetary travel. Toller’s premature return from the proving flight, ten days earlier, had involved Lain in a harrowing round of meetings, consultations and protracted studies of the new scientific data obtained. One faction in the S.E.S. administration had wanted a second proving flight with a full descent to Overland and detailed mapping of the central continent. In normal circumstances Lain would have been in agreement, but the rapidly worsening situation in Kolcorron overrode all other consideration.…
The production target of one thousand skyships had been achieved with some to spare, thanks to the driving ruthlessness and Leddravohr and Chakkell.
Fifty of the ships had been set aside for the transportation of the country’s royalty and aristocrats in small family groups who would travel in comparative luxury, though by no means all of the nobility had decided to take part in the migration. Another two-hundred were designated as cargo vessels which would carry food, livestock, seeds, weapons and essential machinery and materials; and a further hundred were for the use of military personnel. That left six-hundred-and-fifty ships which, with reduced two-man crews, had the capability of transporting almost twelve thousand of the general population to Overland.
At an early stage of the great undertaking King Prad had decreed that emigration would be on a purely voluntary basis, with equal numbers of males and females, and that fixed proportions of the available places would be allocated to men with key skills.
For a long time the hard-headed citizenry had declined to take the proposal seriously, regarding it as a diversion, a regal folly to be chuckled over in taverns. The small numbers who put their names forward were treated with derision, and it seemed that if the skyship fleet were ever to befitted it would only be at swordpoint.
Prad had chosen to bide his time, knowing in advance that greater forces than he could ever muster were on the move. The ptertha plague, famine and the abrupt crumbling of social order had exerted their powerful persuasions, and — in spite of condemnation from the Church — the roster of willing emigrants had swollen. But such was the conservatism of the Kolcorronians and so radical the solution to their problems that a certain degree of reserve still had to be overcome, a lingering feeling that any amount of deprivation and danger on Land was preferable to the near-inevitability of a highly unnatural death in the alien blue reaches of the sky.
Then had come the news that an S.E.S. ship had voyaged more than halfway to Overland and had returned intact.
Within hours every remaining place on the emigration flight had been allocated, and suddenly those who held the necessary warrants were objects of envy and resentment. There was a reversal of public opinion, swift and irrational, and many who had scorned the very notion of fly ing to the sister world began to see themselves as victims of discrimination.
Even the majority who were too apathetic to care much either way about the broad historical issues were disgruntled by stories of wagons loaded with scarce provisions disappearing through the gates of Skyship Quarter…
Against that background Lain had argued that the proving flight had achieved all its major objectives by successfully turning over and passing the midpoint. The descent to the surface of Overland would have been a passive and predictable business; and Zavotle’s sketches of the central continent, viewed through binoculars, were good enough to show that it was remarkably free of mountains and other features which would have jeopardised safe landings.