The changing patterns of night and day enhanced his temporal disorientation. As the ascent continued Overland’s night grew shorter and its littlenight expanded, slipping towards the equilibrium which would be attained midway between the sister planets, and Toller found himself almost losing track of the sequence. The surest measure of time’s passing became the ship’s altimeter—a simple device consisting of nothing more than a vertical scale, from the top of which a small weight was suspended by a delicate coiled spring. At the beginning of the flight the weight had been opposite the lowest mark on the scale, but as the climb continued and the pull of Overland’s gravity diminished, the weight drifted upwards in a perfect analogue of the flight, a miniature ship sailing a miniature cosmos.
Another reliable indicator of progress was the increasing coldness. On Toller’s first ascent the crew had been surprised by the phenomenon and had been considerably distressed as a result, but now thickly quilted suits were available and the low temperatures were made tolerable. It was even possible, while seated close to the burner, to achieve a cosy, cocooned warmth —a condition which abetted Toller’s persistent drowsiness, and in which he could spend hours staring into the darkening blue of the sky, at fierce stars scattered on overlapping whirlpools of light, at the splayed luminance of comets, and at Farland hanging in the distance like a green lantern.
One of the most important problems facing the mission was that of recognising the exact centre of the weightless zone. Toller knew that in theory there was no actual zone of weightlessness, that it was a plane of zero thickness, and that a fortress positioned as little as ten yards to one side or the other would inevitably begin the long plunge to a planetary surface. It had been assumed, however, that reality would be more forgiving than absolute equations and would allow some leeway, no matter how slight.
Toller’s first job was to show that the assumption had been justified.
The six ships had switched over to jet propulsion days earlier, when the lift generated by hot air had become negligible, but now their engines were silent as they hung in a gravitational no-man’s-land. Toller found it eerie that the crews could communicate well with each other simply by shouting—although their voices seemed to be absorbed quickly in the surrounding immensities, they could in fact carry for hundreds of yards. For many minutes he had been busy with the device, invented by Zavotle, which was intended to show up any significant vertical motion of his ship. It consisted of a small pan containing a mixture of chemicals and tallow which gave off thick smoke when ignited, and a bellows-like attachment with a long nozzle.
The machine made it possible to shoot out from the side of the ship tiny balls of smoke which retained their form and density for a surprisingly long time in the still air. Zavotle’s idea was that the smoke, being no heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, would create stationary markers by which the ship’s motion could be gauged. Basic though the system was, it seemed to be effective. Toller had forbidden Essedell and Gotlon to move in case they tilted the circular deck, and he had been sighting the smoke puffs along the line of the handrail for long enough to convince him there was no relative displacement.
“I’d say we’re holding,” he shouted to Daas, pilot of the second midsection, who had been carrying out similar observations. “What say you?”
“I agree, sir.” Daas, barely visible as a swaddled figure at the rail of his ship, waved to supplement his message.
Foreday had just begun and the sun was positioned “below” the six craft, close to the eastern rim of Overland. The upflung brilliance was illuminating the underside of the fortress sections, casting their shadows on the lower halves of the balloons, adding an unnatural and theatrical aspect to the scene. Toller suddenly became aware of a sense of elation as he surveyed the unearthly spectacle. He felt well-rested and strong after the brief hibernation of the ascent, ready to do battle in a new kind of arena, and within him was a peculiar sensation of such intensity that he was obliged to pause and analyse it.
There seemed to be a core of lightness which had nothing to do with the zero gravity conditions, and from that core came varicoloured rays—the metaphor was too simple, but the only one available to him—characterised by feelings of joy, optimism, luck and potency, which infused every part of his mental and physical being. The overall effect was strange and at the same time oddly familiar, and it took him several seconds to identify it and realise that he felt young. No more than that, and no less—he felt young!
An emotional reaction followed almost immediately.
I suppose many would think it strange for happiness to come to a man at a time like this. He relaxed his grip on the handrail slightly, allowing his feet to drift upwards from the deck, and the dreaming disk of Overland, cupped in its slim crescent of brightness, came into view beneath the ship. This is why Gesalla compared me to Leddravohr. She senses the fulfilment I get when called upon to defend our people, but she is unable to share in it and therefore she becomes jealous. No doubt she is anxious about my safety, and that too prompts her to say things she later regrets in the privacy of the bedchamber…
“I’m ready to go, sir.” Gotlon’s voice came from close behind Toller, calling him back into the practical universe. Toller brought his feet down on to the deck and turned to see that the young rigger, without awaiting the order, had donned his full personal flight kit. His lanky form was all but unrecognisable in the thick quilting of a skysuit, which included fur-lined gauntlets and boots. The lower half of his face was hidden by a woollen muffler, through which his breath emerged in white vapourings, and his form was further bulked out by a parachute pack and by the air jet unit strapped to his midriff.
“Shall I go out now, sir?” Gotlon fingered the karabiner on the tether which was keeping him close to the ship’s rail. “I’m ready.”
“I can see you are, but curb your impatience,” Toller said. “There must be a full audience for your exploits.”
As well as being ambitious, Gotlon was one of those rare individuals who were totally without fear of heights, and Toller felt lucky to have found him in the short time available. The crews of the six fortress sections had been in the weightless zone long enough to start getting used to floating in the air like ptertha, but a huge psychological barrier had yet to be surmounted.
Final assembly of the fortresses could not begin until it had been demonstrated that a man could untie himself, jump free of his ship and successfully return to it by means of his air jet. Although he had intellectual confidence in the hastily devised system, Toller was unashamedly relieved that he was not required to put it to the initial test. Once in reality, and many times since in nightmare, he had seen a man begin the 2,500-mile fall from the fringes of the central blue, at first moving so slowly that he seemed to be at rest, and then, as the gravitational yearning of the planet grew more insistent, dwindling and dwindling into the plunge which would last more than a day and end in death.
Toller’s lungs were labouring in the rarefied air, and he felt a stinging coldness inside his chest as he shouted the necessary orders to the other five pilots. While all crewmen were lining up at the rails of their ships their eyes were fixed on Gotlon. He waved to them like a child attracting his friend’s attention before a daring playground stunt. Toller allowed him the breach of discipline in the interests of general morale.