What is happening to me? he thought, becoming alarmed. He had rarely given himself over to introspection, considering it a waste of time, but recently his emotional reactions to events had been so laden with ambivalence and contradiction that his mind had been obliged to turn inwards. And here was another example. In one instant he had pitied the fortress crews—and in the next he had come close to envying them! Few people knew better than he how illusory was the concept of military glory, therefore he could not have been seduced by his fleeting vision of a new breed of patriots, ultimate heroes, manning their fragile wooden outposts in the lonely reaches of the sky.
What is happening to me? he again demanded of himself. Why am I no longer satisfied by what satisfied me once? Why, unless I am deranged, do I press forward where any reasonable man would retreat?
Realisation that he was neglecting his duties prompted Toller to end the self-interrogation and propel himself closer to the first fortress under assembly. The mid-section and one end-section had been successfully aligned and brought together, and now the remaining component was about to be drawn into place. It had been deposited rather a long way from its companions, giving the men who were hauling on the link ropes time to develop a fast and effective rhythm. Clinging to the sides of the mid-section, four of them were working in unison with their free arms. The end-section, which had been sluggish at first, was now moving at a good speed and showed no signs of slowing down as it neared its assigned place. Toller knew it had no weight and therefore could cause no damage by colliding with the rest of the fortress, but on principle he disliked the use of excessive force in any engineering operation. He could foresee the section rebounding and having to be drawn in again.
“Stop hauling—it’s coming in too fast,” he shouted to the men on the link ropes. “Get ready to grip it and hold it in place.”
The men acknowledged his command with waves and made ready to receive the advancing cylinder. Phamarge, who had been overseeing the task, signalled for another two men who were holding on to the short lashing ropes of the mid-section rim to assist their comrades. One of them pulled himself against the leather-covered rim and locked himself in place by clamping his thighs around it.
Toller watched the end-section close in on the waiting man. The wooden structure was losing very little speed and was easily compacting the stout ropes in its path—all of which, Toller thought, was rather strange for an object which was as weightless as a feather. Alarm geysered through his system as he recalled a similar anomaly at the end of Gotlon’s first personal flight—the weightless man had delivered a surprisingly powerful impact, almost as though…
“Get off the rim!” Toller bellowed. “Get clear!”
The suited man turned towards him, but made no other movement. There was a frozen instant in which Toller recognised the rough-hewn features of Gnapperl, then the end-section drove against the remainder of the fortress. Gnapperl screamed as his thigh-bone snapped. The entire fortress bucked, dislodging men from its sides, and the end-section—still squandering kinetic energy—slewed a little and partially entered the main structure. Two opposing lengths of rim scissored across Gnapperl’s body for a moment, ending his screams, before the fortress sections drifted apart and came to rest.
Toller reflexively triggered his air jet and only succeeded in pushing himself farther away from the scene. He twisted around, pumping more air into the unit, and propelled himself backwards into the confusion of drifting figures. Colliding gently with the mid-section, he grasped a lashing point to steady himself and looked at the injured man. Gnapperl was drifting free of the fortress, arms and legs spread, and there was a long rent across the front of his skysuit. Blood had soaked into the exposed insulation, making the tear resemble a dreadful wound, and bright red globules were floating in a swarm around him, glistening in the sunlight. Toller was left with no doubt that Gnapperl was dead.
“Why didn’t the fool get out of the way when you told him?” Umol said, using a rope to draw himself closer to Toller.
“Who’s to say?” Toller thought of the dead man’s odd moment of paralysis before the impact, and wondered if Gnapperl would have been so slow to react had the warning come from anybody else. It could be that his mistrust of Toller had been responsible for his death, in which case Toller also bore responsibility.
“He was a down-looking brute, anyway,” Umol commented. “If any of us had to go, he’s the one I would have picked—and at least he taught us something useful.”
“What?”
“That something which can crush a man on the ground can crush him up here. It doesn’t seem to matter that nothing has any weight. Can you understand it, Toller?”
Toller wrenched his thoughts from morality to physics. “Perhaps being totally weightless affects our bodies. It’s something we ought to be careful about in the future.”
“Yes, and meanwhile there’s a carcase to be disposed of. I suppose we could just leave it be.”
“No,” Toller said immediately. “We’ll take him back to Overland when we go.”
Upside down, the six ships had travelled all through the hours of darkness. In addition to the speed imparted by their jets, there had been a slight gain as Overland tightened her gravitational web, but the acceleration had been negligible so early in the descent. And as soon as daylight had returned—with Overland’s binary dance swinging her clear of the sun—the engines had been shut down and air resistance had brought the vessels to a halt. The pilots had then used the tiny lateral jets to turn the ships over, an operation conducted in majestic slowness, with the universe and all the stars it contained wheeling at the behest of six ordinary men, and the sun obediently sinking to a new position beneath their feet.
The manoeuvre had been completed without mishap, and now it was time to do things which had never been done before.
Toller was strapped into the pilot’s seat, with Tipp Gotlon near to him on the other side of the engine unit. The false deck on which they were sitting was a circular wooden platform, only four good paces across, and beyond its unguarded rim was a yawning emptiness, a drop of more than two thousand miles to the planetary surface. At varying distances the five other sky-ships were suspended in the void against the complex blue-and-silver background of the heavens. Their two-man crews, because they were in the cylindrical shadows of the decks, were only visible where silhouetted against glowing spirals or the splayed radiance of comets. The huge balloons, brilliantly illuminated on their undersides, had the apparent solidity of planets, pear-shaped worlds with meridians marked by load tapes and lines of stitching.
Toller was concerned less with the unearthly ambience than with the demands of his own microcosm. The deck space was occupied by a clutter of equipment and stores, from the pipe runs of the lateral jets to the lockers used for the storage of power crystals, food, water, skysuits and fallbags. Waist-high partitions of woven cane enclosed the primitive toilet and galley. From the latter protruded the lower part of Gnapperl’s body, which had been lashed in place to forestall its unnerving tendency to rise up and meander in weightless conditions.
“Well, young Gotlon, this is where we part company,” Toller said. “How do you feel about that?”
“Ready when you are, sir.” Gotlon gave his centrally divided smile. “As you know, sir, it is my ambition to become a pilot, and I would be honoured if you would allow me to pull the rip line.”