Old Mars

A roaring sound filled the world louder than anything I had ever heard, and I felt a sensation of terrible weight, as though divine hands were pressing down upon every atom of my being. Around me in the sudden gloom, I saw my men pressed slowly to the deck, and heard the protests of the Dominic as the wood all around groaned. I feared to see the ocean lapping at the rail, but the weight, whatever it was, appeared not to affect our buoyancy.

The woman slipped to the deck as well, borne down by the same terrible heaviness. Her face was an image of triumph, and it was the last thing I saw before darkness took me.

There is a gulf between worlds, Majesty, greater than any ocean. Its emptiness is only relieved by an unsetting sun that burns in the blackness and an unimaginable profusion of stars. Those ships that sail that upper abyss are greater than any leviathan of the lower waters that I once knew. How can I adequately describe the glory of the vessel into which I woke? How can I tell you of the grace of her lines, the power that permeated her? Imagine stepping into the vast nave of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where instead of stone, every arch is fashioned of living crystal that glows with light and power the improbable blue of a butterfly’s wing. Imagine the poor Dominic of Osma, which had housed myself and my men these many years, lying on her side like a child’s toy abandoned beside a stream while outside the vast window, the stars shine steady and unblinking as you have never seen through Earth’s fickle air.

And the enemy. As beautiful as the doomed Serkeriah was, her pursuers were her echo in grotesquerie. Inhuman and insectlike, they swarmed through the void, the thousand filthy talons of a single demonic hand. Their carapaces were lit from within by a baleful light that spoke of brimstone and sulfur. Serrated claws reached out from each of these unclean bodies in a design that promised that to be touched by one was to be not merely cut, but infected. And it was on one of these, Your Majesty, that the Right Honorable Governor Smith rode with his diabolical masters.

But I precede myself, for I knew none of this in my uncanny sleep. Indeed, I knew nothing until an unfamiliar voice reached me and called me to myself.

“Captain,” the strange voice said. “Please, Captain. Wake up!”

There is, as I am sure Your Majesty knows, no greater impetus that could call a man back from his own unconscious depths than the fear that those entrusted to his care and command might be in need. I roused myself only with a great effort of will, for my awareness had entirely left me until then. But when I managed to pry open my resisting eyelids, two surprises waited. The first was the man who spoke the words. Kneeling, he was still as tall as I might have stood. His hunched body was covered in a soft, tawny pelt, and his countenance, while expressive of distress and an almost unimaginable kindness, nevertheless seemed most like that of some serene, gentle, and unaccountably furry toad.

The second surprise was that his words were not directed to me.

“What is our situation, La’an?” the woman asked. It would be a mistake to call her voice weak. Rather, it was the voice of a strong person compromised by sleep or illness.

“The alloy you brought us has been recovered, Captain,” the toad-man said, “but the Ikkean fleet is in pursuit. And the crew …?”

“The crew is gone,” the woman said, regaining her feet. “We were attacked on the sea, and I alone survived. Only blind chance and these men preserved me.”

The toad-man made a distressed chirping deep in his throat, looking around at the motley lot of us. And ragged we were, Majesty, even for such a normally tattered bunch. Young Carter lay splayed out upon the crystalline deck, and Quohog beside him, like two men asleep. Mister Kopler had risen to his knees, his eyes wide as saucers as he took in the great structure that surrounded us. Doctor Koch, his head down, scuttled among the fallen men, his eyes blind to all wonders in his haste to care for the men. And I, I confess, sat in awe, struck dumb by the marvelous and terrible fate that had befallen us. When the woman rose to her feet, I found my own, more from a vestigial sense of propriety than from the conscious exercise of will. Only Mister Darrow seemed unaffected by our otherworldly surroundings. He, with the calmness of an attorney before the judge, tugged his forelock to the woman.

“My pardons,” he said. “This alloy you were speaking of. That wouldn’t be the Incan gold, would it?”

The woman and toad-man both turned, he startled and she amused.

“You are correct,” she said. “It is not true gold, but the rare alloy formed in the volcanic crust of some worlds.”

“See now,” Mister Darrow said, turning to young Carter, who had only just regained consciousness. “I told you how it was too light. Real gold’s got heft to it.”

“You’re very clever, sir,” Carter said. “So. Are we dead, do you think?”