Star Winds

STAR WINDS

Barrington J. Bayley

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Website

Also by Barrington J. Bayley

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter ONE

As the shrill whistling sound began to pierce the air, the customers drinking in the Pivot Inn glanced roofward and peered with interest through the engraved windows. Then, abandoning their tankards, they streamed out into the street to scan the sky for the source of the noise.

They soon saw what they were looking for. A big sail-ship was riding low over the tiled roofs of Olam, leaning at a perilous angle and making unsteady progress. The Pivot Inn’s landlord, who had also rushed out onto the pavement, shook his fist. “She’s breaking the law!” he shouted excitedly. “She’s breaking the law!” No one took any notice of him; everyone knew it was illegal to spread ether silk this close to town.

As the ship approached the inn the whistling became a shriek fit to curdle the brain. Hands were clapped to ears, faces contorted, and most present squeezed shut their eyes. Rachad Caban, however, kept his gaze steadfastly on the vessel, even though the unearthly shrieking seemed to be shaking his innards to shreds. She was a galleon, square-cut at stem and stern, which were raked to allow her to cut easily through the air. Her underbooms had already been taken in to prepare for a landing on spring-mounted runners, but aloft and on the outriggers she spread a full set of bellying canvas, angled to achieve a parachute effect on the descent to the ship field. Clearly, however, she was in trouble. Somehow her master had bungled the approach to the field, and finding himself losing altitude too quickly he had—completely against regulations—run up too large ether sails whose silky blue sparkle could be seen standing out among all the white windsail. Catching the ether currents now, the ship steadied and soared over the rooftops, narrowly clearing the spire of the cathedral.

There was good reason for the ban on ether sail at such low altitude—over towns, anyway. The impedimentary waves the sails caused in the luminiferous ether, whose currents they trapped to gain momentum, rebounded against the bulking mass of the ground to set up an interference effect. The result was a high-pitched sound vibration in the atmosphere which now, ringing even louder as the galleon sailed overhead, caused all below to fall to their knees in agony.

The drill-like pain abated as the ship receded. The townsfolk came to their feet gasping. Rachad still watched the galleon. A flying sailship was always a stirring sight, with its carved and painted woodwork, its masses of sail, spars and rigging to which men clung with careless-seeming skill.

“What a goddam awful row,” muttered a fat, bald man who still clutched his head.

“That’s right,” Rachad said lightly. “Earth and ether don’t mix.”