Star Winds

Ten days later Gebeth visited the shipfield to see for himself the vessel in which his protégé and his new-found pupil proposed to set forth for Mars.

Zhorga had sunk all his money into the scheme and work was well advanced. The hold was filled with goods which he hoped to barter with the Martians in exchange for silk. The caulking was all but done and when Gebeth arrived Zhorga was supervising the fitting of extra spars which he believed would improve the galleon’s handling in space.

As Gebeth stood staring up at the ship two horse-drawn drays stacked with wooden barrels rumbled up. He stepped forward and spoke to one of the drivers.

“Are you from Hamshar’s works?”

“That’s right, sir.” The drayman climbed down and began unfastening the lashings. “And there’s two more loads to come.”

The alchemist nodded. The barrels contained a chemical preparation that could be made to smolder slowly to release breathable air. It would sustain the crew of the Wandering Queen on their journey through space.

It was thanks to his own knowledge that Zhorga had been able to obtain the coagulated air so quickly, for only he knew where to find a manufacturer to make the stuff in quantity. Indeed Gebeth had made himself invaluable in many ways. He had supplied Zhorga with the pills, made up to his instructions by an apothecary in the Street of the Alchemists, that the crew members would take during the voyage to ward off the physical effects of space travel. They would be living in conditions of reduced weight once they left Earth, and part of the time, when the sails were furled or during maneuvering, they might experience null weight. Such conditions could rot the bones and weaken the heart.

Captain Zhorga’s rough bellow sounded from above. Sailors came swarming down ropes dangling over the ship’s side. The hold doors were opened and the barrels of chemical air began to be rolled inside, rattling up a short ramp.

Rachad’s face appeared over the railing. “Gebeth! Come up!”

Gebeth climbed a gangway to a door halfway up the wall of the hull. He found himself between decks, with a passageway ahead of him and a stairway to his left. There was a strong bitter smell of the special pitch all chinks and seams had been filled with to make the galleon airtight. Rachad came down the stairs, a pleased grin on his face.

“Come up top, sir!”

He followed Rachad onto the main deck, which was alive with activity and a chaos of ropes and tackle not yet assembled. They wandered among cursing sailors until Gebeth could look over the starboard rail. He saw that yet another item of equipment had arrived and lay in a heap on the ground: a huge sheet of a flexible transparent material which was to be affixed to the hull to cover the sternhouse and part of the main deck. It would balloon up under pressure and meant that one could walk the deck under it without wearing a breathing suit.

“Come to the sternhouse,” Rachad invited over the clamor. “It’s quieter there.”

They climbed to the quarterdeck and entered Captain Zhorga’s cabin. It was as Gebeth would have expected: not too clean, jumbled, smelling of Zhorga’s habitation. “Has the Captain found a role for you yet?” he inquired.

“Well, he uses me as a sort of cabin boy,” Rachad said apologetically. “Running messages and doing odd jobs. But I don’t mind. What an adventure!” His eyes gleamed and he looked through the windows in the slanted rear wall of the cabin. Gebeth noted that the panes had been covered with a second frame containing a single sheet of unbreakable glass, tinted against the glare of the sun. Even the sternhouse had been caulked, in case the outside bubble should fail.

A drawing of Zhorga’s sail plan lay on the cabin table. Gebeth studied it briefly. An air sailing ship like the Wandering Queen was designed quite differently from the old transspatial ships, being closer in many respects to the old sea ships from which both were ultimately descended. Zhorga knew, therefore, that if he tried to sail in space as he did in the atmosphere the result would be a disaster; in space the ship would have no natural weight to keep it in balance. Instead he proposed to sail the galleon much like a cog. The ship would fly decks foremost, with the sails arranged overhead like a canopy. The hull’s inertia would thus provide the needed drag on the sails, whose pull could then act through the ship’s center of gravity, giving a stable system. This arrangement had one other important advantage, besides its simplicity: the ship’s constant acceleration would give objects on board weight in the accustomed direction. One would be able to walk the decks.

Gebeth turned to Rachad. “How is Zhorga managing as regards his men?”

Rachad grimaced, then laughed. “He keeps them in line somehow.”