Star Winds

His men were into the spirit of the thing now and responded well to their Captain’s exhortations. They worked with a will to cut and fit the new sails, bending them to the newly added spars which would swing them into the “parasol” position once the ship reached space.

“But what when we return?” Rachad wanted to know. “We’ll be arrested on the spot if we come back to Olam, or anywhere on the continent, I should imagine. Everybody will know what we did today.”

“By that time we’ll have a hold full of ether silk,” Zhorga boasted, “and people will take a different view of us.” He laughed briefly. “I asked Druro for sail and he refused, like all the others. But he’s donated it anyway!”

He turned away and continued to supervise the work. The hour was eleven in the morning, half an hour past Gebeth’s recommended time, when the Wandering Queen finally took to the air again, almost buried under blue sail, and soared proudly up toward the void.

Chapter FOUR

Clad like some billowing orchid in more than twice her usual spread of silk, the Wandering Queen seemed able to soar without limit. Up and up she went, climbing high above the commercial flying levels until the cloud layer merged with the ground below her.

The air thinned, producing a crop of headaches, nosebleeds and spells of dizziness. A silence and a stillness prevailed, broken only by the thrumming of the rigging and the jubilation of those on board.

Then disaster struck. A violent jet wind, flowing through the sky at more than a hundred miles an hour, hit the galleon without warning. She yawed, reeled, and then heeled over and was dragged on her side on a new and uncontrolled course.

It was a novel and terrifying experience for an air sailor to be at the mercy of an air wind. Ether silk, with its special porous construction, usually let air pass practically without hindrance. But even silk could not ignore a hurricane. Together with hull and canvas, it was ruthlessly seized and driven onward by the blast.

A world of confusion and dread exploded around Rachad Caban. The wind shrieked and squealed in his ears. It scoured him, speared him, slashed him with icy knives, pounded him with numbing hammers. It tore him from the capstan where he was stationed and rolled him down the deck until he met the balustrade, to which he clung with all his strength and thanked the gods that he had belted on a safety rope. That same wind carried others over the side and flew them out on their lines like kites.

On the quarterdeck, Zhorga’s arms were wrapped around the wheel like steel bands, and he was screaming words which the wind instantly whipped away. Then, through the roaring of the jet wind, Rachad heard a sound which completed his terror: a cracking, snapping sound.

The unmistakable sound of timber giving way.

The spars were breaking up.

He sobbed. The galleon presented a dreadful, pathetic sight as she went wallowing through the air. Broken spars, tangled sails, all were trapped in the rigging. Men froze as they clung to the straps and handholds that dotted the decks, paralyzed and ready to die.

But not all were reduced to such utter helplessness. Incredulously Rachad saw three or four drag themselves along the common safety lines, carrying axes with which they chopped and hewed at standing and running rigging. At first their actions bewildered him; he envisaged the Wandering Queen dropping to earth like a stone. Then he realized that they were working to clear away the windsail, which had borne the brunt of the jet wind, and that the ether spars were relatively undamaged. Canvas, spars and rope, the shattered parts of the ship’s superstructure, went whirling away into the distance.

The effect on the Wandering Queen was dramatic. Cumbrously she righted herself, swaying from side to side even though still sent scudding along by the hurricane. Captain Zhorga wrestled mightily with the wheel and the ship turned, wallowing and swinging. The ether sails billowed again with a series of crackling sounds, as they once more filled with luminiferous current.

Seconds later, as abruptly as it had come, the jet wind ceased.

The galleon climbed in an unearthly silence. They were above the jet stream, above the eight turbulent miles of the planet’s weather. Here was a new realm: the stratosphere—tenuous, calm, extending, Zhorga believed, for more than a hundred miles until it finally petered out at the edge of space.

He had intended his men to don space garb adapted from sea-diving gear before reaching this height. Now they were befuddled from lack of pressure, gasping in the frigid air. Yet somehow they found the strength to haul aboard those who had gone over the side, and only then did they open the deck lockers and start struggling into the protective suits.