Star Winds

Fumblingly they ignited the powdered air in their backpacks. Then, utterly exhausted, they fell about the deck, hoping and praying that their captain had the good sense to abandon his foolhardy mission and turn back for home, while there was still a chance.

Captain Zhorga, however, did not have any such good sense. True, the hurricane had left him feeling shaken, but his ship had come through it and that was good enough in his book.

Already his mind was on the greater hazards to come. Far overhead sped the slipstream, a branch of the ether wind that instead of passing through the atmosphere split away and went racing over the top of it, like a breeze deflected by a ball. This slipstream was shallow but immensely strong and swift, and played a vital role in interplanetary sailflight. If approached correctly, it would send the Wandering Queen catapulting at top speed toward her target. Otherwise, there was a risk that it might bear her round into the Earth’s lacuna, a static region where the ether did not move at all.

Zhorga lashed the wheel in position; from now on there would be no pitting the wind against the ether. Scorning to strap himself into his captain’s seat, he stood by the poop rail, knowing it would hearten his men to see him standing there unafraid, prominent by reason of the large number 1 painted on his chest. Patiently breathing the acrid chemical air, he waited out the hours as the galleon continued to climb on the irresistible power of the ether. Space-suits gradually swelled in near-vacuum. Stars appeared as the sky turned first purple then black, and the sun blazed with an unfamiliar fierceness.

With increasing anxiety he watched for the signs: a hastening of the ship’s onward pace, an extra swelling of the sails, a new strain on the tackles.

They came; excited, he gave the prearranged arm signal. On the maindeck men clumsily worked the great ratchets, slipping and sliding on the planking. The three mainmasts that were mounted on those ratchets shuddered inch by inch toward their new settings, while at the same time sheet-ropes were taken in to bring the sails to the angle Zhorga wanted.

But before the maneuver could be completed there came a sudden shock so violent as to send Zhorga tumbling down the stairway to the maindeck. The ship seemed to be turning, tilting. He tried to get to his feet, but discovered to his horror that the deck had turned right over to form a sloping ceiling, and that below him there spread the shimmering blue sails, two hundred miles of space and air, and the blue-and-white expanse of the Earth.

He fell, howling. But already the deck had slipped beneath him again. He rolled, grabbed a handhold, and desperately tried to weigh up the situation.

The ship was spinning with a waltzing gyration whose center seemed to be somewhere between the maindeck and the topgallants. Men were either clinging to whatever was within reach or else were falling and tumbling through space like insects shaken from a tree. Evidently the galleon’s entry into the slipstream had been too precipitate, and Zhorga had no doubt that she was now being carried inexorably toward the lacuna.

He saw that four or five sailors, swaying this way and that as the ship turned over and over, were still clinging to the nearest ratchet bar. He seized a safety line, gritted his teeth, and timing his efforts to the galleon’s oscillations, hauled himself toward the bar.

He reached the men only to glimpse, through gridded faceplates, faces rigid with fear. He thumped and shoved them, but they reacted only by gripping the ratchet bar even more stubbornly.

He could not really blame them. It was not unknown at great heights for air sailors to freeze to the spars and to have to be pried loose. Roaring uselessly in the vacuum, he kicked and shoved more violently, almost knocking one man loose from his hold. At last they seemed to understand what they must do to save themselves. Following Zhorga’s example, they made an effort to work the ratchet mechanism, their boots scraping intermittently on the revolving deck.

The ratchet moved a notch, then another. The mast shuddered and dropped, foot by foot, and shortly there was a change in the movements of the ship. The gyrations damped down. The stem rose, bringing the decks to a slope of nearly forty-five degrees, so that the bow pointed directly at the Earth and it seemed to the eye that the galleon was rushing headlong back toward the ground.

In fact, she was still in the grip of the slipstream. But now there was enough stability for the men to recover their wits and to work the remaining ratchets. The decks leveled; the onrushing slipstream began to do the work Zhorga had planned for it—lifting the galleon at a diagonal angle and at an ever-faster rate.