Star Winds

He signaled Clabert to continue and soon all was in readiness to enter the atmosphere. A second glowing missile crossed the stem of the ship. Zhorga realized glumly that he had no choice but to hope that the captain of the dragonfly would be content to follow the Wandering Queen down, and would forebear from doing her any damage.

But he had reckoned without the impetuosity of certain of his crew, who had received lessons galore from their master on rashness. Unseen by Zhorga, Bruge, Small and Patchman levered one of the bombards out of its storage pit, loaded, primed and fired it, all in the space of a minute.

The ball missed the dragonfly proper, but tore a rent in one of the silken wings. Aghast, Zhorga yelled futilely in his helmet, but the dragonfly’s response came almost immediately. Its third glowing shot hit the Wandering Queen amidships and exploded with a dazzling blare of light.

Zhorga distinctly heard a soft WHUMPH through the brass of his headpiece. Momentarily he was blinded. Then his vision cleared to see that a number of side strakes were smashed, and a section of deck lay propped against the rail, having come adrift from its beams.

On the foredeck, the fighting spirit was unabated. By now both bombards had been manhandled onto their firing platforms. They were fired as fast as they could be reloaded, all balls going wide. In return, the dragonfly sent yet another fire-dart which fell among the rigging and devastated the spars, scattering fragments of wood, rope and silk in all directions.

And then a rapid whisper of air against the sides of the hull signaled the end of the battle. The ship was entering the atmosphere.

Mars’s air was in a sense artificial, being produced by the air fires (though these had burned for centuries and could not be put out). The continuous addition of phlogistonic gases from the burning areas was offset by a boiling off, or evaporation, of air from the top of the atmosphere, which consequently met space abruptly, not gradually as did Earth’s. Almost, the atmosphere had a surface of its own, and the Wandering Queen was now plunging into that surface.

It had been Zhorga’s intention to skim the atmosphere, dropping into it as he got the feel of the local ether currents. Now it was too late. With so many sails gone, or in tatters, control was lost, and there was little that he could do to take effective command anyway.

The susurration intensified. Density, Zhorga knew, would increase rapidly. The desperadoes at the bombards gave up the fight and scrambled to return to their posts as the galleon swayed under the impact of rushing air, scudding along as if driven by a storm.

The sound of the atmosphere became a buffeting roar. Down and down fluttered the Wandering Queen, spiraling and corkscrewing with the aerodynamics of a sycamore seed. It was only her inherent airworthiness that gave her any chance at all—that and the efforts of groups and individuals who stubbornly hurled themselves onto capstans and windlasses, using their instincts amid the chaos to try to bring the ship some measure of stability. When she was only two or three miles from the ground some windsail was released; temporarily it brought the ship out of her spin, sending her lurching crabwise in a stiff breeze. For a minute Zhorga thought a controlled landing might be possible after all, but the damage among the spars was too great. The ship skidded around the Martian sky. She dipped, and entered into a steep, curved descent.

The crash, when it came, was a prolonged, titanic thunder. Timbers, masts, spars and sails shattered, splintered, tore. Zhorga, like everyone else who was not actually killed, was knocked cold.

***

In the restricted view through his faceplate, Rachad saw that he lay on gritty soil. His head ached abominably—not just from the knock he had received from the inside of his brass helmet, but also because his backpack was nearly extinguished and the air inside his suit was foul.

He struggled to sit up, anxiously feeling himself for broken bones, and discovering none, applied himself to unscrewing his helmet. At last the headpiece came off; thankfully he drew in a lungful of cold, thin air with a slightly burnt odor, not at all strange to him after the acrid chemical air he had been breathing.

Unsteadily he came to his feet.

So here he was standing on Mars, he thought shakily. The pull of the planet seemed oddly burdening after so much time in space. Evidently he had been thrown from the Wandering Queen on impact, for he was still attached to his lifeline, which led to the wreckage of the ship. For a while he stared at this wreckage. The crash had almost completely crushed the galleon, scattering timbers over the surrounding ground. A few remaining spars leaned crazily, trailing sail.