John Brosnan - The Sky Lords

She was about to return upstairs when she paused and said, “Frusa, that voice you heard. Ashley’s. I know it maybe kind of hard for you to understand but it does belong to a sort of real person so next time you hear it I would appreciate it if you would be, er, polite to her.”

“Voice came from nothing. No human there. Why talk to nothing?”

“I give up,” muttered Jan and left. As she climbed the crystal staircase she wondered if Ashley’s comment about Frusa reminding her of one of her old coats was the real cause of the panther’s apparent obtuseness.

As she entered the summit room Carl said, “The Sky Angel—Registration Code A810 JLX—was successfully launched from the factory facility three minutes ago and is on course for Earth.”

“Marvellous!” exclaimed Jan. “Are you actually in control of it from here?”

“No. It is under the control of the program in its on-board computer. But I have a direct radio link with that computer. I am receiving a constant stream of information.”

“I see.” Jan marvelled at how blasé she was becoming about Old Science. Here she was, calmly talking to a computer that was in turn talking to another computer an unimaginable distance away in outer space. And that computer was piloting a mile-long airship through the void. “Carl, Milo told me once that there was no air in space. So how does the Sky Angel propel itself? The thrusters on the Sky Lords depended on air to work.”

“The Sky Angel is fitted with rocket motors. They don’t need air to function. When the Sky Angel enters the atmosphere the rocket motors will be discarded.”

Jan thanked Carl for the information and then reluctantly turned her attention to the grisly task of removing the corpses of the dead samurai. She solved the problem by wrapping them in their bed rolls and dragging them, one by one, down the stairs to the observation room below. From there she dragged them down a further flight of stairs and left them on the stairs. When she returned to the summit room she saw the panther licking the blood from the floor. Whether the panther was doing her a deliberate favour or not she wasn’t sure—and decided not to ask.

Ashley was silent for several hours. It was dark when she finally spoke again, and Jan was eating a meal of potato cakes and synthetic fruit which had been generated by Carl in the shelter. “Hi, it’s me again.” She sounded subdued.

“Hello, Ashley. How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Where’s the panther?”

“Out on the prowl. Looking for food, and checking to see if there are any more Japanese about.”

“I don’t like that animal.”

“I’m not too keen on it either,” Jan admitted. “Reminds me of another panther I once encountered. But I think Frusa can be trusted.”

“Hope you’re right. For your sake. If she can’t find any food out there she might decide to munch on you .”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Jan said uneasily, wishing that Ashley hadn’t expressed aloud Jan’s own secret fear.

“Carl says the launch of the Sky Angel went okay. It’s on its way.”

“Yes, I’m very relieved. I only wish it would get here sooner than eight days.”

“I can’t wait either. I can’t believe I’m going to be able to fly again. Carl says the system of sensors in the Sky Angel is very sophisticated. I’ll actually be able to feel the air as it passes over the hull.”

“Sounds delightful,” Jan said, glancing up at the gaping hole in the curved ceiling through which a stiff, and increasingly cold, breeze was blowing. Earlier she had gone up on the catwalk and examined it more closely. She saw it was too big for her to rig up some kind of makeshift obstruction across the hole. As she’d looked out she’d marvelled that the three samurai had managed to land their gliders on such a precarious surface.

Further exploration had revealed a door that led out to a narrow, glass-enclosed observation deck which circled the summit dome. She had stared down at the tops of the surrounding buildings, trying to detect signs of other Japanese look-out posts, but saw nothing suspicious.

Another discovery was a door that led into a tube-shaped room. There was a circular door at the end but it refused to open. Carl had later explained what it was.

“That is where the Sky Angels link up with the Tower. The tube extends out and locks into a socket in the nose of the Sky Angel.”

“So I’ll be able to enter the Sky Angel that way?”

“Yes.”

“Why was the connection built in the first place? Why did the Sky Angels come here?”

“This was where they were officially commissioned into service. A christening ceremony was held here in the Sky Tower each time a Sky Angel arrived from space.”

“Christening ceremony?”

“They would be given names.”

“Oh, I see.”

Since then she had been wondering what to call her Sky Angel when it arrived. The obvious choice was to call it the Minerva , but she also wanted to name it after her dead friend and lover, Alsa.

She mentioned the name problem to Ashley. Ashley said, “Oh, that’s easy. You can just name it after me! Call it the Ashley Vee . After all, I will be the Sky Angel.”

Jan was not impressed with this suggestion. “In that case I might as well call it the Carl , because he’ll be controlling the Sky Angel as well.”

“Oh, he doesn’t count. I’m the one who’s really in charge.”

“Yes, I know.” Jan remembered the situation in the shelter. She had carefully avoided mentioning the sudden turnabout in ‘Carl’s’ policy regarding visitors to the shelter. It occurred to her that establishing and maintaining control of the Sky Angel once Ashley’s program was in its computer might be more difficult than she had anticipated.

She spent an uncomfortable first night in the summit room. The cold and the hard floor made it difficult for her to get to sleep and when she did finally drift off she had a bad dream. She was back in her mother’s house in Minerva. There was a knock at the door. She opened it and there was Ceri, unharmed and smiling at her. Jan happily went to embrace her, but as she got closer Ceri’s face began to change … it became horribly seamed, like the faces of Ezekiel’s followers. Ceri cried out for Jan to help her, but Jan could only back away in revulsion. Then the seamed and sagging flesh had begun to fall away from Ceri’s face until finally there was only a grinning skull. …

Jan had woken up at that point. As she lay there shivering she wondered if the dream meant that Ceri was now dead.

“Jan. Wake up.”

“Um … What?” she opened her eyes. Everything looked unfamiliar for a few moments, then her memory supplied the necessary information to her consciousness that made the interior of the summit room seem once again all-too-familiar. “Carl … what is it?”

“The Sky Angel has just appeared over the horizon. You should be able to see it from here. It’s coming from a southwesterly direction.”

Jan bounded up from her sleeping roll and ran for the door that led out to the observation deck. The sun had just risen and the sky was clear of clouds. Eagerly, she scanned the horizon. There ! Something glinting in the sunlight. It had to be her! The Sky Angel. At last. …

Four days ago it had seemed that everything was going to end in disaster. Carl had been describing the Sky Angel’s descent into the upper atmosphere: “It’s entering the exosphere now. Retro-rockets still firing … Speed reducing to four thousand, eight hundred and forty miles per hour.”

“Why is it moving so fast?” Jan had asked. “Why doesn’t it just float down through the air?”