David Gerrold - The Flying Sorcerers

It took only a few moments, and then he stood up proudly and wetly. Almost immediately Orbur called, “We’re on our way up again!”

Indeed we were. The ocean dropped away at an ever increasing pace. The water spilled out of the hole at a steady rate, and gradually there was less and less water in the boat. Like Purple’s first windbag so many hands ago; we fell upward.

I leaned over the railing in excitement. “Why, it works just like the sand ballast,” I said. “When you throw it away, the boat rises.”

“Of course, you nit!” said Shoogar. “That’s part of the ballast spell.”

“It’s the weight, Lant — it doesn’t make any difference what your ballast is. It’s the throwing away of weight that makes the boat rise.”

“Nice thinking,” commented Shoogar. The ballast goes automatically. No jerks, no bumps.”

“Thank you,” Purple beamed. It was the first compliment he had ever gotten from Shoogar.

He checked our course heading then — the wind was blowing almost directly north — so the boys could either rest of pedal in the same direction, as they chose. They chose to rest and stretched out on their outriggers. There had to be one son on each outrigger at all times, or no son on either otherwise the airboat slanted all askew.

Purple dried himself off as well as he could, then climbed into the rigging to tie up the airbag nozzles. They were still hanging down. By the time he had finished, all the water had drained out of the boat. He toddled back to where we waited and pounded a heavy bone plug into the hole.

Once more the sea glistened far below us. Indeed, it seemed we were higher than ever. When we dropped a sour melon over the side, it dwindled to a distant speck and vanished without a splash.

We were aloft for the rest of that day and most of the next, before we again had to dump ballast. Purple always waited until we had sunk below a certain level before he would throw any away. Otherwise, he said, we were just wasting it. “The idea is to stay aloft as long as possible,” he explained.

We were standing in the front of the boat looking down at the glass-colored water. All was blue and red with the fairytale quality of double daylight. Above, massive cloudbanks covered half the sky, the multi-colored sunlights painting them in gaudy hues and stark relief. Purple eyed them with a worried frown. “I hope the weather holds up,” he said.

The blue sun hesitated on the horizon, then winked out, leaving everything rose-colored. The silence of the upper air was perfect, but for the sssssss of the bicycles and the low chanting at the rear of the boat where Shoogar was trying to change the direction of the wind. It was northeast again, and the boys were pedaling west.

“How much longer do you think the voyage will take?” I asked.

Purple shrugged, “I estimate that we are covering fifteen miles an hour, maybe twenty — that is, in the direction we want to go. If we had a steady wind we could cover the whole fifteen hundred miles in three full days. Unfortunately, Lant, the winds over the ocean are most erratic. We have been journeying for three and a half days and still no land is in sight.”

“We were becalmed for a full day,” I pointed out. That did not help any either.”

“True,” he admitted, “but I had hoped —” He sighed and sank down onto a bench.

I sat down across from him. “I don’t see why you should be so impatient. Your test flight took at least this long.”

“Yes, but we didn’t go that far. Then the wind was blowing west, and we were swept over the mountains. We spent the whole three days just coming back.”

“You were fighting the wind?”

“Oh no. It had died away by that time, but we needed to figure out how best to handle the boat in the air — and then we had to prove to Shoogar that his sails wouldn’t work. It took a full day just to rig them, and then Shoogar would still not be convinced. He made us try over and over and over again. He kept insisting that the airpushers needed something to push against.

“All the time we had those damned sails up,” said Purple, “We were powerless to fight the wind, so we were blown even farther away. Shoogar didn’t want to let us bring them in, but we would have never gotten home otherwise. Once we got organized though, we made good time, and later on the wind gave us a push too.”

“You weren’t over the island the whole time, were you?”

“Oh no. Just before we started pedaling for home we were getting very close to the mainland. There was a very excited crowd there on the beach, but we didn’t try to approach.”

“It was well that you didn’t — they might have stoned you or worse —” I started to tell him what Gortik had said about; the mainlanders, but a distant cough of Elcin interrupted.

Purple started at the sound. His eyes went wide and he leapt to his feet. “Thunder!” he yelped.

“What? What about it?”

“Thunder means lightning, Lant!” He was leaning forward, shading his eyes with one heavy hand. Frantically he searched the sky and the blood-colored clouds. He didn’t see what he was looking for and moved nervously backward to peer out across the side. He began climbing up into the rigging for a better view.

Abruptly there was another KKK-R-R-u-umpp , this time noticeably closer.

Purple yelped again. He didn’t wait for a third ,cough, but swarmed up to the top of the rigging and began untying the windbag nozzles.

“What is it?” both Shoogar and I cried.

“Thunderstorm!” he screamed. “Get up here and help me! Wilville, Orbur! You too!” My sons abandoned their posts immediately and began climbing inward.

“I don’t understand,” I said confusedly, “what is the danger?”

“Lightning!” shouted Orbur. He was already into the rigging.

“You mean lightning strikes airboats too?”

“ Especially airboats — remember what happened to Purple’s housetree? We have to land and drain all the hydrogen out of the airbags. The slightest spark and we’ll all blow up!”

He didn’t have to repeat himself. I followed Wilville up the ropes. Shoogar was right behind me. Purple had already untied three of the bags and was working on a fourth. The airboat lurched sickeningly. I could not tell if the sinking sensation I felt was me or it.

There was a flash of light and another crashing slam. It was directly above us. We were headed right into the storm. Purple was muttering wildly to himself, “Damn the bloody — I should have thought about emergency deflations! Orbur, this is too slow and we will never get all the gas out of the balloons through the nozzles. Somebody is going to have to climb up to the top with a knife and cut holes to let the gas out! We’ll patch them up later —”

“Not now,” I yelped. “If you cut holes now, we’ll fall!”

“No, not now — after we hit the water,” shouted Purple. “We can’t risk doing it in the air or the balloons might rip!” He untied another nozzle. Seven of them were waving free now, spewing their precious hydrogen unseen to the reddened thunder.

Another crash of light and sound limned us in stark relief — and sparked us all to move still faster. The black water below rushed up at sickening speed.

“Tie off the balloons,” shouted Purple. “Slow our descent!”

Orbur swung precariously from a rear mast section, Wilville only a few yards away. A frantic Shoogar clung to the bird’s nest platform. Purple and I were in the forward section of the rigging. All of us were grabbing furiously for the free swinging hoses.

The wind whistled and shrieked. I pulled at the aircloth hose and wrapped it around itself. I swung out on the rigging grabbing for another.