Barrington Bayley - Star Winds

They stared back at him, their faces displaying a frightened gauntness. He spoke to them in a gruff, mumbling voice, stumbling over his words.

“This is the end, you’re thinking, and maybe you’re right. But don’t give up yet. There’s still a chance for us, and we’re going to take it.”

He swallowed. “So now we’ll do a spot of real space sailing. You’ll work on the side windlasses, fore and aft, in groups of three. All you have to do is watch for my signals, and obey them , no matter what happens. Those of you I trust are armed, and if you see anyone desert his post or ignore a command, cut him down without delay.”

“You can depend on it,” Bruge rumbled.

“One more thing—use double safety lines. If things go right we’ll be tossed about a bit. And whatever happens , stick to where you are.”

One of the pressed men spoke up nervously. “Just what is going to happen, Captain?”

“You’ll see.”

Zhorga climbed to the quarterdeck from where he would direct the operation, and watched as the twelve, willing or not, went to their posts and readied themselves. His desperate gambit was about to begin.

In the swirling world of the vortex, maneuvering a sail-ship was not the type of proposition it would have been anywhere else. For practical purposes, in fact, it was virtually impossible. At present the ship swept on smoothly; the vortex was a well-ordered system and its in-turning stream scrupulously obeyed the pattern of forces that had given rise to it. But should she seek to escape the voracious whirlpool she would find the effort futile, and similarly, should she for some reason turn to head deeper into it she would soon encounter the sliding ridges, ripples and minor eddies that the progressive turns of the spiral produced as they surged against one another at different rates of travel. These turbulences would turn the ship back onto her former course: thus she was doomed to run the gamut, to spiral round and round, ever faster, on an ever-narrowing circuit, to destruction.

Within these strictly defined limits, however, there was room for a degree of mobility. At present the sails were lashed to their yards, even the minute area they presented being enough to keep the ship implacably in the power of the vortex. Zhorga gave the signal to unfurl a small mast on the starboard side, and as this was done the ship swung round and moved at a portward angle to the current.

Four stunsails were sufficient to steer the galleon. The Wandering Queen swayed, tossed in the tumultuous stream, as Zhorga guided her toward the swarm. The glints brightened; for all his tension, he breathed a sigh of relief. The eggs were within range!

Half an hour later he suddenly found himself surrounded by the egg swarm. The eggs drifted and hurtled by, some bouncing off the hull and deck. He replaced his helmet in case one should rupture the air balloon, and continued to peer anxiously to see if any of them would react to the ship’s presence.

Not all were absolutely sterile. Some burst into abortive life, sprouting insignificant creatures that lashed about themselves feebly before expiring. Then, when Zhorga had almost given up hope, there came what he had been waiting for.

Instinctively he threw his arm before his face. A writhing patch of nebulosity had blossomed into existence. In little more than a minute it had expanded and solidified into a full-grown monster—and, like its earlier brother, this monster moved toward the ship, sensing her, reaching toward the only mode of life it knew: to attack and destroy.

And Zhorga unhesitatingly gave the order for his men to steer the galleon straight for the heart of the lashing beast!

Even the best of them recoiled with horror when it was realized what was required of them. But only one broke and ran, loping with ten-foot strides back along the shed toward the airshed. Zhorga saw Clabert raise his pistol. A puff of smoke from the flintlock followed. The runner’s body jerked suddenly, and rammed against the airshed, then to go rolling across the deck and lie motionless.

Now the others hurried to obey Zhorga’s order, though whether they understood the purpose behind it was questionable. The ship turned toward the monster, which as it neared seemed to fill the sky. Zhorga clung to the lashed-down wheel to steady himself as the ship gathered speed. For hideous moments the frantic tentacles seemed to enclose her—but they were made to reach out for a fleeing prey, not to snatch at something coming in close. Miraculously, it seemed, she had slipped swiftly between them—and then she crashed into the web-like body!

The concussion was less shattering than Zhorga had feared. The monster yielded and vibrated. The Wandering Queen was like a great cumbersome insect caught in that web, and the beast seemed not to know that it could, if it chose, use its massive tentacles to pluck her out.

Yet the monster continued to charge on its former course, and though the galleon was not broken by the impact her change in momentum was bone-cracking. For all his strength, Zhorga was torn from the wheel and found himself flung hard against the thick covering of the air balloon, which mercifully held. For a while he was confused, and afterward deduced that he must temporarily have lost consciousness. He only knew that eventually he recovered his wits to find himself resting lightly on the deck, but with practically no discernible weight.

The monster was gone. It had disintegrated, its brief, truncated life had collapsed. But, as Zhorga took note of the almost imperceptible level of acceleration, and observed that the galleon had already swung lazily round so that her decks again lay beneath Mars, he knew that the space beast had served his purpose.

The basis of his suicidal strategy had been his reasoning that the creature was not composed of ether silk and so was unaffected by the vortex. It was simple chance, he had decided, that had sent the eggs drifting through this region. He had speculated that the monster’s dread strength might just be enough to tear the Wandering Queen free of the ensnaring current before she was drawn too deeply into its coils.

He had not seriously expected the plan to work. He had expected the galleon to be torn to pieces, bringing himself and his crew a quick death, instead of a lingering one in the eye of the whirlpool, full of misery and—what was worse from his point of view—recrimination.

He relaxed, feeling peaceful, basking in his triumph. The rest of the voyage, he told himself, would be relatively plain sailing. Until Mars was reached anyway.

He wondered if the brave men on the main deck had all survived, or if more had been added to the death toll so far.

A wry thought occurred to him.

They would be dying, he admitted sourly, in the cause of trade.

Zhorga’s prediction proved correct and the Wandering Queen journeyed on through calm ether for the remaining distance to Mars. The temperature dropped sharply and the ship grew bitterly cold. He gave permission for braziers to be lit which burned chak , a combustible charcoal-like preparation which gave off heat but no stupefying fumes or irritant smoke.

There was ample time to make good the damage done by the space dragon. The midmast had cracked and so was cut down, the sails being redistributed among the remaining spars as best as could be managed. Zhorga reckoned he still had sail power enough. Mars was smaller than Earth and so had less gravity to contend with—it was only the shock wave that worried him.

The target planet became first a glowing ruby, then a red disk which Zhorga studied through his spyglass, and at last a full-blown world floating ahead of them, in its own way as fascinating a sight as Earth. At closer range its fiery redness mellowed, and was relieved by other features—the glittering white and blue of the half-frozen polar seas, the clouds of various types: white for water vapor, orange (like dyed cotton wool) for atmospheric dust, and gray for the sooty by-products of the air fires which showed up against the general background as blotches of a deeper, maroon red. Zhorga explained that these burning areas had been ignited in ancient times to release warmth and breathable air onto the planet, for once it had been uninhabitable.