Bob Shaw: The Fugitive Worlds

“There it is,” Toller said, having raised his binoculars just in time to discern smoke pluming out from the other ship’s main jets. “She’s either departing the scene in a huff or going all out to reach our objective first—and if what I’ve heard about the Countess Vantara is true… Yes! We have a race on our hands!”

“Do you want full speed?”

“What else?” Toller said. “And tell the men to put on parachutes.”

At the mention of parachutes Feer’s gleeful expression faded and was replaced by one of wariness. “Sir, you don’t think it’s going to come to—”

“Anything can happen when two ships dispute a single piece of sky.” Toller injected a note of joviality into his voice, subtly punishing the lieutenant for the improprieties in his attitude. “A collision could easily result in deaths, and I would prefer it that they were all on the opposition’s side.”

“Yes, sir.” Feer turned away, already signaling to the engineer, and a moment later the main jets began a steady roar as maximum continuous power was applied. The nose of the long gondola lifted as the jet thrust tried to rotate the entire ship about its center of gravity, but the helmsman quickly corrected its attitude by altering the angle of the engines. He was able to do so single-handed, by means of a lever and ratchets, because the engines were of the modern lightweight type consisting of riveted metal tubes.

Until quite recently each jet would have utilized the entire trunk of a young brakka tree, and consequently would have been heavy and unwieldy. The power source was still a mixture of pikon and halvell crystals, which throughout history had been extracted from the soil by the root systems of brakka trees. Now, however, the crystals were obtained directly from the earth by means of chemical refining methods developed by Toller’s father, Cassyll Maraquine.

Industrial chemistry and metallurgy were the cornerstones of the Maraquine family’s immense fortune and power—which in turn were the source of most of the personal difficulties Toller had with his parents. They had expected him to understudy his father in preparation for taking up the reins of the family’s industrial empire—a prospect he had viewed with dread—and his relationship with them had been occasionally strained ever since he had chosen to enter the Sky Service in pursuit of excitement and adventure. Those two qualities had been less plentiful than he had hoped for, which was one of the reasons for his determination not to be elbowed aside on this particular occasion…

He returned his attention to the astronaut, who was still a good mile above the surface of the undulating farmlands. There was no practical point in racing to the parachutist’s estimated touchdown point, but it might strengthen Vantara’s case if she could claim to have been at the site first. Toller guessed that she had by pure chance intercepted the sunwriter message he had relayed to the palace earlier in the day, and then had decided on a whim to take over at the interesting phase of what had been a tedious mission.

He was considering whether or not to send her a final warning message when he noticed that a line of dark blue had appeared on the western horizon. His binoculars confirmed that there was a substantial body of water ahead, and on consulting his charts he found that it was called Lake Amblaraate. It was more than five miles across, which meant that the astronaut had little chance of drifting himself clear of its edges, but it was traversed by a line of small, low-lying islands from which a skilful parachutist ought to be able to select a good landing site.

Toller beckoned Feer to him and showed him the chart. “I think we may be in for some sport,” he said. “Those islets look scarcely big enough to accommodate a parade ground. If yonder flyaway seed manages to plant himself on one of them the task of plucking him up again will call for some fancy airmanship. I wonder if the lady aviator, as you dubbed her, will remain so anxious to claim the honor.”

“The important thing is that the messenger and his dispatches are conveyed safely to the Queen,” Feer replied. “Does it really matter who picks him up?”

Toller gave him a broad smile. “Oh yes, lieutenant—it matters a great deal.”

He leaned on the gondola’s rail, enjoying the cooling effect of the gathering slipstream, and watched the other ship draw nearer on the converging course. The range was still too great for him to be able to see any of the crew clearly, even with binoculars, but he knew they were all female. It had been Queen Daseene herself who had insisted on women being allowed to enter the Sky Service. That had been during the emergency of twenty-six years earlier, at the time of the threatened invasion from the Old World, but the tradition persisted to the present day, though for mainly practical reasons it had been decided not to use mixed crews. Toller, who had spent most of his active service on the far side of Overland, had not previously encountered any of the very few airships crewed by women, and he was interested in finding out if gender had any noticeable effect on ship-handling techniques.

As he had expected, both ships reached Lake Amblaraate while the parachutist was still high above them. Toller judged which of the islands was most likely to provide the touchdown point, ordered his ship down to a hundred feet and began cruising in a circle around the triangular patch of green. To his annoyance, Vantara adopted a similar tactic, taking up a station at the opposite side of the circle. The two ships rotated as though attached to the ends of an invisible rod, the intermittent blasts of their jets disturbing colonies of birds which nested on the low ground.

“This is a waste of good crystals,” Toller grumbled.

“A criminal waste.” Feer nodded, permitting himself a hint of a smile over the fact that his commander was frequently reprimanded by the Service’s quartermaster general for using up his stores of pikon and halvell at a greater rate than any other captain because of his impatient flying style.

“That woman should be grounded and—” Toller broke off as the parachutist, apparently having agreed with his audience on a choice of landing site, abruptly furled part of his canopy, increasing his fall-speed and steepening his angle of descent.

“Get us down there with all possible speed!” Toller ordered. “Use all four anchor guns on first contact—we must land on the first pass.”

The smile returned to Toller’s face as he saw that the crucial moment had come while his ship was well to the west of the island, so that a single natural maneuver would bring it into position for an upwind landing. It very much looked as though the aerial wheel of chance had declared against Vantara. He glanced again at the Countess’s ship and was appalled to see that it was already breaking out of the flight pattern and beginning a steep descent to the island, obviously intent on making an illegal downwind landing.

“The bitch,” Toller whispered. “The stupid bitch!”

He watched helplessly as the other vessel, its speed enhanced by the following breeze, speared down through the lowest levels of the air and drove towards the center of the island. Too fast, he thought. The anchors will never take the strain! Puffs of smoke appeared on each side of the gondola as its keel touched the grass and the anchor cannon fired their barbs into the ground. The ship slowed abruptly, its gasbag distorting. For a moment it looked as though Toller’s prediction would be proved wrong, then both ropes on the left side of the gondola snapped. The ship rolled and turned, hauling its rear anchor out of the soil, and would have broken free had not the crew member on the solitary remaining anchor begun paying out line at maximum possible speed, thus easing the strain on the rope. Against the odds the single line took up the load without breaking, and all at once it was impossible for Toller to bring off his intended landing maneuver—Vantara’s ship, dipping and wallowing, lay across his line of descent.