Paul Thompson - Darkness and Light

Stutts clapped his rope-wound hands together. "Pperfect! That will make him very happy."

The gnomes' leader whistled into the voice tube.

"N-now hear this! Sighter r-report to the wheelhouse!" In seconds, the little astronomer came banging up the ladder, tripped on the top rung, and fell on his face. Kitiara helped him stand and saw why he was so clumsy. He had pulled his jar-helmet on in such a way as to cover his face with his long beard. Stutts and Kitiara worked and twisted to get the jar off. It came away with a loud pop!

"By Reorx," Sighter gasped. "I was beginning to think my own whiskers were trying to choke me!"

"Did you b-bring your astrolabe?" asked Stutts.

"When am I without it?"

"Then g-go up on the roof and shoot the stars. We need to know our exact p-position."

Sighter snapped his fingers. "Not a problem!"

He went out of the deckhouse through the dining room. They heard his feet stomping across the roof.

"Uh-oh," said Wingover, staring dead ahead.

Sturm said, "What is it?"

"The clouds are closing in. Look!"

They had flown into a box canyon of clouds. Even if Wingover put the wheel hard about, they would still plow into a cloud bank.

"I'd better tell Sighter," Sturm said. He went to the door, meaning to shout up at the gnome on the roof. About the time he cracked the door open, the Cloudmaster bored into a wall of luminous white. Frost formed quickly on Sturm's mustache. Snow swirled around him as he cried, "Sighter! Sighter, come down!"

The frozen mist was so thick that he couldn't see a foot beyond his nose. He would have to go get Sighter. He slipped twice on his way up the ladder. The brass rungs were encased in ice, but Sturm knocked it off with the butt of his dagger. As he cleared the roof line, a blast of frigid air stung his face. "Sighter!" he called. "Sighter!"

The rooftop was too treacherous to stand on, so Sturm crept forward on his hands and knees. Flakes of snow collected in the gap between his hood and coat collar, melted, and ran down his neck. Sturm's hand slipped, and he almost rolled right off the roof. Though there was four feet of deck on either side, he had the horrible idea that he would tumble right off the ship and fall, fall, fall. Cutwood would calculate how big a hole he'd make. His hand bumped a frost-rimed boot, and Sturm looked up. Sighter was at his post, astrolabe stuck to one eye and completely covered with half an inch of ice! Snow was already drifting around his feet. Sturm used his dagger to chip away the ice around Sighter's shoes. His Personal Heating Apparatus, Mark III must have blown out, for the gnome was now stiff with cold. Sturm grabbed the little man's feet and pulled — "Sturm! Sturm, where are you?" Kitiara was calling.

"Up here!"

"What are you doing? You and Sighter get inside before your faces freeze off!"

"It's too late for Sighter. I've almost got him loose — wait, here he is!" He passed the stiff gnome over the edge of the roof to Kitiara's open arms. With commendable agility, he then scooted down the ladder and hurried back inside.

"Brr! And I thought winters at Castle Brightblade were cold!"

He saw that Rainspot was on hand to doctor the frozen Sighter. "How is he?" asked Sturm.

"Cold," said Rainspot. He pinched the tip of Sighter's beard with a pair of wooden tweezers. A quick snap of the wrist, and the lower half of Sighter's beard broke off.

"Dear, dear," Rainspot said, clucking his tongue. "Dear, dear."

He reached for the astrolabe, still in place at Sighter's eye, with Sighter's hands clamped to it.

"No!" Kitiara and Sturm yelled. Trying to break the instrument loose would probably take Sighter's eye with it.

"T-take him below and thaw him out," said Stutts. "Sslowly."

"Someone will have to carry his feet," said Rainspot.

Stutts sighed and went over to help.

"He's g-going to be very angry that y-you broke his b-beard," he said.

"Dear, dear. Perhaps if we dampened the edge we could stick it back on."

"Don't be st-stupid. You'd never get it aligned p-properly."

"I can get some glue from Roperig — " They disappeared down the hatch to the berth deck. Sturm and Kitiara heard a loud crash, and both rushed to the opening, expecting to see poor Sighter broken to bits like a cheap clay vase. But, no, Stutts was on the deck, Sighter cushioned on top of him, and Rainspot was hanging upside down with his feet tangled in the rungs.

"Dear, dear," he was saying. "Dear, dear."

They couldn't help but laugh. It felt good after spending so much time worrying whether they would ever walk the solid soil of Krynn again. Kitiara stopped laughing first.

"That was a crazy stunt, Sturm," she said.

"What?"

"Rescuing that gnome. You might have been frozen yourself, and I'll wager you wouldn't thaw out as easily as Sighter will."

"Not with Rainspot as my doctor."

To his surprise, she embraced him. It was a comradely hug, with a clap on the back that staggered him.

"We're coming out of it! We're coming out!" Wingover yelled. Kitiara broke away and rushed to the gnome. He was hopping up and down in delight as the white shroud peeled away from the flying ship. The Cloudmaster emerged from the top of the snow squall into clear air. Ahead of them was a vast red globe, far larger than the sun ever appeared from the ground. Below was nothing but an unbroken sheet of cloud, tinged scarlet from the moon's glow. All around, stars twinkled. The Cloudmaster was flying headlong toward the red orb.

"Hydrodynamics," Wingover breathed. This was the gnomes' strongest oath. Neither Sturm nor Kitiara could improve on it just then.

"What is it?" Kitiara finally said.

"If my calculations are accurate, and I'm sure that they are, it is Lunitari, the red moon of Krynn," said Wingover. Sighter appeared in the hatch. His hair was dripping, and his broken-off beard fluttered when he spoke.

"Correct! That's what I discovered before the snowstorm hit. We're a hundred thousand miles from home, and heading straight for Lunitari."

The ship's complement assembled in the dining room. Reactions to Sighter's announcement were mixed. Basically, the gnomes were delighted, while their human passengers were appalled.

"How can we be going to Lunitari?" Kitiara demanded. "It's just a red dot in the sky!"

"Oh, no," said Sighter. "Lunitari is a large globular celestial body, just like Krynn and the other moons and planets. I estimate that it is thirty-five hundred miles in diameter and at least 150 thousand miles from Krynn."

"This is beyond me," Sturm said wearily. "How could we possibly have flown so high? We haven't been gone more than two days."

"Actually, time references are difficult to make at this altitude. We haven't seen the sun in a long time, but judging from the positions of the moons and stars, I would say we have been aloft for fifty-four hours," Sighter said, making a few jottings on the tabletop. "And forty-two minutes."

"Any other r-reports?" asked Stutts.

"We're out of raisins," said Fitter.

"And flour and bacon and onions," added Cutwood.

"What does that leave for food?" Kitiara asked. Birdcall made a very unbirdlike squawk. "What did he say?"

"Beans. Six sacks of dried white beans," said Roperig.

"What about the engine?" asked Sturm. "Have you figured out how to fix it?"

Tweet-tweedle-tweet.

"He says no," Bellcrank translated.

"The lightning bottles are holding up quite well," Flash reported. "My theory is, the cold, thin air offers less resistance to the wings, therefore, the engine doesn't have to work as hard."

"Rot!" said Bellcrank. "It's my ethereal air. All that flapping impedes our flight. If we lopped off those silly wings, we could have flown to Lunitari in half the time."