Nigel Findley - Into the Void

He looked up into the sky over the swiftly rising dragonfly. From the ground, the sky had been the delicate blue of a robin's egg. Now it had darkened to a rich royal blue. He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun. Directly overhead was a faint speck of white, barely visible in the bright sky. Was that a star? he wondered. Yes, it must be.

It took him a moment to notice it, but the sky was darkening as he watched. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it shaded from royal blue to a darker, navy blue, then to a rich midnight purple. As the sky darkened, the single star above grew brighter. Clearer-and somehow harder -it looked now, like a cold chip of diamond mounted in the inverted bowl of the sky. It seemed somehow nearer than any other star he'd ever seen, and it didn't seem to twinkle at all.

He glanced at his companions. Aelfred Silverhorn had finished his conversation with the dragonfly's crew member and was leaning against the gunwale rail with Estriss. The first mate caught his glance and walked over to him. "Nice, isn't it?" the big warrior remarked. "I think this is my favorite part of spelljamming. Just wait for the stars."

Teldin looked up again. "There's already one there," he pointed out.

Aelfred looked up in some surprise, then he smiled.

"That's no star," he told Teldin. "That'll be the Nebulon." As if the warrior's words had been some mystical cue, the sky faded to black and the stars came out.

Even though he'd been on Toril for only a couple of days, Teldin was awestruck once again by the stars of space. From the ground, on a clear night, he could see what seemed like millions of stars, and they seemed crisp, bright, and immediate. But the star field from space…

The difference was almost unbelievable. In the cool vacuum of the void, he could see myriads more stars than on the crispest night planetside. Every star seemed sharp, cold, clear… almost solid, as if he could reach out and touch one, pluck it from the heavens, and have it set in a gold ring, as you could any other gem of great value.

Teldin's eyes were filled with light. Even against that brilliant star field, he could pick out the one dot of light that Aelfred had told him was the arcane's ship. Not only was it brighter than any other, but it felt closer. It was bigger, too. All the other stars were dimensionless points. The "star" that was the Nebulon was starting to show a disk.

Aelfred settled on the bench next to Teldin-at a respectful distance, as a "business assistant" should. The big man nodded deferentially to his "employer." "Have you figured out what you're going to say?" he asked quietly.

"I think so," Teldin replied.

"You know exactly what it is you want out of this meeting?" Aelfred pressed.

Teldin was silent. That's the big question, isn't it? The simple answer to "what do I want?" was straightforward: "To get rid of this damned cloak." But that wasn't the whole of it, by any means. Even if the arcane could open the clasp-and no matter how much he wanted his freedom-Teldin knew he had to confirm that the cloak was of arcane manufacture before he could hand it over to T'k'Pek. Just how was he going to do that?

At home, Teldin had always prided himself on his ability to "read" others, to pick out when they were telling the truth and when they weren't. He didn't know how he did it; it wasn't anything certain, more like a combination of factors, and it was felt rather than reasoned. He'd been burned a few times, but more often than not he'd proved to his own satisfaction that he could tell when someone was lying about something important. On the walk through the city, he'd decided that he'd have to depend on that ability now. He didn't know enough about the cloak to ask the arcane cunning questions, trying to trip him up. He'd just have to get T'k'Pek talking, then trust his instincts-"trust his gut," as his grandfather used to say.

Aelfred was still waiting for an answer to his question. Teldin patted his large friend on the shoulder. "I know what I want," he confirmed.

The dragonfly had maneuvered so that the Nebulon was now directly ahead, and close. Teldin examined the ship, fascinated. So far, every spelljamming ship he'd seen looked like some kind of vessel. The gnomish dreadnought, the Unquenchable, looked like some nightmarish rendering of a sidewheeler; the hammership Probe had the hull, decks, and rigging of a seagoing ship. Even the "insect ships"-the wasps, mosquito, dragonfly, and deathspider-looked as if they were built to sail or fly… at least to travel from one place to another. The Nebulon, however, bore absolutely no resemblance to anything that could ever float or set down on land. The arcane's ship was a cylinder about as high as it was wide-like a milking pail, Teldin thought. It was light gray, almost white, ribbed by black bands. From the way the white material shone in the harsh sunlight of space, Teldin was certain it wasn't wood, metal, or even stone. Ivory, he mused, it reminds me of ivory, but they couldn't build a whole ship out of ivory, could they? The arcane's ship tumbled slowly through space, recalling images of Rianna's tiny mosquito and the efforts of Vallus Leafbower and the crew to bring it under control.

There was no such problem here, however. The dragonfly deftly maneuvered to match the motions of the cylinder. As the ships moved relative to each other, Teldin felt an uncomfortable shifting of balance in his inner ear. Remembering his conversations with Horvath and other spelljamming "veterans," he assumed this meant the two ships were aligning their gravity planes so that the "local down" for each vessel was the same. Soon the Nebulon appeared to be stationary- in relation to the dragonfly, at least-while the stars wheeled slowly about the two vessels. Teldin's sense of balance finally settled as well.

As the dragonfly drew closer, Teldin realized the scale of the ship he was seeing. From a distance he'd guessed the cylindrical ship to be about fifty or sixty feet in diameter. Now, as the dragonfly hovered over one circular end, he saw the Nebulon must be almost five times that size: its diameter was about equal to the full keel length of the Probe. The black bands he'd seen were rows of great windows. What a view they must give, he thought with wonder.

The dragonfly made a final course correction and settled to the large, circular deck. There was a slight jolt as the small ship landed and a barely heard creak as its legs absorbed the strain. This was followed by another, almost subliminal thump. One of the dragonfly's crew came aft and nodded respectfully to Teldin. "Welcome aboard the Nebulon, milord," he said. He gestured to the ship's rail. "You may disembark now."

Teldin nodded with what he judged to be the right mixture of politeness and indifference. He stood and waited for the crewman to throw down the rope ladder… but there apparently was no need for the ladder. One of the crewmen just swung his leg over the dragonfly's rail and vanished. Teldin walked over to the gunwale.

There was a narrow, steep staircase butted up against the dragonfly's hull, its top step almost exactly level with the small ship's deck. The staircase was made of the same featureless white material as the rest of the arcane's ship. Teldin leaned over the rail. The stairway wasn't resting on the deck, as he'd expected. In fact, there was no visible division between the staircase and the deck. It was almost as though the stairway had grown out of the deck itself.

One dragonfly crewman was standing at the bottom of the stairs. The other was at Teldin's elbow, ready to give him a hand as he climbed over the rail. Teldin glanced behind him. Yes, his "assistants" were flanking him. Aelfred shot him a meaningful glance-obviously the big warrior thought he should go first, in case of a trap-but Teldin shook his head almost imperceptibly. If this was a trap, they were certainly dead men no matter who went down those mysterious stairs first. And, unaccountably, Teldin found himself unwilling to let somebody else take the lead this time. Both Aelfred and Estriss-and the others aboard the Probe- had already put their lives on the line for him, to help him discharge an obligation that wasn't theirs, that really had nothing to do with them whatsoever. They'd done it of their own will, he knew, but that just made it worse. No matter how much Aelfred wanted to lead-and, to be honest, no matter how much Teldin would like to have the big warrior ahead of him-it was about time Teldin did what was right. Ignoring the crewman's proffered help, he swung his legs over the rail and started down the stairway.