Black Clavius, standing near her still, watched her joy with a deep pleasure of his own. Somehow he had been certain that Broni Ehrengraf Voerster would not be afraid. He knew the dirigible was in difficulty. It was such a primitive machine. But it achieved a kind of gallant grace with its soft, whirring flight through these high regions.
‘“We set mountains on the earth lest it should move... and we made the heaven a roof strongly upholden...’“
“Is that from the Christian Bible, Clavius?” Broni asked.
“The Q’ran, child. It, too, is a holy book.”
“This is rather frightening, you know--” Broni said.
“Yes?”
“But it is so beautiful that it is hard to be afraid.”
He could
feel
the emotions in her. What a strong empath she was. What a wild talent she had. What a waste to give such a spirit a damaged heart.
Lord, you should have done better by her. I am sorry to criticize, but you know it is so
. Ah, Clavius, he thought. You quote Allah’s holy book, yet in the same breath you criticize Him. You like to live dangerously, old kaffir.
He glanced at the altimeter on the wall.
Volkenreiter
was flying at two thousand nine hundred meters. High, but still below the mean altitude of the Planetia. One was tempted to say something more to the Lord about poor planning and allocation of resources, but perhaps he had better choose another time to tempt Destiny.
The Wired Man turned to look back at the others in the salon. The Healer looked frightened and slightly airsick. Mynheer the Astronomer-Select simply looked exhausted. Fear did that sometimes. Instead of draining a man’s courage, it drained his strength and energy. The fact was that Voertrekkers were not enthusiastic fliers. They had the Rebellion to blame for the state of Voertrekker aviation. But another society would have recovered its aerial skills much more swiftly. Without aviation as a baseline, how would the people of Voerster ever rediscover the arts of space travel? The answer, plain enough, was that they never would.
It seemed to the Starman that Eliana, who sat calmly looking out at the storm, was deriving much of the same fearful pleasure from the excesses of nature as Broni.
Volkenreiter
, still struggling to keep above a rising floor of mist, rounded into an eastward-running cloud canyon. Luyten had nearly set, but at this height, there was still light in the sky. The interior of the gondola glowed golden. Ahead and to the left, where the mists were solid,
Volkenreiter
’s
“glory”--
the airship’s shadow surrounded by the prismatic rainbow of Luyten’s light broken into the spectrum by the moisture in the air--fled along the insubstantial cliff face. Even as they, Clavius and the two women, watched it, the glory vanished as the sun set
As the golden light disappeared, Eliana was struck by the odd notion that the airship and its passengers were making a mortal passage. After this flight nothing would ever be quite the same again. On pure instinct she glanced at Black Clavius.
You know what I am thinking, Wired One.
He smiled at her. Like daughter, like mother. If only a syndicate had found you years ago, mynheera The Voerster’s consort. What a Starman you would have made.
Otto Klemmer studied the banked instruments before him.
Volkenreiter
was at three thousand meters. Pressure altitude. More height would expand the gas in the lifting cells, making it necessary to valve off helium. And when it came time to descend, the smaller volume of lifting gas combined with the weight of the ice the envelope had accumulated would cause the airship to plummet, and he would have to rely on the release of ballast to stop the fall. It was the eternal airshipman’s dilemma. Except that on this flight,
Volkenreiter
carried no ballast.
“Blier,” he commanded. “Give me ten degrees nose down.”
“Luftkapitan--I don’t think we should--”
“Damn you, man. Don’t argue with me. We have to descend. We are at pressure altitude.”
“We are near Einsamberg,” Buele declared abruptly, his mouth still set in its foolish grin.
“How the hell would you know where we are?” Blier said angrily.
The boy tapped his head with a nail-bitten finger. “It is all in here, Brother.”
“Don’t call me ’brother,’ you little
lumpensckeiss!”
Blier yelled fearfully.
“Pay attention to duty!” Otto Klemmer snapped. “Ten degrees down.
Now
.” He retarded the throttles to reduce body lift, and
Volkenreiter
settled, almost wistfully, into the world of darkness under her keel.
Light diminished on the flight deck as the outside world disappeared. Rain streaked the gondola windows and froze there in spiky white shafts. The turbulence began again, more strongly than before.
Volkenreiter
seemed to be striking a series of invisible waves, each of which made the structure creak and groan as the strain was distributed through the dirigible’s light frame.
The altimeter unwound slowly back two thousand eight hundred meters. Klemmer estimated that the ship’s keel was now probably a thousand meters above the level of the ground below. But there were uncharted peaks in the Grimsels well over two thousand five hundred meters above sea level. Tension gripped Klemmer’s stomach.
The flight deck was illuminated by an intense electric blue flash as a lightning bolt crackled down nearby. Blier moaned and released the elevator wheel. But the
lumpe
Buele remained at his post, rock steady on the fore-and-aft helm. In spite of himself, Klemmer was impressed.
Volkenreiter
penetrated a storm cell and paid an immediate penalty. She was buffeted, bombarded with hailstones, and almost rolled on her beam-ends before Klemmer could restore level flight. He spoke into the tube: “Is everyone all right down there?”
“Can’t you find a less athletic path, Luftkapitan?” The thin voice of the Astronomer-Select trembled, but remained controlled.
“Stay belted down, please,” Klemmer said. He was amazed at the calmness of his own voice. An old senior captain had long ago said to him that flying airships was hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror. It occurred to Klemmer that fliers had probably been saying that for tens of thousands of years in tens of hundreds of places.
The turbulence eased and Klemmer caught a glimpse of what might have been snow-clad rocks below. In Einsamtal, the valley of Einsamberg Kraal, there was snow on the ground for ten months of the year. He glanced at Buele. He had done no more than glance at the navigational charts. Was he some sort of navigational genius? There was a name for people like that
. Idiot savant?
One look and something in that elongated, ugly head--some cellular calculating machine kept track forever? Well, the world was filled with wonders.
But at the moment, the only wonder of interest to Otto Klemmer was the wonder of how to get his ship safely through the storm and moored in the valley of Einsamtal.
The dirigible flew through a sheeting rain mixed with large hailstones. Klemmer felt the impacts on the rudder through the helm in his hands. Gusts of wind yawed
Volkenreiter
from side to side. That meant the ground was very near. Downdrafts from thunderstorms often struck the ground and boiled away in windshears that could destroy an airframe.
Lightning illuminated the ground ahead. Patches of snow reflected the flash and burned afterimages into the eyes. There! Klemmer leaned forward and tried to wipe away the rime on the windscreens. Ahead lay a mountain valley, and at the head of the valley, nested against granite cliffs-- Einsamberg Kraal. A vast, ancient stone keep. Powerful, yet strangely inviting even in these circumstances. Klemmer turned on the landing light. The facades were still alive with the glowing pastels favored by the first Kraalheer, Elias Ehrengraf, whose name Eliana was given at her christening.
The valley was called Einsamtal--Lonely Valley, a lush mountain meadowland where once great herds of hornhead had grazed. In the flash of light, Otto Klemmer saw the mooring mast in its leveled circle at the foot of the valley. Klemmer shouted to Blier to get himself under control, that landing was near.
The technique for a short-handed mooring of a lifting body airship was to approach the mast from downwind. Then at fifty meters distance one discharged the anchor mortar, firing the hook into the ground and engaging the automatic reel under the steering surfaces, so that the ship behaved like a fish hooked by the tail. A skillful pilot was then expected to strike the mooring cup precisely so that the nose latches closed while the reel took the strain on the anchor rode and brought the ship to ground.
In calm weather it was a test of skill. In these conditions it was a test of survival.
Klemmer reduced throttle and rotated the engines so that the propellers were parallel to the ground. He used them to draw the airship down while the wind carried it toward the mast.
Another lightning flash blinded Klemmer as it struck the well-grounded manor house and coruscated into the ground.
Blier shouted suddenly,
“Too fast, Kapitan! Too fast! We are going to crash into the mast!”
Without orders, he fired the stern mortar. Klemmer felt the anchor leave the ship, and the familiar shudder as the rode played from the reel. The anchor would strike the ground too far from the mast. The rode would run out to its limit and either snap or smash
Volkenreiter
into the ground before she could reach the mast.
“Cut the anchor line!”
Klemmer shouted into the speaking tube.
“Somebody down there get aft and cut the stern anchor line! “
Klemmer tilted the engines through a complete reversal and slammed the throttles hard against the stops.
Volkenreiter
shuddered and bridled at the rough handling. A flurry of icy rain swept across the beam of the landing light and froze on the windscreen, blinding Klemmer. Buele ran to the glass, slid it open. Freezing rain slashed into the flight deck, but Klemmer could see the mast ahead. He could feel the shock of the stern line going taut. No one had succeeded in cutting it.
It was, in fact, Tiegen Roark who found himself incomprehensibly in the stern lazaret between the mortar breach and the reel. He was sawing desperately at the hemp rode with a dinner knife.
The
Volkenreiter
slammed to a stop at the end of its misplaced stern tether. Blier was thrown forward over the guardrail and through the open windscreen. His startled shriek faded as he fell fifty feet to the ground.
The airship dropped like a stone, struck the ground on its single pneumatic wheel under the gondola. There was a crack like a pistol shot as a main longeron broke. Then
Volkenreiter
rebounded back into the air and forward again as Tiegen’s efforts aft were rewarded with the separation of the stem line.
Otto Klemmer, in what was the finest bit of airmanship of his career, steered the
Volkenreiter
directly onto the cup at the tip of the mast The mast itself was nearly uprooted, but it remained upright as the latches slammed closed, capturing the airship, which immediately castered around the mast-circle to come to a stop three feet from the ground with her nose into the wind.
Klemmer shut down the magnetos, raced down the ladder and through the salon to the lazaret. Shoving Tiegen Roark aside unceremoniously, he fired the two outward-facing small mortars. The kedge anchors struck and buried flukes in the soft ground of the Einsamtal meadow. Klemmer engaged the winches and snugged the airship down until its single wheel rested firmly on the ground. Then he helped Healer Roark to his feet with thanks and apologies for his rudeness.
“Luftkapitan,” Roark said with feeling, “whenever you find it necessary to be rude in such a manner, don’t stand on ceremony.”
Klemmer stepped into the salon. Through the windows he could see that the Einsamberg kaffirs had gathered around the airship with carts and torches. To Eliana Ehrengraf, he said formally, “We are on the ground at Einsamberg, mynheera.”
“Thank you, Luftkapitan Klemmer,” the Voertrekkerschatz said formally. “You have our gratitude.”
Trekkerpolizeioberst Transkei stood rigidly at attention, clenched fists tight against the red stripe of his Wache uniform trousers. His ordinarily florid face was drained of color and the veins of his thick neck were made prominent by the inner pressure of his mingled fear and anger. Despite the chill in the room, the colonel was sweating.
Ian Voerster, standing behind his antique desk, still in his traveling clothes, slammed his riding crop down on the polished wooden surface. His voice was like an iron rasp. “They went
where
? Tell me again, you stupid man!”
“To the mynheera the Voertrekkerschatz’s kraal at Einsamberg, Voertrekker-Praesident. The Healer said mynheera Broni needed a change.” As he spoke, Transkei fixed his eyes on the Zulu shield and assegai on the stone wall behind The Voerster. Though the ancient trophies had occupied that spot on the office wall ever since Transkei came to Voertrekkerhoem, this was the first time he had ever examined them with such strained earnestness.
“Who authorized it?” the Voertrekker-Praesident demanded. “Who let them go?”
Transkei’s chin actually trembled. Humiliation and apprehension griped his bowels. Gas rumbled in his gut and for a moment he feared he would physically disgrace himself.
‘The mynheera Eliana Ehrengraf authorized the flight herself, sir. And I suppose I let them go,” he said.
“You
suppose
you let them go? What dreck is in your head that you use for brains?” Ian Voerster’s pale blue eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and rage. He had arrived at Voertrekkerhoem only minutes ago, after a long and wearying ride from Windhoek.
Transkei’s back and buttocks ached with the rigidity of his position. “It did not occur to me to challenge the authority of the Voertrekkerschatz, sir,” he said.
“I am surrounded by incompetents,” Voerster grated. “Who else was aboard the airship?”
Transkei tried to swallow the dryness in his throat and said, “Besides the Voertrekkersdatter and mynheera Eliana, there were Healer Roark, the Astronomer-Select and his assistant, some kaffirs, and the Starman Black Clavius... “