Down to a Sunless Sea

21 The Voyage

With strangely shaped knives, the golden children cut their bonds and also removed the lassoes. They gathered closely about their captives, chattering excitedly among themselves, reaching out to touch with curious fingers their hair, and the Martian furcaps.

Brant looked them over alertly. They were all young, and many of them were no more than boys—including the one who had lassoed him. This lad looked to be about twelve, maybe thirteen. He had long, coltish legs, finely muscled arms and shoulders, and bright golden eyes with a glint of mischief in them. Later, Brant learned the boy’s name was Kirin.

Not only were they bald but completely devoid of any body hair at all, he noted. This made a lot of sense to Brant, for the humidity and warmth of this climate caused his scalp to perspire most annoyingly, and the rivulets of sweat had been trickling down into his eyes. Baldness would be a survival-trait down here, he thought to himself.

The boys were all completely naked, save for light, glittering harnesses made of some material he could not at once identify, but certainly not leather. These consisted of two straps over the shoulders, buckled to a strap which encircled the body just below the nipples, and a further strap about the hips.

The harnesses were fashioned of some scaly, glinting stuff colored rich bronze or peacock blue or red-gold. They seemed to be partly utilitarian and partly ornamental. That is, buckles and hooks hung from them, and attached to these the nude youths wore certain tools or implements: Otherwise, the straps served mainly to support gemmed pins, badges of precious metals, and such ornaments.

The knives wherewith they had cut the bonds from the two Earthsiders and the women, seemed ill-suited to such a task. They didn’t look at all to Brant like weapons, more like kitchen utensils.

They were made, he noticed, of transparent metal, clear as crystal. And the long slender lances the aerial riders had carried were fashioned from the same material. Brant had never seen such a curious metal in all his years on Mars. He filed it away mentally as just one more mystery. Later on, in Zhah, he discovered that the golden race extracted the glassy metal from the waters of the shining sea by a process akin to electrolytic baths. This made sense: after all, the seawater was heavy with mineral salts of every kind.

The flying youths had captured all of them, including the outlaws, and had rescued Agila, who crouched whimpering on the springy rattan deck, while Suoli crooned and fluttered over him, soothing his hurts with kisses.

Most of the outlaws were still armed, although only with knives and pistols, for they had dropped their laser rifles and spears when lassoed by the flyers. Tuan, at that moment, was fingering the butt of one of Brant’s own power guns, glancing around with hard, calculating eyes.

Brant caught his eye. “I wouldn’t try it, Tuan,” he said in low tones, cocking a thumb skywards. The chieftain looked up to see the monster dragonflies on their curious perches. Many were watching the scene below with inscrutable eyes of glittering ocelli.

Tuan flinched a little, and nodded curtly to the Earthsider as if agreeing.

Since they did not seem to be under any sort of constraint and were merely surrounded by a jabbering mob of naked boys, Brant ambled over to where Tuan stood and spoke to him.

“I don’t know but what those flying monsters might not come to the aid of their riders, if provoked,” he said. “Lay off the guns.”

Tuan raked them with a glance of contempt. “They are but boys,” he grunted harshly. “Soft, effeminate—weaklings, by the look of them.”

“Yeah, and they’re also completely unarmed,” drawled Brant cooly. “Is it Honor for a warrior chieftain to fire upon naked, unarmed children?”

The shaft went home, as Brant had known it would. Honor to the People was more than life or wealth—an indefinable, precious quality to be nurtured, not depleted. Even outlaws such as Tuan were sensitive when it came to matters of that nature. He flinched at Brant’s carefully chosen words, and gave him a hard look from ugly eyes.

“There is still blood to be paid between Tuan and you,” the chieftain reminded him.

“I know,” Brant nodded. “But let’s settle the private feud once we’re out of this mess. Otherwise, it might cost you the lives of all of your men. We have no way of knowing what resources, what defenses, what peculiar powers, these strange people might possess.”

That went home, too. As superstitious as all wandering nomads, Tuan had been stuffed full of tales of ghosts, gods and goblins—well, the Martian equivalents, at least—from his mother’s knee.

“It shall be as you say, f’yagh,” he grunted sourly.

“I have a name,” Brant reminded him. “It is Brant.”

“Brant, then!” snarled the other. The Earthsider gave him a cool smile and strolled back to Zuarra’s side.

While Brant had been in brief conversation with the outlaw chieftain, Will Harbin had been trying to converse with the golden youths. They were mystified by his words, whose meaning eluded their comprehension, although he spoke to them in the oldest form of the Tongue with which he had any facility, and strove to modify his pronunciation to their own.

Eventually they were led into the spacious forecastle, where soft cushions of gaudy colors were strewn in cozy profusion. Strange food and drink was served to them in ceramic bowls and goblets, and the sources of only a few of them could the travelers identify as being similar to some of the mushroom-meat they had sampled back in the fungus-forest.

There was a golden, sweet wine, like honey-hearted mead, and a rich red brandy that savored of apples, somehow, and a light sparkling wine, like vintage champagne, but lime-green. Brant had tasted something like these from various of the mushroom-trees. In particular, he guessed the golden mead was derived from the dripping honeycomb-stuff they had eaten first.

Tuan cautiously sampled the strong red brandy, coughed at its unexpected bite, and pronounced it a fair enough beverage, on the whole. Then he lifted his cup to the smiling boy with the jug, asking for a refill.

While some of the food and drink was familiar, many others were not. There was a savory stew in which small nuggets of chewy meat of beeflike consistency swam in a highly spiced red sauce, for one. And another was a ragout of stringy meat-fibers soaking in a thick, creamy gravy.

Everything was so completely delicious, that the travelers merely shrugged off the question of where the food came from, and wolfed it down.

Sometime while they were at the feast, the odd vessel got underway. Brant had wondered earlier how a ship with neither sails nor oars could be made to travel, but the answer, when it came, was simplicity itself.

They were towed by the dragonflies!

Tethered by long lines to their perches in the complicated mastlike structures overhead, the point and flank creatures bearing mounted riders to guide them in the desired direction, the winged creatures drew the lightweight but stoutly built craft over the glowing waters with apparent ease.

Brant and the others stared at this strange sight with wondering eyes. The luminous sea, the naked laughing children on their fantastic flying steeds, the elfin vessel itself—it was all like some scene from a fairy tale, or an illustration in an old children’s book, Brant thought.

What Zuarra, or Suoli, or the other natives thought was beyond conjecture. Perhaps they were beyond amazement itself, by this time, their imaginations stunned by the sheer profusion of marvels they had encountered on this weird journey below the planet’s ancient crust.

The boy who had captured Brant, an eager, bright-eyed little imp, had attached himself to the tall man with a sort of proprietary interest. Seeing that neither could understand each other, the boy laid his hand on his breast and said, carefully, “Kirin!”

Brant nodded, repeating the name a time or two until he had the pronunciation right. Then the lad laid his hand on Brant’s chest with an inquiring look.

“Brant,” the man said, grinning.

“Pran-dt?” murmured the boy. The man shook his head, and kept repeating his name until the lad, Kirin, had it right. Then they began a language-lesson, Brant pointing to various parts of the body, to the sea, to the boat, and so on, and trying to memorize the words that Kirin gave him.

Got to learn the language somehow, thought Brant to himself. We might be here a lot longer than we think.

Will Harbin, in the meantime, was getting language-lessons of his own. His tutor, surprisingly, was a young girl!

They had not realized at once that not all of the slim, golden children were male. Harbin’s teacher, Aulli, was of about the same age as young Kirin, and every bit as long-legged, flat-chested as the boy, her breasts not even having begun to bud. Lacking noticeable breasts, the girls mingled with the boys in one naked, bald, golden mob, to the eyes of the newcomers.

Tuan listened suspiciously for a time to the exchange of nouns and verbs—but they were on to simple verbs by that point, “jump,” “sit,” “run,” and the like. Then he snorted and stalked away to join his men. He had gathered them into a tight group amidship and they kept much to themselves.

It did not occur to Brant to wonder exactly where the ship was heading, until somewhat later. Even if he had thought about it at the time, he could never have guessed.