Jandar of Callisto

7. A CRUISE ABOARD THE FRIGATE SKYGULL

Although my arms were chained, my feet were free. So swiftly had the arthropods fled to their battle stations that I was left standing alone and unguarded. The Princess stood a bit beyond me, staring up at the fantastic winged ships which circled slowly and ponderously overhead.

"What in the world are those things?"

"They are scout ornithopters," she said. "Have you never seen one before?"

I assured her that I had not. She looked puzzled. I reminded her that I was a stranger from a far land.

"It must indeed be far distant," she observed, "if you have never heard of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar!"

I had indeed heard mention of the name, but had not dreamed of anything like this.

"Now is our opportunity to escape," I said. "While the Yathoon warriors are engaged in battle, perhaps we can steal a couple of thaptors and be off."

I was half afraid that she would refuse my assistance, and not at all certain that the Ku Thad (the term meant the "Golden People") did not share the va lu rokka fatalism of the Horde. But such was not the case. We made at once for the thaptor pens of Gamchan's retinue and secured two beasts.

The bird-horses were restive and upset by the excitement. Perhaps they smelled blood and war and death on the air. At any rate they clashed their beaks at us and screeched angrily as we threw saddles over them and sought to mount. I cursed under my breath and wished for the tractable mount I had made friends with in Koja's corral. But Darloona was a born thaptor-woman and knew the trick of handling an uncooperative mount: you beat him over the top of the head with a little wooden club called an olo, affixed to each saddlebow for just that purpose. It looks very much like a dumbbell.

Thus we mounted and cantered out of the camp.

At the perimeter we encountered, of all people, my former owner, Koja. He did not seem particularly surprised to see me.

"Ride due north, Jandar, and then east along the margin of the jungle. I trust the Princess Darloona is most anxious to return to her people," he said solemnly.

"How did you know my name, Yathoon?" the Princess demanded. He indicated the circular medallion of bright metal affixed to her girdle.

"Unless I am mistaken, that is the Seal of Shondakor, is it not?" he asked rhetorically. "If so, and since only the regnant Princess may bear the sacred Seal, it follows to my mind that you are she."

"Why are you helping us, Yathoon?" she asked suspiciously.

Koja shrugged, or performed a twitch of his antennae equivalent to a shrug.

"Why not? I assume the ornithopters are searching for you. The Sky Pirates have never evinced particular interest in our treasures. And unless my eyes misread the insignia on yonder rudder, that is the flagship of Prince Thuton himself, an ambitious and not overly scrupulous man who might well find a path to power through possession of the Princess of Shondakor."

Squinting against the bright gold sky, I saw that the more sumptuous and ornate of the three flying vessels bore a blue and silver emblem, a winged fist, painted on the vertical rudder fin, a structure ribbed like an enormous fan, which protruded from the poop at the aft of the galleon―or frigate, as a scout ship is more properly termed.

Darloona was still not convinced that Koja meant us well. She glanced at me.

"Can we trust this capok?" she demanded, using an impolite colloquialism that can be rendered, bluntly, as "bug."

"We can, Princess. Koja is a great warrior, a mighty chieftain, and my uhorx-friend," I said. As I still did not know the Thanatorian word for "friend" I used the English word.

"Come, I will guide you. Make way there, guards!" Koja clacked, waving aside the perimeter watchmen. He sprang into a saddle and cantered off ahead of us, waving aside any who might interfere with our flight.

"Koja, why are you doing this? Will you not get into trouble with your own people?" I asked.

"We have small hope of defeating the ornithopters," he said calmly. "But some small measure of victory can be snatched from the very mandibles of defeat if we can prevent the Sky Pirates from obtaining that which they seek. No more talk now―ride!"

Koja's guess as to the objective of the Sky Pirates was confirmed an instant later. The lead frigate, the one with the royal symbol painted on its rudder fin, floated low over the encampment on lazily beating vans, and a rather flashily dressed and overly handsome young man leaned over the ornately carven balustrade to shout through a gilt-paper megaphone to the arthropods below:

"Attention, chieftains of the Yathoon! We covet neither your possessions nor your destruction. We wish only the person of the red-haired Shondakor maiden your warriors seized in the jungle yesterday. Send her out alone and we will take her and leave without causing you harm!"

At that moment a sailor, his bright green stocking cap flapping in the breeze caused by the slowly beating vans, spied Darloona's bright hair as we rode like the wind from the other side of the camp. He was stationed aloft on the observation deck atop the command belvedere in the ship's forecastle, and thus had an excellent view of the surrounding countryside. We could hear him shouting his discovery to Prince Thuton, for such the handsome spokesman at the rail proved to be.

Thuton snapped a series of crisp commands. "Helmsman? Forward at ten knots! Take your mark on the three riders! Bosun! Lassomen to the forward port rail―lively, now!"

The great craft began to move with a creaking and a drumming of beating vans. Like a great shark she came gliding through the air towards us. Casting a glance back over my shoulder, I could see the brightwork of her prow, and the frowning face of the vengeful warrior that was her figurehead.

Just as we reached the edge of the jungle her shadow fell over us. I thought the overhanging boughs would shield us from the lasso gang, and I also thought we would make better time if we rode along the edge of the jungle rather than pushing into her depths. Both guesses proved somewhat less than inspired. For we came to an open space where no branches afforded protection above, and the flying loops came hurtling down to snap about us.

Squealing and kicking, Darloona was hauled out of her saddle like a hooked mackerel. A second lasso caught Koja around his middle and he went .flipflopping upwards, his face solemn and expressionless.

I, too, was roped and drawn skyward. A smooth hull, every chink tightly caulked with a rubbery gumlike substance, swept past me as I was drawn up.. Then the deck rail, its supporters carven into the likeness of winged dolphins, swept under me, and I was dropped with a resounding thud to the deck. I saw then that the lasso was affixed to a tall davit which protruded over the side, something like a gallows.

Prince Thuton strode forward, beaming smiles. He was a young man, rather foppish, dressed in tight bottle-green breeches, floppy-topped skyboots, and a frilly white blouse, trimmed with lace at throat and wrist. A rapier hung from his baldric, which flashed with gems. As I got a close-up look at him, I discovered that the Sky Pirates, although fully human as far as I could see, had distinct racial differences from the Ku Thad.

To be precise, instead of tawny and honey-colored, his skin was papery white; instead of flaming red, his hair, worn long and ringleted, was sleek and black, as were his unslanted eyes. He was a handsome fellow, if a little soft in the face, with a brilliant smile and a smooth voice and charming manners. He looked and acted for all the world like some delicate French privateer of aristocratic birth. His eyes lingered for just a moment on Darloona's naked breasts; in the next, he had whipped a scarlet cloak off the shoulders of his lieutenant and draped it about the girl.

He made a profound bow, clicking his heels together like a Nazi officer in a World War II movie.

"My dear Princess! I bid you welcome to the flag frigate Skygull: its crew and officers are your servants to command. As for Thuton, Prince of Zanadar, who stands before you, he is―your slave!"

It was, I must admit, a pretty speech. Then why did my blood boil as I saw the half-smile Darloona turned on this smooth-faced Sky Pirate, and the gratitude in her voice as she thanked him for his courtesy?

As for myself, I was fighting mad. I came to my feet, kicking out of the lasso, ready for blood.

"We don't need your help!" I yelled. "We were doing just fine! I am returning Darloona to her people, and can get along on my own."

Prince Thuton elevated a polite eyebrow at me.

"And who is this . . . person?" he inquired.

The girl cast me a reproving look. Then, disdainfully, "Some nameless barbarian, a slave of the Yathoon. Please pay no attention to his hasty words ―he is very rude and has no conception of civilized behavior."

"So? A turn at the wheels will teach him better manners. Come, dear Princess: I have prepared a light buffet in my cabin―toasted biscuits and a light wine, spiced meat cubes and a scrap of salad―nothing fancy."

You are too kind, Prince Thuton," she murmured. He offered his arm and they turned to go, ignoring poor Koja and myself.

"Don't go with him, Darloona!" I fumed. "Don't listen to him! You know what Koja said―he has some political motive in wanting to capture you―"

Thuton turned a stern eye on me. Darloona flushed indignantly.

"Silence, you―you―amatar!" she snapped. "If you are not capable of feeling gratitude to a noble gentleman who has just rescued you from the perils of the trackless jungle, at least refrain from the insult of openly impugning his motives."

"Presently this fellow will grow tiresome, and I fear I shall have to teach him his place," Thuton purred, an ominous note in his suave voice.

Koja plucked at my arm, but I shrugged him off bad-temperedly.

"Anytime you feel like giving me a lesson, Prince!"

He stopped, turned, and stood with arms akimbo, looking me up and down. In what seemed a deliberately insulting way, his eyes lingered on the amatar glyphs painted across my chest.

"I am hardly accustomed to being insulted on my own deck," he said. "Presently, I fear Thuton of Zanadar must instruct you in the maintenance of your temper, fellow!"

"Jandar of-of-of Thanator is ready whenever you are!" I blustered, chest heaving with the intensity of my emotion. He elevated a polite eyebrow again.

"Really, my dear Princess, this barbarian is absurd! Now he takes all the world for his domain!"

Suddenly he was hard as steel. "Will swords suffice you, my peppery savage?"

"They will indeed!"

I had snatched up one of the whip-swords during my flight from the Yathoon camp. I had slung it across my back. Now I dragged it forth and flourished it, albeit a bit awkwardly, due to the shackles with which my wrists were still bound. Prince Thuton noticed this and called for his blacksmith, who swiftly released me from my bonds.

The Princess of Shondakor regarded me doubtfully. "You will not, I trust, kill him, my lord? The lout did, after all, rescue me from the Yathoon camp―for all that he was the cause I was there in the first place!"

The Prince bowed, saluting with a flicker of his blade.

"Dear Princess, his life is yours―I but wish to tutor him in his manners." Then, turning to me: "Ready, barbarian?"

I grunted and set my stance. I was well aware that this was a serious mistake; I was acting foolishly, even dangerously. This suave and agile Pirate was going to do his best to make me look like a buffoon―and I so desperately wanted to correct the bad impression that Darloona had formed of me. I cursed under my breath, and wished I had kept my temper and held my tongue.

But it was too late now. I consoled myself by recalling my prowess with the sword. I had been an excellent fencer at Yale, and there was a good chance my skill with the blade could turn the tables on this wily Prince. With luck, I might make him look the fool!

We set to it, blades clicking, steel ringing, feeling each other out. Very soon I was puffing for breath, streaming sweat from every pore, my forearms tense and quivering with strain and fatigue. I had been very, very foolish in stumbling into this quarrel. I had not stopped to think that I had passed the whole of last night standing up, my arms shackled to the tent pole. Not only was I close to exhaustion, but the muscles in my arms and shoulders were lame and aching.

Then again the whip-sword was a weapon with which I lacked training and experience. My battle with the vastodon should have shown me that I was making a dangerous error in attempting to duel with the heavy, cumbersome weapon. The flexive blade was all of five feet long and difficult for me to employ, while Thuton used a light, supple rapier that looked very much like the standard fencing Epee. His agile, flickering point was everywhere―teasing my cheek, nicking my shoulder, drawing a crimson scratch first on this arm and then the other. He pranced lightly about the deck, while I shuffled heavy-footed and wearily. His men began to snicker. Koja looked as doleful as it is possible for a Yathoon to look.

Well, I shall not dwell on the scene. The memory is painful enough. Suffice it to say that Thuton made me look like a fumbling clown, an oaf of the dullest water. He played with me like a cat with a mouse, but with amusement, not viciousness. He could have cut me to ribbons, but he was in a great good humor, with a beautiful girl for an admiring audience, and he was content to nick me and scratch me and draw me in blundering circles and, for the final coup de grace, to sever the waistband of my loincloth with a flick of the wrist. I had to drop my sword in order to preserve what little of my dignity was left.

He left me standing there, flushed crimson, furious, ludicrously shielding my nakedness, streaming with smeared blood and sweat.

Tossing his blade to the bosun, delicately wiping his brow with a perfumed bunch of ribbons, he turned, offering his arm to the Princess. She gave me a look of genuine contempt and went with him.

All in all, it had not been a very successful day.

Koja and I were sent to work at the wheels, while Darloona enjoyed the trip in a luxurious cabin.

The Sky Pirates are a rough lot, but not unkindly in a gruff way. A fellow named Gomar was put in charge of us, a bluff and hearty old seadog―or skydog, I suppose―with a scarlet kerchief knotted about his brows and a bush of inky beard that made him look like something out of The Pirates of Penzance. He let me sponge off in a trough of cold water, dug out a ragged kilt, clean loincloth, and a sort of open vest of repulsively orange felt adorned with copper disks. I felt like a stage gypsy in this getup, but I did not protest. Koja and I were given food, some sour ale, and I was permitted to rest before taking the wheel.

These wheels are enormous flat gears of hardwood set laterally about three and a half feet from the deck, and they are located in the main belowdecks compartment. There are fifty of them, stacked one above the other, with little catwalks and platforms in layers. The rims of the wheels are studded with handles and there is a slave at every handle. They walk about the outside of their wheel, pushing forward, and it is these wheels that supply the motive power which makes the enormous wings―or vans, more properly―flap.

It took us about a week, this cruise. And I was chained to my wheel for all the world like a galley slave out of some Errol Flynn epic of the Spanish Main. I don't think that Darloona realized Koja and I had been chained to the wheel―I suspect her oily―tongued host glibly said we had been given servile shipboard duties commensurate to our social level, or words to that effect.

The week was extremely educational.

Some of the wheel slaves were captives taken in war; others were native Zanadarians sold into slavery by impecunious parents or condemned to the wheels of the flying navy for some misdemeanor, or because of accumulated debts. The Sky Pirates require an enormous number of wheel slaves, a steady supply of fresh new bodies, as the grueling labor wears men out swiftly. Few wheel slaves last out their first year belowdecks. For this reason, I learned, the civil courts of Zanadar used slavery as a standard punishment for almost everything―murder, theft, embezzlement, adultery, bankruptcy, rape, attempted assassination, fraud, and just about any other crime you could name. And slavery automatically meant the wheel.

We labored in shifts around the clock, four hours at the wheel and four hours off―a murderous pace. After my first three or four shifts at the wheel I thought I would die. After a few more, I wished that I could die. Never had I realized the body could experience such bone-deep exhaustion. As the saying has it: I discovered muscles I did not know I possessed. But we were fed heartily on good vastodon steaks washed down with a ration of some fierce red wine. And unlike the slaves at the oarlocks of an old-time galley back on Earth, the huge compartment wherein we labored and in whose corners we slept were not black stinking holes. Wide-open louvers in the upper works permitted a bracing flood of cold fresh air to circulate. In time I began to harden; my shoulders toughened and my back, belly, and chest began to develop steely thews.

Between shifts I talked with my fellow slaves. They were a motley crew, about half of them black-haired Zanadarians with paper-white complexions, the rest from every tribe and nation across the breadth of Thanator. There were silver-gray, chitin-clad Yathoon such as Koja, although, as it happened, they came from various of his rival clans and there were none of his own people at the wheels of the frigate. But there were many of the honey-skinned, redheaded Ku Thad with their slanted emerald eyes. Beyond these representatives of the three Thanatorian races I had already encountered during the course of my travels and adventures across the surface of the jungle moon, there were others from peoples I had not yet met, including many from a squat, dour-faced race who had lank, colorless hair, swarthy, greasy skins, and yellow eyes. These, I was told, were members of a bandit army called the Chac Yuul, the Black Legion. I will have quite a bit more to say of them before my tale is told.

We were en route to Zanadar, the city of the Sky Pirates. Scuttlebutt had it that the glib-tongued, wily Pirate Prince had persuaded Darloona that he wished to help her people against their foes, but to do so must first return to the Cloud Kingdom to marshal his forces. Scuttlebutt also had it that Thuton was wooing her for all he was worth, with an eye towards uniting the two realms. I ground my teeth at this information, and entertained some bitter thoughts of what I would like to do to the Sky Pirate when next I had him at sword's point.

Talking to the wheel slaves helped fill in the blanks in my background information. There were enormous areas in which I was completely ignorant.

I learned that the planet, or moon, was largely land surface. Thanator has two inland seas. The larger of these, Corund Laj, the Greater Sea, is in the northern portion of the globe, while Sanmur Laj, the Lesser Sea, is far to the south. The Greater Sea and its coast is dominated by a race of red-skinned, bald-headed men, merchants and traders and shopkeepers, a mercantile civilization like ancient Carthage, but culturally closer to medieval Persia. Their civilization is called, for some reason, the Bright Empire of Perushtar: it is composed of the three cities of Farz, to the north, Narouk in the west, and Soraba to the south; its capital, Glorious Perusht, lies on a large island off the southern coast which has the rare distinction of being the only island on all of Thanator.

The superb metropolis of Shondakor lies on the river Ajand, one hundred korads* south of the Sea of Corund Laj.

West of the Corund Laj and at approximately the same latitude rise the White Mountains of Varan. Hkor, upon one of whose peaks Zanadar, the City in the Clouds, is built. To the south of these mountains, west of Shondakor, and at approximately the latitude of that city, lies a colossal tract of jungle called the Grand Kumala. South of the Grand Kumala the Plains of Haratha stretch for about five hundred korads, from the shores of Samnur Laj the Lesser Sea in the remote west to the foothills of the Black Mountains of Rhador, towards which the Yathoon Horde had been traveling. The distance between the encampment of the Horde and the city of the Sky Pirates, then, was enormous―three hundred and ten korads, or two thousand one hundred and seventy-five miles.

My readers (if any there be) must forgive me for this dissertation on Thanatorian geography, which may be a bit lengthy. But since the course of this story of my adventures on Callisto will take my reader, as it took me, to most places in this hemisphere of the jungle moon, I felt it advisable to describe the location of these lands and cities, and their relations to each other, in some considerable detail. As to the opposite hemisphere of Thanator, there is little that I can say, as I have never seen it. This modicum of geographical information, incidentally, which I gleaned from conversation with my fellow wheel slaves, proved priceless. For at last I had some notion of where lay that all-important disk of milky jade in its ring of guardian monoliths―the Gate Between The Worlds, to which I must somehow make my way again if ever I hope to return to my own world. I have marked its approximate location on this rough map.

I also learned something about the recent events on this world. Some months before my arrival on Thanator, the city of Shondakor had been conquered by a powerful bandit chieftain named Arkola, leader of the Chac Yuul, the Black Legion I mentioned a bit earlier. I know of no precise terrene equivalent by which I can explain the nature of this robber horde. They are, in a sense, nomadic warriors like the Don Cossacks of seventeenth-century Russia; they are also, in a way, something like the wandering condottiere of fifteenth-century Italy. Professional warriors, banded together under a commander selected by popular acclaim, they go where they will, living off the land, here attacking a merchant caravan, there seizing a fishing village or a hamlet of farmers, sometimes laying siege to the castle of some reputedly wealthy lord, and at other times selling their swords as a mercenary unit in some war between the cities of Thanator. What had led them to attack one of the most splendid and brilliant of all the great cities no man could say. But they had taken Shondakor by surprise, and seized control of the metropolis in a virtually bloodless coup. Perhaps their warlord, Arkola, had wearied of the nomadic life of camp and march, and sought to carve out a kingdom for himself and his Legionnaires―or, even better, to become the master of a kingdom that already existed, rather than creating one.

At any rate, when the Princess Darloona saw that the dreaded Black Legion was already within her gates and that further resistance was futile, she led the bulk of her people from the city into the jungles of the Grand Kumala. Discretion is, by repute, the better part of valor; doubtless Darloona thought it wiser to avoid the massacre of her people by escaping the Legion with her fighting strength all but unimpaired. Once hidden in the trackless depths of the Grand Kumala, she could regroup her forces, lay her plans, and live in hopes of retaking the city. The Kumala is twenty-five hundred miles from east to west, and one thousand five hundred miles from north to south at its greatest breadth. You can see how easily one could conceal an army or two in that enormous wilderness, beyond chances of discovery. With nearly four million square miles of the densest of jungles at your disposal, you could tuck several fair-sized empires into the corners of the Grand Kumala and they might never be found.

I did not until much later learn the circumstances whereby I came upon Darloona alone in those jungles, battling against the vastodon; but she later told me the story, a simple one of a hunting party broken up by a pack of yathribs, the members dispersing in all directions and thereby losing track of each other. If I had not come along, and if the vastodon had been elsewhere, it would only have been a matter of an hour or two before she would have found her way back to the rest of her party.

I did, however, come along. So did the vastodon. And it is upon such small happenings as these that the fate of worlds may Bang.

It is hard for me to estimate the number of nights and days I spent slaving at the wheels of the flying ship. The monotony of the grinding labor, the bewildering succession of work shifts and sleep shifts, the cumulative fatigue, all prevented me from keeping an accurate measure of the passage of time. But these ungainly flying contraptions, I now know, are capable of making at least three hundred miles cross-country in a single day, so I was at my wheel for a week at the very least.

While this speed is not remarkable, compared to the velocity at which a terrene jet liner travels, it's fast enough for a ship propelled by muscle power alone.

The Skygull was the personal flagship or yacht of Prince Thuton. The pun in its name, incidentally, exists in both Thanatorian and English. There is a species of small flying reptile on Thanator, found generally in desert regions, called the zell. A branch of the same species can be found along the shores of the two Thanatorian seas. To differentiate this branch from the desert-inhabiting zells, the shore branch is known as the sea-zell, or lajazell, as laj is the Thanatorian word for "sea." Kaja is the Thanatorian word for "sky," hence the pun in the name of Thuton's ship, the frigate Kajazell.

I call it a frigate for, technically, being a light, speedy scout ship, that is what it was. But it looked more like a heavily ornamented Spanish galleon. The Skygull was eighty-seven feet long, very broad in the beam and flat-bottomed. It was built up very high in poop and forecastle: the forecastle rising to about forty-two feet above the keel level and the sterncastle to thirty-five feet. The upper works of the forecastle bulged out sharply, an exposed belvedere with wide, high windows giving a good view on all three sides, and a flat, balustraded observation deck on top of this. The belvedere served as the pilothouse and from there the frigate was controlled and directed. A bowsprit protruded from the fore of the observation deck just above the curved row of windows, with an elaborate figurehead depicting a winged warrior with a fishtail. Further down the curve of the hull, below the pilothouse and at about what would be the water level on a seagoing ship, were two bulging observation balconies, one on either side of the hull. The sterncastle had a similar belvedere, pointing aft, and a vertical rudder fin, ribbed like an enormous fan, was attached to the rudderstock below this belvedere. The rudderstock was linked to the sternpost and thence to the rear steering gear.

The hinged wings thrust out to either side amidships and belowdecks. The spread must have measured at least one hundred and twenty feet from wingtip to wingtip, fully extended. The portion of the wings, or vans, which were attached to the sides of the ship were fixed rigid; but about one-third of the way out, the vans were hinged in a most ingenious and complicated manner, with enormous pulleys and guy-stays which manipulated the outboard wingsections which actually flapped up and down. The movements of the vans were powered and controlled from between-decks. The huge wheels we slaves turned communicated kinetic energy through sequential cogwheels, pinion wheels successively engaging with larger cogs, and the whole connecting with the guy-stays, which were thin and strong as nylon cord. There was a ratchet-and-pawl arrangement on the wheels to prevent sudden reversal; for otherwise, a contrary gust of wind could have stripped the gears disastrously. The guy-stays wound about gigantic winches above our level, the stays communicating from the winches to the wing sections through a row of circular ports in the sides of the hull.

The concept of a bird-winged aircraft was not uniquely Thanatorian. I remembered that the Renaissance genius of Leonardo da Vinci, however, had not been able to invent a practical model of such a craft although his notebooks are filled with elaborate drawings of ornithopters. Weight and motive power were the main problems.

I was fascinated by the ingenuity with which the Zanadarians made practical the use of genuine ornithopters. For example, the flying frigates were not, as I had thought at first, made of wood at all, but of specially treated paper. Huge sheets of strong woven-reed papyrus were soaked in glue and stretched over plaster forms, layer after layer. When baked dry in brick ovens and stripped from their forms, the result was something like sections of molded plastic. The glue-impregnated paper hulls were incredibly thin, lighter than plastic or even balsa wood, and tough, strong, and durable.

The entire ship was made of paper wherever possible. The beams and masts and keel, sternpost and stempost, bowsprit and van ribs, were hollow tubes. Even the huge figurehead was a hollow paper mold. The vans, the flapping sections at least, were constructed like the wings of a giant bat, narrow hollow paper tubes, like unsegmented bamboo rods, splayed out from a center rib. Between these ribs, however, silk webbing was used instead of the glue-impregnated paper. Tough silk, tightly stretched and pegged like drumheads, was then soaked in wax for extreme stiffness, the interstices sealed with wax. Paper plates had proved impractical here.

But this use of strong, light paper construction alone would still not have made the eighty-seven-foot-long frigates skyworthy had it not been for the gas compartments. The entire lower deck, the bilge, of the frigates was pumped full of a buoyant natural gas like helium or hydrogen, whose enormous lifting power rendered the ornithopters virtually weightless. Geysers of this gas were found in the White Mountains; they were tapped, and the bilge compartments of the frigates were pumped full of gas under high pressure. The nozzles were unscrewed and detached from the input hoses, then transformed by the addition of a simple snap-on valve to pressure cocks which permitted some of the buoyant gas to be ejected at need, permitting the ship to sink to a lower level. The bilge compartment, once full, was then sealed and caulked until it was airtight. And the ships were skyworthy.

There were two masts amidships, set side by side rather than fore and aft as on a seagoing schooner. Light shrouds stretched from mast to mast, and then to the bowsprit and the poop, for the display of signal pennants and for the use of the sailors who manned the lonely and rather windy topmast observation cupolas.

The ships had a crew strength of thirty-five officers and men, and eighty wheel slaves. It was the number of wheel slaves required to power the vans that kept the number of the Zanadarian vessels at a minimum. Otherwise, with such an amazing technological advance over the other nations of the jungle moon, they could have controlled a world empire.

And if ever the Zanadarians discover the steam engine, God help Thanator!