Sky Pirates of Callisto

Chapter 7 OUT OF CONTROL!

And now I have come to that point in my narrative where I must describe incidents to which I was not a witness―adventures in which I did not personally partake.

At the time of their occurrence, I was completely ignorant of these events, and it was only long after their conclusion that I learned of them.

It was Koja of the Yathoon Horde who was the first to notice that I was no longer aboard the Jalathadar.

The giant arthopode gradually became aware of my absence. The aerial contrivance, in which we had intended to voyage to the City in the Clouds, had risen from the surface of the Corund Laj into the brilliant daylight. The supplies of fresh drinking water now fully replenished, the sky ship ascended rapidly to the three-thousand-foot level and proceeded due west in the direction of the White Mountains.

The shores of the great inland sea rapidly receded in the wake of the flying galleon. The domes and tower of Narouk vanished on the horizon; Ganatol, too, sped beneath the keel of the sky machine. Soon the Jalathadar would be over the hill country, and ere many hours had passed, it would be flying over the great mountain range itself, bound for the mountaintop citadel of the infamous Sky Pirates.

At first, Koja suspected nothing. The huge insectman merely noticed that I was no longer to be seen on the midship deck. Some time before, the arthopode had noticed me lounging by the rail; now that he looked again, I was no longer there. Instead, it was the Zanadarian captive, Ulthar, who leaned idly against the carven balustrade.

Koja came stalking up to where the former captain of the Jalathadar stood.

“Has Jandar gone below or up to the control cupola?” the faithful Yathoon Warrior inquired in his solemn, uninflected voice.

Ulthar darted an alert, wary glance at the chitin-clad giant. Then his eyes fell away with seeming indifference.

“I have not seen him, kapok,” Ulthar replied.

Koja’s chitinous casque of a face was devoid of expression, and his enormous compound eyes reflected no expression as he observed the Zanadarian captive, who fidgeted nervously under his solemn scrutiny.

“But he was here at the rail just a few moments before we ascended,” Koja said patiently. “I was aloft, and I remember seeing you stroll over to where he stood, leaning against the rail. Surely, you must have noticed in which direction he went when he quit your company ….”

“I said I saw him not! An end to your questions, kapok!” Ulthar snapped, abruptly.

The huge eyes surveyed the nervous Sky Pirate imperturbably. “Kapok” is a derogatory term sometimes used against the Yathoon insect-men as an insult. It may be translated as “bug.” Koja did not enjoy bearing that term applied to him, but, not being human, his reactions were not those of an ordinary warrior. Indeed, the arthopodes of Thanator do not experience the full range of human emotions, and are popularly thought to have no emotions at all, since their endocrine system is markedly different from that of the other races of the Jungle Moon. This, however, is a fallacy. I had taught Koja the meaning of friendship, and he had found his own way to love, for I believe the stalking, ungainly monstrosity loved me with an unswerving devotion and loyalty rare even in men.

He did not, however, react to the insult, but stood, blinking emotionlessly down at the tense, fidgeting Zanadarian. Perhaps his cool intelligence was pondering the motive behind the other’s nervousness and short temper, or perhaps he was slowly rephrasing the question in his mind. At any rate, with a snarled expletive, the Zanadarian prisoner abruptly turned from the rail and strode rapidly away.

Koja stared after him, pondering the strangeness of his mood and actions. Then he ascended to the control cupola to see if I had gone there, but of course he found me not―for at that moment I was floundering in the beach shallows, exhaustedly struggling to drag myself up onto the shoreline.

Valkar was duty officer at the time, it being his shift. The handsome Ku Thad prince greeted the solemn-faced insectman in a friendly fashion and replied that he had not seen me in some time.

“Jandar is not on duty at present, and may be taking his leisure in his cabin. Why don’t you look there?”

Koja thanked him and turned away. But I was not in my cabin, nor in the galley, nor down in the store chambers, nor in the wheel deck, nor in the poop. I did not seem to be anywhere aboard the Jalathadar!

This, the Yathoon warrior found puzzling in the extreme. But where a human being might have taken alarm at this point, the cool, disciplined mind of the stalking arthopode merely registered the accumulated data and continued patiently in his methodical search, until, sometime later, he had ascertained that I was simply not on board at all.

Having made certain of my absence, however, Koja wasted no time in bringing the matter to the attention of his comrades.

Lukor’s cabin adjoined my own, Koja entered, to find the gallant, silver-haired little swordmaster reclining comfortably on his bunk, sharing his attention equally between a black bottle of well-aged brandy and a volume of salacious anecdotes called The Thousand Diversions of Pellasitir the Inventive. The amiable Ganatolian waved a greeting as the solemn-faced insectoid entered his quarters.

“Hoy, friend Koja! You find me at my leisure, improving my mind with a brief but informative excursions into the less reputable byways of literature and restoring my depleted energies with an excellent bottle of quarra, of a vintage vastly overrated by injudicious connoisseurs, but not without a robust bouquet to recommend it. There is nothing like a wellaged quarra … how does the poet put it? 'The golden nectar of a vanished summer slumbers in the good wine’s honied heart'―is something wrong?”

“Jandar is not on board,” said Koja in flat, emotionless tones, going right to the point as was his usual way. The peppery little Ganatolian, who had been refreshing himself with another swig from the black bottle, as if to test the wisdom of the poet whom he had just quoted, choked on the fiery beverage.

“Ak-kaff! Umph! My jointed friend, whatever are you talking about? Of course our brave and yellow-headed captain is aboard―wherever else could he be, may I ask, and us three thousand feet above the ground?”

“Lukor, he is nowhere on the ship. I have searched the vessel from stem to stern, and he is not to be found. Something untoward has occurred … .”

Lukor tossed his book aside with a muttered curse, corked the brandy bottle, tenderly deposited it beneath his pillow, and sat up on the edge of the bunk, sobering at Koja’s ominous words.

“You suspect foul play, is that it?”

Koja flexed his brow-antennae in the Yathoon equivalent of a human shrug of the shoulders.

“I saw him at the rail while we were taking on fresh supplies of water. Now he is nowhere aboard the galleon. I asked the Zanadarian, Ulthar, which way Jandar had gone, but he professed ignorance on the matter. However, he could hardly have avoided seeing our friend leave, since he was rather near him at the time. It is a puzzle, Lukor.”

Lukor massaged his brow and tugged viciously at his long, carefully tended mustachios.

“Ulthar, is it? I would not trust that Zanadarian any further than I could throw him … and I would be happy to attempt throwing him, if the deck rail was near enough! I warned Jandar he was making a mistake by permitting that treacherous, sly, cunning rascal of a Sky Pirate to voyage with us―but it is always our noble captain’s way to expect the best of others, rather than anticipating the worst from them. Well, if Ulthar has had a hand in this, we shall not find it difficult to pry his tongue loose―I know a little trick with a heated dagger-blade set between the bare toes that will encourage the most close-mouthed man on Thanator to pour forth his autobiography in less time than it takes to heat the blade. But―caution, now―have you thoroughly searched the ship? Our friend may well be gossiping with one of the officers in their several cabins or down in the hold with the men, swapping a bottle and telling tall tales of derring-do ….”

Koja described the itinerary of his search. By the time he had completed his account, the excitable little Ganatolian master-swordsman was alarmed.

“Where is Prince Valkar? In the control cupola, you say? Come, friend Koja, we must bring this to the attention of the ship’s company at once, before we have traveled farther. Jandar may well have fallen overboard.”

“Or been pushed,” said Koja expressionlessly.

Ere long the alarm was given, and anxious men combed every cubicle and closet of the Jalathadar without finding any token of my whereabouts. Summoned before a worried Valkar, our captive Sky Pirate stubbornly maintained that he knew nothing of my whereabouts―which was, I suppose, true enough, for Ulthar could not have known that by this time I had been taken prisoner by the lord Cham of Narouk, and he doubtless assumed or at least hoped that I had drowned beneath the blue waves of the Corund Laj, weighed down by my boots, sword, cloak, and other encumbrances.

No threats of stern measures could dislodge the truth from the smooth-tongued Zanadarian, who eloquently argued his complete ignorance in the matter and his innocence of any wrongdoing.

“Give me a few moments alone with this sky rascal, a dagger blade and a pot of coals from the galley, and I will pry the truth from him!” Lukor demanded. But Valkar reluctantly forbade any such questioning by force.

“We cannot do that, Lukor. We have Captain Ulthar’s word of his innocence, and nothing against him but idle suspicion. Why, even Koja cannot offer us eyewitness proof of wrongdoing! It is entirely possible that Jandar fell overboard, taken off-balance when the Jalathadar lifted, or borne away by a strong gust of wind sometime later on. But to subject a helpless captive, who has given us his parole and his oath of honor not to interfere with the functioning of the ship, would be an act of criminal barbarism. We are, after all, civilized men.”

” 'Civilized men,' are we?” Lukor spat, as if the very phrase left a bad taste in his mouth. “Well, maybe so, and maybe a wee touch of uncivilized behavior, would wring the truth from. this smooth-tongued assassin,” he fumed.

But Valkar would not listen to such words. He did, however, everything that could be done under such mysterious circumstances. The aerial galleon swung about and retraced the leagues she had traveled, regaining again her former position above the bright waves of the Greater Sea. Anxious eyes combed the waters for any sign of me, and armed parties prowled the nearer shores, but by then I imagine the waves in their ceaseless advance and retreat had smoothed away the footprints I had made when I had emerged from the sea, for my friends found nothing to suggest I had come ashore.

For many hours the gigantic flying machine hovered above land and sea, searching for the lost adventurer. Far into the night the sky ship floated above the grassy hills, alert for the slightest token of my presence. But, of course, I was not to be found, for by that time I was sound asleep on my rude pallet in the slave pens of Narouk.

Fuming at the frustration imposed by inactivity, the peppery little swordmaster was all for storming the walls and gates of Narouk―or, rather, he urged Valkar to descend upon the central market square of the city, demanding that I be turned over to the ship, if indeed I was being held captive by the Perushtarians. Valkar himself was rather given to this idea, for indeed it seemed logical that if I had somehow gone overboard while the sky galleon was lifting from the waters of the Corund Laj, I could well have been taken captive by a party of Perushtarian warriors.

But the responsibility of sole command had now devolved upon the strong shoulders of the Shondakorian prince, and he could not yield to the temptation. For the prime purpose of our voyage into peril was and must remain the setting free of Princess Darloona from her captivity among the Sky Pirates. And to imperil the entire quest on a hare-brained scheme was to jeopardize her safety, which was―and remained―of paramount concern.

Until the princess of Shondakor was safe among her friends, any man aboard the Jalathadar―even myself―must be considered expendable. And for one lone ship to attack a full-sized city was to risk the damage or destruction of the ship―and the doom of Darloona, warrior princess of the Ku Thad.

Valkar wrestled mightily with his decision. He and I were old comrades and many was the time we had fought side by side or back to back, holding death away at swords’ length. For him to desert me now in the hour of my greatest peril was the most horrendous decision he had ever been forced to make, but in the lonely eminence of his captaincy, he had to make that decision, although no other man can ever know the immense agony he endured in reaching his eventual choice of action.

Against the darkness of the night sky, where the great moons of Jupiter spread their multicolored rays across the silent landscape, the Jalathadar rose on silent wings, the last footsore and bone-weary search party having been taken aboard.

Then she turned her prow towards distant Zanadar and sailed off into the night, leaving me a doomed and helpless captive in the hands of the Perushtarians.

Sometime before dawn Valkar was rudely roused from his exhausted slumbers. He propped himself up on one elbow and peered blearily into the light of a swaying lamp held by Lukor.

“What… what is it? What’s wrong, Lukor?”

“`What is it?’ indeed, my fine prince!” chortled the spry old Ganatolian with a sort of fierce, grim enjoyment. “Perhaps, one of these days, when enough disasters have overtaken us, the excellent Lord Valkar will begin to pay some attention to the timely warnings of a garrulous old swordsman! Hah!”

Valkar blinked at him, understanding none of this. Behind the little Ganatolian loomed the silent Koja, lamplight striking highlights on the glistening, expressionless mask of his chitinous face, solemn eyes glittering.

“What are you talking about? What’s happened now?” demanded Valkar.

Lukor snorted. “Oh, nothing―nothing at all! It’s just that the trustworthy Zanadarian, who gave you his word of honor not to violate his parole or to do aught to interfere with the operation of the vessel―which word of honor you chose over my poor arguments―has cut the wing lines and wrecked the steering controls.”

“What?” Valkar demanded incredulously. His gaze flew past Lukor to meet Koja’s emotionless eyes.

“It is true, Valkar,” the arthopode intoned somberly. “The vessel can no longer be steered, and is plunging before a powerful tailwind, completely out of control.”

Valkar ground out a bitter curse between clenched teeth, swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, and came to his feet, snatching on the garments he had discarded at retiring.

“How… how did this happen?”

Lukor’s face was screwed into a smug expression that wavered between a scowl and a smile.

“Why, through treachery―treason―cunning lies!” he barked. ” `Pray, honorable Valkar, let me take this sneaking scum aside and question him a bit with a slight application of heated steel’ `Oh, no,’ quoth you, `we cannot do that to so fine and trustworthy a gentleman as the noble Ulthar! Be silent, you silly old Ganatolian! ‘Twould be rude―crude―criminous! Step aside, you white-bearded old barbarian, and permit the gently born Ulthar to go about his business―”’

“Oh, do be quiet, Lukor!” cried the exasperated Valkar. “What is our current situation? Are we losing altitude, or what? What’s our position―and have you apprehended Ulthar, or is he still on the loose?”

Koja’s face was devoid of expression and his voice was an emotionless monotone as he replied.

“That is another mystery, Valkar. For, having accomplished his dirty work, the Zanadarian traitor has vanished completely. We have searched the ship from stem to stern, and he is nowhere on board. He has vanished, just like Jandar….”

Chapter 8 THE MYSTERIOUS NORTH

Valkar scrambled into his clothes and ascended swiftly into the control cupola, where he was quickly brought abreast of their situation.

Duty officer for that watch of the night had been a young noble called Tomar. An impressionable, easily influenced youth, the boy had generally taken everyone at his word (a trait that Lukor had earlier ascribed to me, as well). Some of the men had noticed that our captive had exchanged friendly words with the impressionable youth on several occasions, but no one had thought much of it. And quite frequently, complaining he was unable to sleep, Ulthar had shared the lonely night-watch with the young Shondakorian noble.

Ulthar was forbidden the control cupola, but had taken his station in one of the observation belvederes nearby and, while scrupulously avoiding any interference with Tomar’s watch, had from time to time given him tips on navigation and some slight advice on trimming the wheel. No one had thought much of this, either.

On this particular night, however, again claiming he was unable to sleep, Ulthar had casually leaned against the balustrade of the observation belvedere, and had, in his friendly, unobtrusive way, quietly engaged the boy in desultory conversation during this loneliest of watches.

A strong wind had sprung up during the night, buffeting the Jalathadar to starboard and requiring constant attention to the wheel to avoid being driven off course by imperceptible degrees. It was not an emergency, but it demanded the duty officer’s fullest attention. Chatting casually, Ulthar had given the boy a few words of advice on holding the ship steady and a bit later had advised him that the craft might easily rise again above the buffeting winds by ascending a few hundred more feet. The trusting young officer had complied with these bits of advice, lifting the ship to a higher level, and at that altitude the vessel had encountered a powerful tailwind blowing due north.

Ulthar now advised the boy to have the rudder trimmed to offset this new influence on the course, and before the youth could rouse his messenger, who slumbered soundly in the cupola against call, the smooth-tongued Zanadarian volunteered to go back and pass the order along. There was simply no reason why Tomar should have suspected the wily Sky Pirate of treachery, so he accepted the other’s offer and passed down to him the code flag which denoted an official steering command, and which all messengers bore under such circumstances.

But instead of going aft to the rudder station, Ulthar muffled himself in his hooded cloak, which he had donned against the cold winds of this height, and, wordlessly showing the official code flag, had gone down to the wheel decks, unattended except by a skeleton crew at this hour. There, unrecognized in the uncertain light, his few gruff commands given in a disguised voice, Ulthar bade the crewmen go on deck to help unlimber the shroud lines. And once the deck was cleared, he opened a wall cabinet, where a fire ax was kept against emergencies, and proceeded to sever one by one the great cables that carried motive power from the wheels to the hinged wingsections. He had crippled one entire wing and was busily chopping away the cables that controlled the other, when a curious member of the wheel crew descended to question the order, which no one on deck knew anything about.

Ulthar had cut the man down with one blow of the great ax, but others were crowding down the gangway by then, so, leaving the starboard wing only partially damaged, the traitorous Sky Pirate had turned and fled.

And was nowhere to be found, although the crippled ship had been thoroughly searched.

He had simply vanished into thin air!

Tomar had, it was soon discovered, ascended into a very dangerous altitude, higher than any at which we had yet sailed the Jalathadar.

A seasoned and veteran sailor of the skies of Thanator, Ulthar had surely known this, known that at the three-thousand-foot level, subtle but powerful up-drafts from the winding canyons of the mountainous country below can gradually and imperceptibly lift the keel of a Zanadarian ornithopter many hundreds of feet over the hours of darkness. Doubtless his desultory conversation, combined with the efforts required to hold the galleon steady on her course against the buffeting pressure of the cross-winds, had so occupied the young officer’s mind that he had not noticed the sky ship was ascending ever higher at a steady but unobtrusive pace.

Then, timing his action to a nicety, remembering those coded charts of the wind belts of Thanator we had labored fruitlessly without deciphering, Ulthar had at exactly the proper time casually advised the boy officer to ascend a few hundred feet to escape the buffeting winds―which brought the Jalathadar, unbeknownst to any but the cunning Ulthar himself, into a powerful south-to-north windstream, which, at the vessel’s four-thousand-foot level, stood at gale force.

As these grim facts and deductions sank in, Valkar ground his teeth. The calamity was all but disastrous, and while the ship was not completely crippled, she was at least helpless to evade the gale winds which blew her on and on into the unknown north of the world.

With one wing out of action and the other only partially useful, the rudder alone was not sufficient to alter the course of the Jalathadar.

A helpless prisoner of the winds, she flew steadily across the mountain country, drawing farther and farther from her goal. Ahead of her lay leagues of bleak and barren arctic tundra, where no man dwelt and no cities existed.

Ahead lay the glittering ice fields of the polar cap and a horrible death at the ultimate north of the world.

And there was nothing they could do about it.

Dawn broke, flushing the skies of the jungle Moon with pallid gold.

Driven before the merciless fury of the gale wind, the giant ornithopter flew steadily on into the unknown regions of the mysterious north.

In the captain’s cabin, Valkar and the other senior officers pored wearily over the coded charts, striving to figure out a solution to their dilemma.

Unable to assist in the solution of their navigational problems, Lukor and Koja prowled the great ship restlessly, hoping against hope itself that they would somehow stumble upon the hiding place of the traitor, Ulthar.

With them, white-faced, with haunted eyes, went the boy Tomar. Tortured by feelings of guilt for his unconscious complicity in the cunning plot of the treacherous Zanadarian, the young noble suffered acutely. His sufferings were somehow all the more unendurable in that none of his shipmates had as yet uttered the slightest word of condemnation against him. The boy would have felt better, oddly enough, had they hurled accusations at his head, cursing him for a vapid fool.

Instead, they had said nothing at all. Valkar had slapped him on the shoulder in silent sympathy, tousled his hair affectionately, and had muttered a few comforting words to the effect that he should not blame himself for this calamity. Of course, the boy did indeed blame himself―and curse himself for an easily swayed idiot―and would cheerfully have laid down his life, could self-sacrifice have alleviated his responsibility for the disaster in any degree.

Bluff, garrulous, kind-hearted old Lukor, sensing the silent boy’s inward torments, loudly tried to josh him out of his black mood.

“rush, lad, ‘tis not your fault―yonder slick-tongued rapscalion could charm the fish out of the seas with his words! Look how he bemused Prince Valkar with his protestations of innocence, when not a man of the crew but had the slightest doubt that our tall Koja here was correct in his suspicions and that the lying villain tipped poor Jandar over the side when we were taking on water. You mustn’t blame yourself, m’boy.”

The young officer shook his head stubbornly, without a word, but his bright, tearless eyes were eloquent. Even Koja was disturbed by the lad’s eloquent suffering. The gaunt, chitin-clad, ungainly arthopode―so invulnerable to human emotions―touched the boy’s shoulder with an awkward, tentative caress.

“You must listen to Lukor, now. He speaks the truth, you know. No one blames you in the slightest, young Tomar, and it is thus irrational for you to blame yourself.”

“I can’t help it, Lord Koja―Master Lukor―I should have known better than to trust him. But … he was so casual and offhand about it all, and we had spoken several times before. I knew he was an enemy and not to be trusted, but―but―I guess I felt sorry for him, alone among strangers, with no one to give him a kind word. So I just fell into the habit of smiling, and saying hello, and sort of passing the time of day, a little … .”

“Ah, the cunning rascal, to play upon the kindly feelings of a well-meaning boy,” Lukor snarled.

They paused by the deck rail, viewing the barren land ahead, bathed in the brilliant morning light.

“‘Tis a strange land into which we venture, comrades,” said Lukor. “I, for one, know naught of the northlands. What of yourself, friend Koja?”

The towering insectoid stared solemnly out across the bleak tundra toward the glittering ice ramparts on the distant horizon.

“My people inhabit the southernmost portion of the globe, as you know, Lukor, and upon the endless grasslands of the Great Plains of Haratha was I hatched and raised to adulthood. Never do the war parties of my clan venture north of the Grand Kumala, and in all my days I have never journeyed beyond the ramparts of the White Mountains. But my people have vague traditions of the north of the world, the Frozen Land, as we call it. There is naught within those traditions that is the least wholesome.”

Lukor surveyed the northern horizon bemusedly.

“Well, I come from Ganatol, as you know, but we Ganatolians know a bit of the country north of the mountains and, like your own people of the Yathoon Horde, we have heard naught that is wholesome of the Frozen Land. However, ere long we shall discover the truth behind these unsavory myths, eh, comrades?”

Koja’s gaze was fathomless, his jeweled black eyes inscrutable.

“I begin to understand the actions of the villain Ulthar,” he said in his cold monotone. “The man thrust Jandar overboard, hoping we would waste time searching for him and perhaps do something foolish, like getting embroiled in a raid against the Perushtarian city of Narouk, to the possible detriment of our quest to Zanadar. But when that ploy proved fruitless, and we persisted in our intention to sail against the City in the Clouds, even without Jandar at our side, he must have staked all on a desperate gamble to cripple the ship so that it would be caught helpless in the gale winds of the four-thousand-foot level and be carried into the Frozen Land, there to crash among the ice mountains which legends hint may be found at the pole of the world. A clever and resourceful man, this Ulthar―a pity that he is against us and not with us ….

The boy Tomar spoke up now; the warm, friendly words of Lukor and Koja seemed to have broken through his preoccupation with his fancied guilt. “I wonder where he is hiding. Do you suppose there is some sort of a secret compartment on the ship, somewhere?”

Koja manipulated his antenna in the Yathoon version of a shrug.

“Perhaps so,” his grating voice said tonelessly. “Or perhaps, his mission accomplished, he threw himself overboard to avoid his certain punishment at the hands of Prince Valkar. Such fanaticism is not uncommon among humans, I believe. We of the Yathoon Horde are often accused of fatalism, but it has been my experience that human beings are themselves far from invulnerable against the desire for self-immolation.”

“Well, if he is hiding somewhere aboard the ship, oughtn’t we to be on the lookout for him?” Tomar suggested. “Surely, he’s bound to get hungry, and will have to come out of hiding or starve to death. We might be able to grab him then, when he does come out!”

Lukor stroked his neatly trimmed white beard judiciously.

“The boy has a point there, Koja,” he mused. “But I am thinking that if Ulthar is indeed hidden somewhere aboard the ship, he will be thinking more about that undamaged rudder and starboard wing than he will about his empty stomach. It would not be at all unlike the sneaking rascal to come creeping out of his secret hidey-hole, when all are asleep, to disable the last maneuverable portions of the ship. Best we advise Valkar to mount watch tonight, lest any such `accidents’ occur; we are in enough trouble right now, as things already stand.”

“He doesn’t even have to do that,” Tomar spoke up again. “Do you know what would be the worst possible thing Ulthar could do against us? If he still has that fire ax with him, he could chop a hole right through the double-hull and let all of the gas out … then we’d crash and be shattered against the ground.

And that would really be the end of everything .…”

“Hmm,” muttered Lukor, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “The lad has something there, Koja. Best we bring these notions to the attention of Prince Valkar without delay!”

The three turned and left the deck rail in search of the captain.

All that day the Jalathadar hurtled on into the mysterious north. It grew steadily colder; ice began to form on the rigging and, ere nightfall, the rigid wings were sheathed in sparkling crystal.

They were over the great ice fields of the polar cap now; some of them wondered if the winds could carry them on across the ultimate pole and into the other hemisphere of Thanator, a region of utter mystery, or whether the winds would lose their force and dwindle in intensity once they were near the pole itself.

No one really knew.

But already new dangers were presenting themselves, for as the wing surfaces and decks became sheathed in sparkling ice, the deposits added to the weight of the vessel, and she began to sink lower and lower.

With darkness, the land below became obscured, save for the feeble luminance provided by the slowly rising moons. Below them lay a glittering sea of ice, like a vast desert of molten glass. But to the north, blotting out the faint glimmer of the all-but-invisible stars, rose sharp peaks; whether these were mountains of solid ice, as legends whispered, or were merely mountains of rock, could not be ascertained. Neither did it really matter; what did matter was the height of those mountains.

Were they high enough to endanger the lumbering Jalathadar, rapidly sinking under the cumulative weight of her ice?

Would they rush on until they crashed full into the peak of one of those mountains, looming up before them out of the darkness―a mountain they could not avoid, due to the damage Ulthar had wrought to their steering apparatus?

In the face of this all-too-possible danger, Valkar had no patience with idle theories about skulking saboteurs concealed in secret compartments that might or might not be hidden within the structure of the giant ornithopter. He did, however, take the precaution of stationing guards over the undamaged wing, control cupola, and rudder.

Sinking lower and lower with every hour, her decks sheathed with solid ice, the galleon of the skies began to lose speed as she descended below the four-thousand-foot level. But black night had closed down around her by now, and even the great and many-colored moons of Thanator were hidden behind thick banks of blowing fog, filled with driving sleet.

There was little sleep for any of the men that night, aboard the galleon of the skies, which we had most aptly named the Desperate Venture.

One of the senior officers, sturdy old Haakon it was, had proposed a risky plan to bring the Jalathadar to a halt so that her wing cables could be rewoven.

It was his plan to use what little maneuverability they had to bring the flying ship near the peaks of the mountains, and to fire our catapult at the nearest of the peaks.

Earlier in this narrative I have already discussed the giant steel arrows the smiths of Shondakor the Golden had prepared for this “secret weapon” of mine. Well, Haakon suggested they secure a strong line about the shaft of one or several of these arrows, and fire them into the ice-clad peaks, an act that might―just might―bring the Jalathadar to a halt, similar to using an anchor to secure a sea-going ship against the actions of the tides.

The scheme was fraught with perils, of course.

The lines might not hold, in which case they would lose their arrows, and the catapult would be rendered useless.

Conversely, the lines might hold, but the sudden halting of the ship in midflight might batter her to wreckage against the mountain peaks, or the winds might tear her apart.

It was a desperate plan, but it might well succeed, and the officers agreed it was worth a try. Anything was better than flying blind through the unmapped mountains of the pole and either smashing the ship to atoms by collision in the dark with one such peak or being blown over the pole to be lost amid the unknown dangers of the mysterious hemisphere beyond.

So Valkar roused all the ship’s company, stationing men along the deck rails, in the masthead observation-points and along the various ports, with lamps and torches to provide what little illumination they could, while the slowing winds blew the ice-sheathed ship among the frozen peaks of the pole, and a band of trained gunnery officers stood ready to fire the catapult.

One member of the crew, however, had not been able to get out of his mind the possibility that Ulthar was still hidden somewhere on the ship.

It was young Tomar.

The boy still felt keenly his guilt in unconsciously giving the treacherous Zanadarian his chance to disable the flying galleon of the skies.

So while the rest of the ship’s company were busied on deck with the dangerous scheme to harpoon a mountain peak and bring the Jalathadar to a halt, young Tomar went into the untenanted captain’s cabin to search through the ship’s papers, hunting for a chart or blueprint of the galleon itself.

The rest of us had long since given over the study of the ship’s papers, for their coded notation had resisted our every effort to decipher them. The geographical charts, the ship’s log, the signal book, the packets of standing orders―all these were deemed useless to us, unless we could solve the mystery of the Zanadarian code.

But the boy Tomar was not concerned with the solution of the code system. Before long he found a tightly rolled parchment scroll which served as a sort of blueprint of the ship’s design, and was busily examining it by the light of a stealthy candle.

Cabin by cabin, chamber by chamber, closet by closet, the youth was studying the chart, comparing his knowledge of every hallway and compartment with the plan inked on the parchment scroll.

Somewhere in this chart he hoped to find a discrepancy.

One of the compartments inked here might very well not match with those familiar to his memory.

And that compartment, when he located it, would be the secret hiding place.

And in that compartment he would find Ulthar.

Chapter 9 ULTHAR’S LAIR

It was a weird, fantastic scene: the dark, windswept sky, the ice plateau under the many-colored glory of the huge moons of Jupiter, the flying ship wallowing sluggishly against the wind, sheathed in glittering ice, hurtling toward the sharp and jagged pinnacles of the ice mountains dead ahead.

One peak swept up before the swaying ornithopter. The light of the many moons flashed and sparkled from its crest of splintered pinnacles, rose, argent, deep yellow, gray-blue. It swung out of the darkness, loomed up before the prow, and the hurtling Jalathadar sped directly for it.

The ice mountain grew swollen and enormous. It blocked half the sky dead ahead. Any second the ship would ram straight into the glittering barrier, the figurehead would splinter, the prow crack, the hull shatter, precious levitating gas hissing like a thousand angry serpents as it leaked from burst hull-seams.

But Valkar had calculated to the last notch. Leaning crazily from the swaying cupola, dark red hair streaming behind him in the shrieking wind, he hoarsely bawled the order at the last possible instant of time.

Burly shoulders slammed into the great wheels. Guy stays creaked, timbers groaned, taut lines, rigid within their frozen envelope, thrummed like deep-throated harps in the roar of the gale. The great vans lifted, took another pitch, while desperate men thrust the vast rudder over with every atom of strength they could drain from knotted sinews. Backs straining, faces black with effort, they hurled their bodies against the control rods, battling to turn the rudder against the bellowing gale.

Lurching drunkenly, the Jalathadar staggered, swung about, swerved in the nick of time to swing safely past the ice peak. So narrow was her escape that the starboard wingtip scraped ice from the utmost pinnacle as she swung about.

And in that fraction of a second, old Lukor, in charge of the catapult crew in my absence, cut the thong. Like a gigantic bow wielded by a titan, the timbers of the catapult thundered home, launching the massive arrow of steel into the seething gale. The keen tip crunched deep in solid ice; hooked barbs held fast against the lurch of the mighty ship.

The Jalathadar wobbled, jolted to a dead stop, and swung back against the sheer wall of ice.

The impact was staggering. Men, stationed along the rails, went rolling into the scuppers like ten pins. Taut rigging, stretched beyond endurance, snapped. One mast splintered, broke clean, and the whistling winds ripped it away, crow’s nest and all. The lone watchman stationed therein was whipped away, a quick glimpse of flailing limbs, a broken, despairing cry―and he was gone.

The ship came crunching up against the mountain peak. The deck rail crumpled under the impact. One forward-hull belvedere was shorn away. But, luckily, the damage was slight―slighter than anyone could have guessed. Gallant men hurled lassos about pinnacles. Steel grapnels crunched and squealed on slick ice. Soon many lines held the flying galleon fast against the peak of the mountain.

And Valkar began to breathe again.

The boy Tomar had found that for which he sought. The plans he had discovered among the ship’s papers showed a small cubicle off B-deck, tucked away behind the captain’s salon and the storage rooms that lay next to the double hull. The youth was certain that, in all his wanderings about the flying ship, he had never observed that cubicle. It must be the place whereat Ulthar lay bidden.

Taking up a lantern and his rapier, the young lieutenant determined to find out the truth for himself.

Down the swaying ladder he went, trying to ignore the pitch and toss as the ship rolled sluggishly to the beating gale. Shielding the lamp against accident, he felt his way down the swinging ladder until he reached the hallway, and thence along the narrow corridor, past the doors that led to the grand salon where the captain was wont to feast with his senior officers.

Twice he retraced the way, each time finding no entrance to any such cubicle. His eyes gleamed; he was certain he was right. But, if the cubicle could not be entered from the hall, it must have some sort of secret entrance through the grand salon itself. Greatly daring, the boy crept into the salon, his lamp muffled now under his cloak.

The walls were covered with bookshelves and brackets, between ribbed stanchions.

Somewhere here there must be a secret door.

But where?

He ran his fingers along the bottom edges of the shelves, groping and testing for a secret catch, but he found nothing. He peered at the paneling, but the light of the many moons that shone in a fitful glare through the great bank of windows that overlooked the captain’s balcony revealed nothing.

Then his questing fingers caught and dislodged a heavy navigational instrument of polished brass. It fell to the floor with a crash and rolled the length of the room with a frightful clatter, as the floor swayed to the pitch and roll of the ship. The boy held his breath, but nothing stirred.

He turned away then, to begin a careful examination of the entire wall, starting with the far corner. As he strode off, one panel slid aside, revealing a small opening. Keen black eyes glared through that hole, watching him as he went. Then unseen fingers touched a secret spring and a narrow section of wall slid aside with a faint hiss whose sound was lost in the bellowing of the gale.

And Tomar suspected nothing until suddenly, from behind, a strong arm locked about his throat and he stared up into the grim smiling features of Ulthar.

Choked into unconsciousness, the boy slid limply to the floor. Ulthar knelt swiftly, stripped him of dagger and sword, and removed the guttering oil-lamp from its precarious place, wrapped in Tomar’s cloak. With a malicious chuckle, the Sky Pirate ensconced the lamp in a nearby wall-bracket. It would never do, he smiled to himself, to permit the lamp to fall and perhaps break, thus turning the Jalathadar into a raging inferno.

Having disarmed the unconscious youth, he stepped swiftly across the salon to the door, listened intently, peered out, taking great care that he should not be seen. Then, satisfied that the youth had come alone, he crossed the room to where Tomar sprawled and stood looking down at him thoughtfully.

Probably the best and safest thing to do would be to slit the lad’s throat right now and heave him out the windows. That way no one would be able to trace him to Ulthar’s secret hiding place―but, stay! The Zanadarian could not be certain that Tomar had discovered the secret cubicle all by himself; perhaps he had shared his discovery with another ….

He thought a moment, fingering the cold metal of the heavy dagger, then he knelt, tore open the throat of the lad’s blouse, and cuffed him lightly but stingingly on the cheeks until the boy awoke from his swoon.

The youth lay unresistingly and stared at him in silence, a resolute expression on his features.

“Ah, Tomar, we meet again!” the Zanadarian laughed. “It was very clever of you to trace me to the secret cubicle. Tell me, did you discover my hiding place all by yourself or were there other minds to share the task―and, perhaps, the honor of finding me―eh?”

“I found you all by myself,” said Tomar, stoutly―unaware that by so admitting he had just signed his own death warrant. Then the boy followed with a question of his own.

“Did you really push Captain Jandar overboard while we were taking on water supplies? Master Lukor and the others say you did, but I can’t believe you would violate your own word of honor in so treacherous a fashion.”

“You don’t, eh?” Ulthar frowned, then laughed―an ugly sound, cold and hard and thick, with no humor in it. “Well, I shoved your heroic captain over the side with about as much compunction as you would show in treading on a serpent. Honor is a luxury desperate men cannot afford. It heartily amused me that Jandar was such a gullible fool as to accept my word or trust me in any fashion, but such emotions are common, I am told, among the lesser races. We gentlemen warriors of Zanadar reject your womanish concepts of honor and chivalry. This view of ours is a superior trait which sets us apart from the other, lower races of humankind on this world, and, in the end, it is the trait that will lead us to the mastery of the globe.”

The boy continued to observe Ulthar with steady, fearless eyes during this speech. No emotion, except the faint shadow of revulsion, crossed his features.

“Then, of course, you did not hesitate to mislead me with a pretence of friendship, so that you could betray that friendship and attempt to wreck the ship, when the first opportunity presented itself,” the boy said tonelessly. The man shrugged, said nothing. The boy pressed him further.

“You must have been aware that I felt sympathy for you, and offered you in simple politeness an honest gesture of kindness. But instead of feeling gratitude, as a civilized gentleman would, you seized upon my youth and inexperience, idealism and gentility, as a tool to work your own murderous ends―or a weapon, to cut the throats of us all. As I suppose you are about to cut mine.”

Ulthar of Zanadar sneered.

“What large words and noble sentiments for so small a boy-cub! Well, lad, you have me dead to rights, if it does you any good to know it. I would gladly lie-cheat-connive―or betray anyone, even myself, in order to stay alive and escape from my captivity.”

“You could have forsworn your allegiance to Prince Thuton, you know,” said Tomar. “You could have put your wits and courage, your knowledge and resourcefulness to the service of Shondakor and thus have risen high in her councils. Instead, you cling to a doomed way of life. For Zanadar will fall, you know.”

Ulthar crooked an interrogative eyebrow.

“Hah! What, cub, you who prate of honor and chivalry, would urge me to betray my own people?”

“Yes, when they are wrong and we are right. For too long have the merciless Sky Pirates lived by looting and terrorizing the other civilizations of Thanator. It is no betrayal to realize an error and correct it, choosing the way of right over the way of evil and tyranny.”

Something in the boy’s clear, fearless tones, something in his steady, contemptuous eyes, something in his expression, perhaps scorn, touched Ulthar to the quick. The mockery left his features; his face went hard and ugly, his eyes cold and vicious.

“Enough fine words for now! You were right about one other thing, too. I am going to cut your throat, even as you guessed. And I think I’ll do it now, if only to stop your sermon.”

The boy regarded him unflinchingly.

“Do you mind if I take the blow standing on my feet and looking you in the face, rather than lying here like a trapped beast?” he asked contemptuously.

“Just as you like.”

The boy got up, slowly, while Ulthar backed off toward the windows, watching him carefully. Then Tomar turned to face him and Ulthar closed in with the knife.

At that precise moment three things happened almost simultaneously.

First, the deck jolted under their feet―for at that moment Lukor had fired the catapult, sending the great steel arrow crunching into the ice peak, bringing the hurtling Jalathadar to a sudden halt.

The impact staggered the Zanadarian. He was thrust off balance, and his arms went out to the nearest stanchion to steady himself, and in that involuntary gesture his fingers loosened their hold on the dagger and it went flying.

Tomar staggered and almost fell himself, but steadied himself by grabbing hold of a wall bracket.

Regaining his balance with a sulphurous curse, Ulthar snatched the boy’s rapier from his girdle and strode toward him, lamplight gleaming off the length of naked steel. Young Tomar watched the stealthy advance of the treacherous assassin. He knew he had not the slightest chance of opposing his young strength against the older man. Ulthar was taller, burlier, heavier than he―and was a master-swordsman. But the boy did not fancy the notion of standing supinely, waiting for his death blow. The blood of a thousand nobly born warrior ancestors clamored within him at that moment―bold men and gallant women who had stood and fought against overwhelming odds, rather than yield like slaves to the death blow.

So he snatched up the oil-lamp, still brightly burning in the wall bracket where Ulthar had set it, and threw it.

Startled, Ulthar raised his blade to knock the burning lamp aside. Instead, the thin glass of the lamp chimney shattered against the steel, drenching the Zanadarian from head to foot with black oil.

Burning black oil!

Within an instant, Ulthar was wrapped in flames. Uttering one great, horrible cry of surprise and rage and terror and pain, the flame-wrapped figure stumbled backward, flailing at burning body with burning hands-tripped over the window seat-hurled through the great bank of windows―and fell like a blazing meteor down to a sudden death on the frozen plains far below.

So perished Ulthar of Zanadar. With all the cruel cunning and treacherous ingenuity of which his cold, powerful intellect had been capable, he had labored mightily to destroy the Jalathadar and to frustrate it in its quest.

That he had ultimately failed was as much due to the quick thinking and steady nerves of a brave young boy as it was to the trickery of fate.

It was an hour or so later. The wind had fallen, and although the air was bitterly cold, the skies were clearing and the great, many-colored moons of Jupiter shone down on a scene of furious labor. They had seen many strange sights, those moons, in the innumerable aeons of time since their creation, but never one so bizarre as this.

Lashed securely to the utmost pinnacle of an ice mountain near the north pole of Callisto, a fantastic flying galleon hung aloft. Men wrapped in thick cloaks were cutting it free, chopping loose the great barbed arrow of steel that held it fast to the pinnacle, while other men labored mightily at repairing the damage to their vessel.

“Thanks to the Lords of Gordrimator,” said Valkar, “the hull compartments were not breached when we slammed into the ice wall. We could have lost our supply of levitating gas and been marooned in the Frozen Land for the rest of our lives had that happened. As it was, we did not even spring one seam.”

“Aye―and thanks to the bravery and cool head of young Tomar, here, our hidden enemy has been flushed from his lair and will trouble us no more,” growled Lukor, tousling the boy’s hair with rough affection.

Tomar was silent, his features pale, his manner withdrawn. He stood with the others on the poop, overlooking the workmen who were splicing together the shorn control cables with new cordage.

“It was a horrible way to die,” the young man said finally.

“Death is always horrible because it is an end from which there can be no beginning again,” observed Koja solemnly. “But in the case of the Zanadarian, the end was fitting. He would have slain us all by secret ways, by hidden treachery, sneaking from his concealed lair in the darkness. But you faced him bravely and fought cleanly and slew him honorably. You have nothing with which to reproach yourself, young Tomar.”

The youth looked up at the impassive features and glittering eyes of the ungainly arthopode, and suddenly he smiled.

“I believe you are right, sir,” he said.

And old Lukor laughed and took the youth by the nape of the neck and shook him lightly. The youth grinned at him.

“Ah, Tomar, you are a boy no longer. You have had your baptism of blood and fire and death younger than most of us, but you have come through it well, and you stand among us now, a man among men. Welcome!”

Valkar smiled, clapping the young man’s shoulder. “I stand with Master Lukor on that, Tomar, but the next time you flush out a traitor from his hidey-hole, and finish him off single-handedly, try to kill him by some other manner than setting him afire. The laminated paper whereof the Jalathadar is constructed is highly flammable, you know, and it has always been Jandar’s opinion that the gas stored under pressure in the double hull is as explosive as a gas called `hydrogen’ on his home world. You could have blown the ship apart, had it caught fire instead of Ulthar―”

He stopped, for Tomar had suddenly gone pale as paper and swayed on weak knees until Koja steadied him with a strong arm.

“Lords of Gordrimator!” gasped Tomar, feebly, “I never thought of that!”

They were still laughing a bit hysterically from the release of tension when grizzled old Haakon came puffing and blowing up to them, his heavy face red from exertion, wiping greasy hands on a bit of waste.

Valkar turned to greet him.

“What’s the good news, Haakon?”

“Good news, indeed, captain!” the older man wheezed. “There’s enough spare cable in the lockers to repair both wings and rudder stays, although they will not bear the full tension we could call on unsevered lines to take. A few days more work and, if we don’t all freeze solid in this accursed land, we’ll be on our way to Zanadar in good fashion―a little more beat up than we had intended to look, but able to fly well enough!”

Valkar yawned hugely and stretched until his joints creaked. “Good news is right, Haakon! Well, it’s your watch. Me for my bed. The night has been long and busy. A few more nights so crowded with excitement, and I will give over adventuring and settle down to quiet days in Shondakor. Gentlemen?”

Lukor smothered a jaw-cracking yawn of his own.

“I’m for bed, too. Old bones tire easily, they say. What about you, friend Koja?”

The chitin-clad arthopode stared broodingly out over the moonlit ice fields. His tones were somber and sorrowful.

” I, too. But I am wondering where Jandar sleeps this night―if indeed he yet lives. And, in all our adventurings to come, if ever we will be able to find him in this world of foes. I had thought to stand beside him when we battled against the warriors of Zanadar, as we have fought many times ere this, he and I. Now, methinks I will fight alone … but I go to my soft bed, wondering where he slumbers tonight, under the many moons ….

It was a question none of them could answer.