The Maelstrom Eye

Chapter Nine

"It should be right in this next berth… no, wrong one, just ignore the mess. There! Here it is! This one right here, this beautiful ship, this is the Perilous Halibut, my labor of love for many years. Glorious, isn't she?" Dressed in a brown tweed suit with a lime-green shirt and a yellow tie that could blind onlookers within ten feet of it, Dyffed stood before the long black ship he had named and beamed up at its bow. His face was wreathed in beatific happiness. "I feel ninety years old all over again," he sighed.

There was a long silence as Teldin, Aelfred, and Sylvie stared at the ship with thoughtful expressions.

"It's very"-Teldin struggled for a word, glancing at Aelfred for help but finding none-"interesting," he finished. It looks like a black banana with fins, he thought.

"I absolutely agree," said Dyffed, reaching up to pat the bottom of the ship's metal-plated hull. "The Perilous Halibut was called such because, first, it is sort of like a fish, and the Office of Yachting Names, Designations, Codes, and Other Completely Nonmilitary Appellations had run out of all the other fish-type names, and all the paperwork with our previous suggestions had already been filed and lost. Secondly, it is perilous because it's a dangerous ship-I mean, dangerous to our enemies, of course. We built it, so it can't be dangerous to us. We were originally going to paint it blue to go with Vice Rear Admiral Blekinmangrars's new uniform, but we had already ran out of that particular shade and Midnight Ebony was all the supply office had left, which was a very fortunate error for all concerned, because now the ship is perfectly camouflaged against the blackness of space, though we might someday have to paint stars on it here and there to make the camouflage more authen-ouch!"

The gnome hastily stuck a finger in his mouth. "Dratted riveting," he muttered, popping his finger out for a second to speak, then putting it back in.

Teldin stepped around to the side to gauge the ship's size. The Perilous Halibut rested on a massive and complex framework of wooden supports inside the gigantic hangar on Port Walkaway. The ship appeared to be about the same length as the Probe, two hundred feet or so, and was about twenty-five feet thick and prism-shaped, octagonal in cross section. A rectangular black tower stuck out from the upper deck of the ship, almost like a shark's fin, and smaller fins stuck out from several places along its sides. The ship's tail retained the fishlike imagery, with the lower end of the tail falling well below the bottom of the ship itself. The ship would lose its tail if it landed on solid ground, but Teldin guessed it had been meant to land on water.

Teldin's eyes scanned the upper deck of the Perilous Halibut, noting a simple gold railing running around the edge. The railing was, of course, at the height of a typical gnome's waist-in other words, just about the height of a human's knees. It wouldn't do to get close to it and trip over the side of the ship.

"I can't believe we're lucky enough to have this whole ship to ourselves," Aelfred said. Teldin and Sylvie turned to stare at him in amazement. Aelfred glanced aside at them, putting a finger momentarily to his lips.

"Ah, nothing lucky about it at all," said Dyffed, pleased. He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "Nothing at all. Experimental ships are sent out all the time from here, and most have come back. Or some of them have, at least. I last heard the return figure was closer to twelve point eight percent, including all ships bearing the expected casualties but not counting fragmental returns if they couldn't tell which

'iip the fragments belonged to. But that's neither here nor shi there, of course, for though this is its first flight test, the Perilous Halibut is of a proven theoretical model, the first of its kind to be built, and we have nothing whatsoever to fear, nothing at all, unless the tail falls off." Dyffed chuckled, glancing at the tall threesome behind him. "An old gnomish joke, you understand."

No one else so much as smiled.

Dyffed coughed and went back to admiring the Perilous Halibut. "Yes, this lovely ship will be ready to fly at any time, right after a few last adjustments are made. Then she'll be fit for space."

"Ah, adjustments," said Aelfred with interest, "by which you mean…" He waited and looked at the gnome.

"Oh, the usual things, of course," said the gnome. "Check a few fittings, tighten a few bolts, install the lavatories, order the weapons, unpack the helm and install that, then run the usual experiments to find out if it can float. It should float, or at least it does on paper. By that, I mean that the ship doesn't float on paper, but rather it floats on water, as the expression-"

"Do you mean the ship has no weapons or helm right now?" Teldin asked, barely beating Aelfred to the question. Dyffed cleared his throat and managed to look everywhere but directly at Teldin. "Well, deck weapons were accidentally left off the design prints at first-careless of me-but we did manage to find places to put one, a ballista, right there on the front-the bow, as I believe it's called. Perhaps someday we'll have our, um, ah, birthday party mounted there instead."

"Birthday party?" Sylvie asked, an eyebrow raised. "Are you serious?"

Dyffed quickly eyed Teldin, then grinned and waved his arms elaborately. "Yes, oh, yes, we're going to have a birthday party-right, Teldin? — to celebrate her first birthday. I mean, to celebrate the admiral's birthday. We should have the helm installed within the hour, give or take a bit, if we can get the paperwork filled out. All we can do in the meanwhile is sit back with our fingers in our ears and hope everything works properly. Ah, which reminds me, I need to bring out a piece of old equipment and run some tests on it before we leave for One Six Nine. It's a locating device, something One Six Nine called a 'thingfinder,' which he made for us. We, of course, have improved upon it-just a tiny bit, mind you-and if it hasn't decayed or been sat upon, it should lead us right to old Thirteen Squared's address without fail. Remarkable device-operates completely on thought power. Not as efficient as hydrodynamics, I know, but-ah, I see someone signaling me, so I shall have to leave you here to marvel at the marvel, as it were. Don't touch the riveting or the tail." Dyffed was off at once, striding purposefully toward a group of other gnomes standing near a maze of scaffolding at the ship's stern.

Teldin watched Dyffed go, shaking his head slightly as he did. He turned away and kept his arms crossed in front of him as he looked the outside of the ship over, occasionally chewing on a thumbnail.

"Do you know," said Aelfred, who had adopted a similar posture, "that in the last three and a half years, I have never once taken a long voyage on a spelljammer other than the Probe? And not once, never, did I ever ride on a gnomish ship." He nodded thoughtfully.

"I don't like this," Sylvie said, her hands jammed into her pockets. "Our chances of getting killed look awfully good."

The three stood in silence after that, looking at the ship and listening to the gnomes argue and hammer things in the distance.

Teldin sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. "I'm not crazy about this, either, but I sailed on a gnomish ship once, when I left Krynn, and I'm still alive. Of course, I wasn't on it very long. Let's find out when this thing takes off. We may as well enjoy ourselves before we have to go."

"What's this 'birthday party' he was talking about?" asked Sylvie, looking at Teldin. "He thought you knew about it."

"It's some sort of secret weapon that they're taking with us on the ship," Teldin said. "Dyffed won't say anything about it that I can understand."

"Secret weapon," said Aelfred noncommittally. All three stared at the black ship a little while longer.

Aelfred finally uncrossed his arms and sighed heavily. "Teldin, did the gnomes recover any of those sagecoarse casks from the Probe?" he asked.

Teldin thought. "Just one. It's at the lake docks, Pier Twelve, with the rest of what they could salvage."

Aelfred nodded solemnly. He took a last look at the Perilous Halibut, then turned without a word and walked off at a casual pace toward the hangar doors and the docks beyond. Sylvie followed with only a slight hesitation.

Teldin watched them go, then looked back at the black ship and sighed.

There had been no sign of Gaye at the infirmary in the morning. Inquiries to the gnomes who were carrying the personal belongings of Teldin and his companions to the Perilous Halibut brought a variety of long responses, all of which could be boiled down to a simple "I don't know." Gomja said he would take a walk around the base and find out what she was up to, then he disappeared, too.

Teldin wandered aimlessly around the base for several hours, inspecting the variety of bizarre gnomish ships. He was mildly fascinated by the heavily armed, shiplike deathglories and the tiny clockwork spellfighters, watching as they took off on their deep-space patrols. In time, he found himself standing inside a hangar, feeling his cloak flap against his legs. The cloak had become a dark rich emerald hue, almost black, just within the last hour.

Did that color mean anything? he wondered. Why does this cloak do anything at all? What's the point of it? The frustration was neverending.

He looked around, frowned, and spotted Dyffed speaking with two other gnomes across the hangar, perhaps two hundred feet away. They were bunched together and appeared wry secretive, but their arms were waving and gesturing wildly in some intense discussion.

Teldin was suddenly seized with a perverse urge to know what they were talking about. He couldn't walk over to them and ask. That is, he couldn't-unless he were a gnome. He pushed the thought away, but it came back unbidden. What would he learn if he were suddenly a gnome? What would they tell him?

He'd never tried to use his cloak's powers to change his shape into a gnome. He'd had good success with human-sized male and female forms, but this was different. His old inhibitions against assuming other forms had eroded steadily in recent weeks under the twin pressures of curiosity and frustration. Things had been out of his control for too long.

Teldin looked around and spotted some gnomish work clothing hanging from a peg. On impulse, he casually walked over to pick it up. The gnomes paid no attention to him. Teldin walked on until he had stepped behind a large stack of wooden crates shrouded in darkness. After a brief, final moral struggle, he carefully looked around, then removed his own clothing. He felt intensely foolish, worrying that someone would see him at any moment. Why am I doing this? he asked himself, struggling out of his pants. Because I want to know what's going on, he answered himself. I want to know what this secret big-named device is that Dyffed's so fired up about. I'm tired of being left in the dark.

When he was undressed, he hesitated and strained to hear any sounds of someone approaching. Satisfied, he closed his eyes and stood perfectly still.

Miggins. He remembered the friendly little gnome who once had traveled with him on the Probe and was now left far behind on Toril; then he pictured his own features and body slowly melting down to Miggins's size. He felt a tingle of power surge through his shoulders as the cloak released its energies, and he avoided opening his eyes to look around. The floor grew larger, making his feet scuff the floor as they pulled apart. In his mind, his face took on Miggins's features, down to the gnome's excited grin.

When Teldin felt the power stop flowing, he opened his eyes again. The floor was much closer to his face now, and the hangar seemed bigger. He raised his arms, noted how short and brown they were, how stubby his fingers looked. His hand came up to his face and touched it, and he knew without doubt that those whiskers and that outrageously big nose were his. Teldin tugged on a chin hair and winced. It had worked. He was now a gnome. He was so astounded that he could hardly speak.

He reached for the gnome clothing, marveling at how different everything seemed from his new height and how far he had to reach to get anything. It was like being a child again. He noticed then that he was still wearing the cloak in its full-length version, and he quickly shrank it down to necklace size. Moments later, he had tugged on the work clothing-Gods, he wondered to himself, do these gnomes ever take baths? — and carefully hid his own clothing. With a deep breath, he walked with short, quick paces out from behind the crates and headed as nonchalantly as he could toward the three gnomes across the hangar.

It took a lot longer to get to the gnomes than he had expected, being as unused to his short legs as he was. Nonetheless, he was within hearing distance before his legs felt as if they would give out from the rapid pace.

Dyffed was examining a red box held by one of the other gnomes, a shaggy-haired character with spectacle lenses as thick as the bottoms of ale steins. The wild-haired gnome was dressed in a filthy gray smock, and he constantly mumbled short phrases like "Careful!" and "No! There!" The third gnome looked like a bored bureaucrat type, wearing a loud striped suit that Teldin was coming to associate with the government officials on this particular world. The three spoke in Gnomish, which Teldin understood, thanks to his cloak. Teldin was becoming accustomed to having the cloak translate foreign languages for him, and it appeared to be more proficient at it now than it once had been. Translated or not, however, Teldin could barely understand anything the gnomes were saying at the moment.

"I don't see where the meridional field radiation is being bottled," said Dyffed. "See, you've got this-"

"No, not there," mumbled the wild-haired gnome. He tried to point something out to Dyffed, but the other gnome paid no attention and tried to pull the red box from the wild-haired gnome's hands.

"See, it's all reversed here in the paraboloid process," Dyffed said, rattling the object and poking a finger into it. "The bottle should be flow separated here, by the little blue widget-"

"Careful!" said the wild-haired gnome, stepping back and sheltering the box in his arras, a fierce look on his bearded face. "Don't touch that!"

"Oh, for the love of Reorx's maiden aunt, I wasn't going to touch the little blue widget." Dyffed grabbed for the box and poked around inside it again. "Oops," he suddenly announced, an expression of surprise as he jerked back his finger.

Remembering that "Oops!" was a universal word of danger among the tinker gnomes of Krynn, Teldin slowed and came to a stop only a dozen feet from the threesome. He could see that the red box had a dark, glassy plate at one end. The back of the box was open and filled with gears, wires, and glowing things.

"Aaagh!" cried the wild-haired gnome, tugging the red box away from Dyffed's fingers and peering into it with an agonized expression. " 'S all ruint!"

"There, there," Dyffed soothed, snatching the box away from the other gnome. "Let's simply give it a field test and see if it's really rained." Dyffed looked around briefly, spied Teldin's gnomish shape and ignored him, then scanned the hangar. "I know! We'll look for Teldin Moore!"

For a second, Teldin feared he had been found out, even though he hadn't the faintest idea of how that was possible. The gnomes watched as Dyffed held the red box up to his face so that he peered into the dart glass plate.

"All I should have to do is concentrate, of course, and this should… do the trick…" Dyffed's voice faded as he slowly rotated in a counterclockwise direction. Teldin noted that the other two gnomes carefully ducked when the box was aimed in their direction, and he would have done the same except that Dyffed gave a peculiar little cry and aimed the box directly at him.

"Why…" Dyffed raised the box, looked hard at Teldin's gnomish form, then looked into the box again, pointing it at Teldin's head. "Obviously a defect," he muttered. "Cheap foreign parts."

"Locate him" said the wild-haired gnome in a worried voice, nudging Dyffed and pointing at Teldin.

"What? Oh!" Dyffed lowered the box and looked excitedly at Teldin. "Your name is…?"

Teldin's mind went blank for a second before he answered, "Muggins." It sounded like Miggins, whose form he was copying, so it would probably do.

"Ah, Muggins, excellent," said Dyffed, pleased. "You must have lived around humans a lot to have such a short name. We'll search for Muggins, then, and hope that proximity of the target to the universal locator apparatus doesn't result in a feedback loop and the subsequent breakdown of matter on an elemental level, as it did on that unfortunate spelljammer that the Salvage Committee was telling me about yesterday. Quite a shame. Not much salvage value in sawdust." With that, Dyffed poked a finger inside the open end of the box to make some hurried adjustments. The wild-haired gnome looked on with the expression of a mother finding an infant playing with a box full of her finest crystal glassware. The bureaucrat gnome yawned broadly.

It took five seconds for the gnome's words to sink into Teldin's consciousness and make sense. He didn't catch it all, but he caught enough. "Ahhhh…." he began, backing away and looking around for an excuse to leave.

"Won't take but a second!" Dyffed said, raising the box to his face and aiming the open end at Teldin. "Do cover your face in case the field unbottles itself. Very messy, but that's science for you. Can't make an omelet without killing a few chickens first."

"Wait! Don't do it!" Teldin cried, remembering only at the last moment that his voice had not been changed along with his physical form. He put up his hands to shield his face, not knowing what would happen next.

To his infinite relief, nothing happened at all. "Oh, gullion splat," muttered Dyffed. "This isn't working. I'm not getting anything at all now." He handed the box to the wild-haired gnome, who held it up to his face and peered into it in Teldin's direction. The latter gnome grunted and turned the box upside down, then sideways, then backward.

''S broke," mumbled the wild-haired gnome sadly, lowering the box and looking down at it like a child at a smashed toy.

The bureaucrat gnome yawned again, looked around, and scratched himself. "Well," he said in a rumbling bass voice, "it's about time for my budget and appropriations meeting, so if you don't mind, I'll take the development of this new invention into consideration for the next fiscal year's budget and let this year's-"

"But we need the funding!" Dyffed cried in a stricken voice. "I'm absolutely totally, completely, positively, and error-free certain that we will have the locator up and running within no more than… no more than…" He stopped as all three gnomes turned toward the hangar door in puzzlement. "I say," he finished, "what is that most bizarre sound?"

Teldin turned to look and listen, too, but he heard nothing at all. Could the gnomes naturally hear things he could not, even in his new form?

"It's the emergency siren from the ranch," said the bureaucrat gnome in mild surprise. "Now, what could possibly-"

"Uh-oh," said the wild-haired gnome.

Teldin and the other two gnomes immediately turned to look at the speaker.

The wild-haired gnome started to back away from the hangar entrance. "Hamsters," he said, with not a little concern in his voice.

"Oh, my," said the bureaucrat gnome, looking about the hangar. "Oh, my, then I suppose we'd best-"

"Yes, immediately, I would think," said Dyffed, his eyes suddenly as large and round as saucers. The gnome looked at Teldin, then hurried over to him.

"Here!" Dyffed said, thrusting the box into Teldin's small hands. "Take this to Teldin Moore immediately! I'll bring the instructions later. Don't get caught!" With that, the three gnomes ran off into the depths of the hangar, looking anxiously over their shoulders and pushing each other along as they made their escape. The last that Teldin heard of them was Dyffed's cry, "Hurry before they get here!" A distant door slammed, and silence fell.

Hamsters? The cloak had translated the gnomish word but had provided no explanation for what the word meant. Teldin had to assume a hamster was some sort of animal, and to be caught by one was obviously regarded as a terrible thing.

"Then what am I doing here?" he suddenly asked himself aloud. Clutching the box, he turned to run back for his hidden clothing. He would have to change back into his normal size and get his sword. With his cloak's powers, he could better deal with the situation.

He would have done this, except that, when he turned around, he found his way blocked. He jumped back in fright, yelled, and dropped the red box as a golden-brown, grizzly-bear-sized animal, with an impossibly big pink mouth, smelly, hot breath, and ivory incisors the size of axe blades, lunged-

And ate him.

"I'm sorry," said Gaye, leaning against the infirmary door. She heard the sound of water splashing, but no reply.

"Teldin, I said I was sorry," she repeated. "I talked the gnomes out of keeping you here overnight for observation and testing, so you can say 'thank you' if you want, but if you're mad at me and you don't, I understand, because it was my fault the hamsters got loose and ate you and spit you out in the laundry pool. I didn't think they had mouths that big."

There was a pause on the other side of the door, then the sound of more water splashing. He was certainly going to be difficult about this one, she thought.

"Teldin, why don't you speak to me?" she called. "I know you're angry about being stuffed into a cheek pouch and covered with hamster spit and then thrown in the laundry pool and losing your old clothes, but you know, I don't understand how you lost your clothes to begin with. I mean, you weren't running around wearing old gnome clothes for fun, were you? That's kind of weird, you know? I didn't know you did that sort of thing, but I guess I can understand it if you said you'd been robbed at sword point and forced to change clothes with a gnome, but you haven't said that, so I have to assume-"

"Gaye!" roared Teldin. "Just shut up!"

Startled, the kender backed away from the door. "That's a fine way to talk," she mumbled. She surveyed the door for a moment. "Do you really mean that?" she called.

A few splashing sounds came from behind the door, then silence. Gaye listened carefully, thinking she could hear someone moving around in the room. "Teldin, are you okay?" she asked. There was no reply.

Maybe he slipped on some water while getting out of the tub, she thought. Maybe he's just drying off-but if he needs help, he could need it now. Do I wait or not? If I wait and he's hurt, I'll never forgive myself. He was pretty angry, and angry people don't think clearly. She eyed the door handle, then decided to risk it. She found the door unlocked (like all the infirmary doors), and threw it open.

"What?" Teldin spun around, clutching the towel with which he had been drying off. "Gaye! Gaye, get out of here!" he yelled.

Startled, the kender did exactly that. She reappeared two seconds later to close the door.

"Gaaaaye!"

She ran off again, finding a position safely down the hallway while Teldin slammed the bath door shut with a bang. She heard something dragging across the floor-probably the wash stand-and heard the object being set against the bath door. Then footsteps stomped away from the door, and there was silence again.

"Rats," she said, alone in the dimly lit hall. Well, it's my own fault, she decided. The gnomes told me about the giant space hamsters they use to power their ships, and they told me they raised the giant hamsters here, and I just had to see what a hamster was, and they looked so awfully cute in the barn that I went and let one out, and they all got out, and now the gnomes hate me and the humans hate me and even Teldin hates me. She decided she could live with everything except the last.

She was getting to like Teldin a lot; he was really mysterious. What was his big secret, anyway? It had to do with his magical cloak, but no one would tell her about it. Now he never would.

Gaye turned and walked away down the hall toward the dark, narrow staircase. She avoided a stack of short wooden curtain rods leaning against one door, though she was tempted to kick it. The gnomes had all left a while ago for some reason, so there was no one else to talk to. It was going to be a bad day.

At the top of the stairs, Gaye heard the echo of a door slamming downstairs somewhere, then heavy footsteps coming rapidly up the steps toward her. It sounded like the giff general. She hoped he wasn't angry with her, too.

She was halfway down the upper flight, feeling rotten about everything, when the other stair-climber reached the landing. She barely looked up as she came down.

"If you're looking for Teldin," she mumbled, "he's not in a good mood."

The dark figure stopped short with a quick grunt. An odd and unpleasant body odor reached Gaye's nose. It was like old sweat and filth and fresh blood. She looked up. It was hard to see except for the faint light from a hall window, upstairs behind her. She could barely see the huge figure lift his right hand as he came at her. The figure was holding a long blade, and he was twice her height. He wasn't a giff.

Gaye dodged to her left as the sword slashed down and smashed into the wooden step where she had been standing, splintering the step into kindling. She instantly fled, her legs pumping as she ran back up the steps toward the dim light. Boots crashed hard and fast on the stairs behind her. She heard the attacker panting hard as he came after her. His armor scraped against the walls right behind her.

She reached the top of the steps and dived right, just as a sudden, sharp pain stabbed her left heel. Something thumped into the hall floor behind her at the same time. She lost her balance and fell, crashing into the curtain rods and knocking them down with a clatter, then got up again. Her heel hurt badly, but the pain was muted as yet. She ran down the dark hall for the room where Teldin had been taking his bath and jerked on the door handle as hard as she could.

The door wouldn't budge. She realized that Teldin had probably stuck the wash stand under the door handle on the other side, jamming it shut.

"Teldin!" she screamed, rattling the door handle. She looked back. The attacker was upon her, his head scraping the hall ceiling. The sword went up for a downward cut.

She gave up thinking. She dived forward at the giant's right side as the sword sliced down with a snap of air. Her small hands caught the hilt of the sword between the giant's huge fists and pulled it down and to the side farther than the giant had meant it to go. The giant staggered forward, off balance. The sword slammed into the floor as the assailant fell heavily on his side, the sword almost but not quite pulled out of his grasp. Gaye ran back down the hall, past him, and snatched up a wooden curtain rod before she ran back. Her heel screamed pain with every step.

"Teldin!" Gaye screamed again, gasping. The giant was already getting to his feet outside Teldin's door, the sword firmly clutched in one massive hand. With the light behind her now, Gaye could see that her attacker had a dull yellow-orange face with short tusks sticking up over its upper lip, and wore black, spike-studded armor, well oiled. His eyes were all wrong, with white pupils floating in round jet-black seas. An ogre, she thought, as the attacker's lips parted and she saw his sharklike teeth. He raised his sword again, uttering no sound, reaching her with two swift strides.

Gaye stepped aside at the last second, feeling the awful pain in her heel, and thrust the curtain rod up at the ogre's forearm as the sword came down. The ogre's blow was deflected off the stick, but the strike was still powerful enough to stagger her. Without waiting, she pushed the upper end of the rod into the path of the ogre's descending face, and it struck him in the right eye, punching in hard.

As the ogre let go of his sword, his hands clawed at his face and his mouth soundlessly opened. Gaye danced back out of the way, taking the stick with her and raising it to block the next attack. The ogre dropped to his knees and felt for the sword with one hand, the other clamped over his right eye. When he heard a door open, he lifted his sword and got to his feet to hunt for his tormentor with one good, squinting eye.

Instead, what he saw coming was a human who moved with a blur of speed, wearing ill-fitting trousers and a dark red cape. A short sword flashed in the human's right hand. The human ran up before the ogre knew it and drove the short blade straight into the ogre's chest, completely through his leather armor, right up to the weapon's hilt.

A fantastic jolt of pain cut through the ogre's next breath. He dropped his own sword again and tried to grasp the short sword's hilt with both hands, releasing his injured eye at the same time, but the world began to spin and grow black around the edges. The walls tilted, and he felt himself fall-then the world was gone.

A bright light flashed in the window at the end of the hall, followed almost at once by an ear-shattering boom of thunder.

Teldin stepped back from the dead ogre and looked at Gaye. She took a hesitant step toward him.

"I hope you're not mad at me," she said. Then her eyes rolled up, and she fell forward on her face.

Outside, Teldin saw a huge fire burning out of control along the lake docks. A strange vessel, like a giant blue scorpion, lay tilted to one side, half of it crashed into a storage shed by the lake. Flames licked around the vessel's jointed legs and up its arched tail. Scorpion ship, Teldin thought dully, holding the kender's limp body close in his arms. The orcs found us. How? How could they, with a whole world to search? How have any of them ever found me? It was driving him mad.

A fast shadow shot by over his head. Teldin instinctively ducked and started to run, crouching over Gaye to shield her. He heard the distant shouts of gnomes in hand-to-hand combat, wild cries and curses from nonhuman throats. Another shadow passed by overhead, and something dropped from it to strike the roof of a large warehouse to his left. A wide ball of orange fire splashed upward from the oily impart, the muffled whoomp of the blast stinging him with its heat.

Sirens were going off everywhere. The air was filled with echoing cracks and thumps as the air-defense engines fired. A chorus of screams sounded above and behind him, followed by a tremendous crash and the shattering of wood as a spelljammer fell and pancaked upside-down into the pavement near the infirmary.

"Teldin Moore!" came a loud, nasal shout. Teldin looked around and saw Dyffed waving at him from the low, wide door of a gnomish troop barracks. He instantly ran for the gnome, Gaye held tight against his chest. Dyffed's neat brown suit was ripped and burned, and he clutched a pair of pistols. As Teldin came up, the gnome stepped out of the doorway to let him by, then raised both pistols and fired them simultaneously into the air. A hideous cry rang out, and Teldin turned in time to see a body fall from a snakelike spelljammer passing overhead. Dyffed stepped back into the barracks as the body smacked the stones a short distance away.

"Damned inconvenient time for an air raid," Dyffed said conversationally, picking up two more loaded pistols from a table that appeared to be covered with them. Teldin noticed then that two other gnomes were in the room, loading pistols from chests full of smokepowder, shot, and weapons as quickly as their short fingers could move. The hazy air stank of burned powder.

"I was just going over for supper," Dyffed went on, squinting into the sky from the doorway again. "The cooks, Reorx bless them, had promised me a hot bowl of their best seven-weed soup. Never got as far as the third armory. I heard the alert siren and was told to set up an ambush point here, and then there were ships all about me, falling right out of the sky through the clouds like hail. How's the kender?"

"Her ankle's cut badly," Teldin said, laying the kender down on a gnome's child-sized bunk bed. He banged his head on the bottom of the upper bunk as he tried to straighten up, swore, then carefully stood and rubbed his head. "I've wrapped the wound, but she needs a spell or potion to heal it. I couldn't find anyone in the infirmary, not even the patients."

"That's because they're all at their antispelljammer stations. Didn't you hear the warning siren?" Dyffed looked at Teldin, then looked back outside. "Ah, I forgot. You're a human, of course, silly of me. Haven't got the same range of hearing as we do-a shame, too, if you ask me. We do have sirens that humans can hear-and elves and goblins and everyone else can hear them, too, for that matter-but we always sound the high-pitched gnome sirens first, as it gives us a leg up, you might-oops!" Dyffed instantly raised both pistols and fired, aiming them straight out the door. The loud reports stung Teldin's ears, but he still heard the clatter and thump of a body falling on the pavement outside. "As you might say, I was saying," Dyffed finished, tossing the pistols on the floor and grabbing two more from the table. "It makes the enemy think we didn't know they were coming. I could use a hand here, if you don't mind."

Teldin grabbed for two pistols himself, torn between watching Gaye and fighting. Dyffed didn't look up as Teldin joined him. The gnome merely raised his pistols and fired out the door. Teldin raised his weapons and found himself staring right at a wounded humanoid warrior in studded black armor, looking vaguely like a pig-nosed man, not ten feet away. It staggered toward the door with a curved sword clenched in his gloved fist. Teldin's fingers tightened on the triggers, guns aimed at the humanoid's head. The sharp double crack snapped off his hearing, filling his head with a painful whine, and acrid smoke instantly obscured his vision and stabbed his nostrils. Dyffed shoved Teldin in the legs, pushing him out of the doorway and back into the room as the black-armored humanoid collapsed across the doorway, sword clattering into the room. Bloody droplets splashed across the floor at Teldin's feet.

"The gods made us all," said Dyffed, grabbing two more pistols, "but smokepowder made us all equal. Old gnome saying, you understand. Seemed appropriate."

Teldin grabbed two more pistols himself from the huge stack of them now on the table. The two gnomes loading them worked madly. A figure suddenly appeared in the doorway. Teldin snapped his pistols up-and froze just before he could squeeze both shots off.

It was Sylvie, her clothing splattered with blood, clutching a messy, long dagger in her hands. He lowered the pistols at once. "Teldin!" Sylvie called, out of breath. "Teldin, we've got… we've got to get to the Halibut! The gnomes are taking off! The base…"

Dyffed shoved at Sylvie's legs and forced her into the barracks room, then fired twice out the door again. Teldin tried to get to the door and listen to Sylvie at the same time, but she stopped him with her free hand.

"There are…" she finally said, after swallowing hard. "There are humanoid ships, apparently orcish, landing all over the place. We have to get out of here. Aelfred's been looking for you, and Gomja. Gomja had brought us back to the hangar just before the orcs came. We're going to get into wildspace, where they can't catch us, before it's too late." A low, muffled boom echoed across the port.

Teldin nodded back at the silent form on the bunk bed. "Can you carry her?" he shouted, too excited to think that Sylvie was right in front of him. The half-elf navigator saw Gaye and gasped, hurrying over to the kender's side and sheathing her dagger without wiping it off. In a moment, she had Gaye cradled in her arms.

"I'll never get my seven-weed soup tonight," Dyffed said sadly, stuffing four pistols into his wide belt and carrying two more. "First the hamsters, then this. Not my day at all. Shall we be off?"

Teldin nodded, taking a deep breath. Sylvie came up behind him. "Teldin, she's still bleeding," she whispered.

Teldin glanced at Gaye's pale face, then looked outside, across the broad, clear pavement, to the far-away hangar where the Perilous Halibut waited. Fires leaped into the sky everywhere, and black clouds rolled and drifted across the whole base. Few figures were visible in the open, most dodging from building to distant building. The sky was clear of spelljammers. They've all crashed or landed, Teldin decided. The ores must be down and waiting for us, too.

"Let's go," he said, then dashed out of the building, pistols up, running for the distant hangar. "Come on!" he shouted back, waving Dyffed and Sylvie on as they followed him.

Behind them, oblivious to everything, the two gnomes loaded pistols until there was no place left to put them.

Twenty minutes later, the Perilous Halibut, its helm having been installed by accident two days earlier, burst through the thin wooden roof of the hangar. Cracked lumber and splinters sprayed through the air behind it. Sylvie was at the helm, there being no one else with the spell power to fly the ship as fast as she. The Halibut roared along beneath the cloud cover for many miles, leaving the naval base and a mass of pinned-down and burning humanoid ships far behind it. Borrowing an idea from Dyffed, Sylvie had the cloud-concealed ship simply fly off the edge of Ironpiece, where enemy ships were not likely to look for it. Luck was with them. The sky was overcast right to the edge, and they saw no sign of any humanoid ships when they sped away into the void. The ship's dark, nonreflective color proved to be a marvelous asset in hiding it against the black backdrop of wildspace.

Teldin looked out of the open jettison platform at the Halibut's stern as they left Ironpiece. Seen edge-on, the world was now just a rapidly receding band of light against the distant constellations. Once they were safely away, he knew, Sylvie would take the time to draw out the course through the phlogiston to get to Herdspace. Sylvie, alone out of everyone else, had remembered to ask the gnomes for the navigational charts to Herdspace. This she'd done shortly after she had been taken to the infirmary, and she'd stored the charts with her belongings. We don't deserve to have someone that smart with us, he mused.

Not that Gomja was a slouch, either. He had taken charge of the evacuation, pointing out that the humanoids obviously knew where Teldin and company were, and waiting at the base for the humanoids to go away was a losing game. It was better to get off-planet into wildspace again and try to outdistance the enemy fleet before it caught on. Funny, thought Teldin, how we thought landing on Ironpiece would solve our troubles. Instead, our troubles just followed us right down to the ground.

A heavy hand dropped on Teldin's shoulder, startling him. "Someone wants to see you, old son," Aelfred said with a crooked smile. "We managed to scrape a healing potion together from somewhere for our kender."

Wordlessly, Teldin followed his friend down the too-narrow corridor to the equally cramped room that was now serving as Gaye's room. He had barely begun to figure out where anything was aboard this flying black coffin. Already he was starting to hate it.

Aelfred opened the door. Teldin had to stoop slightly because of the low ceiling and barely fit through the doorway. Gaye was in bed, looking at him with a pale, anxious face. "You mad?" she asked in a soft voice. Teldin half smiled. "No. You okay?" Gaye's face cleared with relief, and she settled back in her small bed. It had been sized for a gnome, and she just barely fit it. "I'm okay."

Teldin managed to sit on the edge of her bed without crowding her too much. "I saw you poke the ogre in the face with that stick. That was a lucky shot, but you should have just run and let me handle it."

"Oh," she said. She was about to say more but didn't, simply shrugging instead. "Thanks."

Teldin rubbed his face, thinking. "We're heading for that sphere that Cirathora called Herdspace, though I don't bow how we're going to find the fal once we get there. Dyffed was going to give us a device, a locator of some kind, that we could use when we got to Herdspace. I got it, then lost it when the, uh, hamster swallowed me. We'll have to hope for a lucky break when we get there."

Gaye looked down at her lap. "What did the locator look like?" she asked.

"Little red box," he said. "He called it a thingfinder. The humanoids might have gotten it, but its more likely that one of the gnomes on the base has it now. We can't go back for it. The scro are all over the place." He patted Gaye's feet under the blanket, then stood up to leave. "I've got to find out what's going on aboard our new ship. I'll come back to check on you in a little while."

Gaye didn't look up as Teldin headed for the door. He heard her call his name once, and he turned before he left.

Gaye was still looking down. Her arm was out, handing something to him. It was a red box with an open back and a dark glass window on it.

"I found this when I was out earlier," she said. "Is this it?" She dared to look up.

Ironpiece was a bright spot of light against a stupendous backdrop of stars as the pair of doors at the stern of the Perilous Halibut came open. The figure there looked out but was oblivious to the splendor of wildspace. Instead, the figure stepped around the rear jettison, from which shrapnel could be launched at trailing foes, then carefully scanned the void.

Despite its apparently mechanical trappings, the gnomish covered lantern the figure bore was powered by a simple magical spell that provided continual light. The gnomes had merely added assorted gears and sparking devices that made the lantern weigh three times what it normally would, yet none of the devices worked and all had frozen in place with rust. Still, the light inside was as bright as ever.

After a few moments, the figure spotted a faint, blinking light trailing the ship. It was the signal. Carefully, the figure raised the lantern and, recalling the code that had been so painfully learned, began to open and shut the lantern's cover, sending the first of many messages that its master awaited. Only the stars saw the figure's face and noted its grief.