Sky pirates of callisto, p.8
Sky Pirates of Callisto, page 8
"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."
