“I don’t think it can close in — the ship is almost the same shape as a ptertha, and our response to a crosswind will be roughly similar.”

“I hope you’re right,” Zavotle said gloomily.

Rillomyner looked round from his post at a cannon and said, “We haven’t eated since dawn, captain.” He was a pale and pudgy young man with an enormous appetite for even the vilest food, and it was said that he had actually gained weight since the beginning of the shortages by scavenging all the substandard food rejected by his workmates. In spite of a show of diffidence, he was a good mechanic and intensely proud of his skills.

“I’m glad to hear your gut is back to its normal condition,” Toller said. “I would hate to think I had done it some permanent mischief with my handling of the ship.”

“I didn’t mean to criticise the take-off, captain — it’s just that I have always been cursed with this weak stomach.”

Toller clicked his tongue in mock sympathy and glanced at Flenn. “You’d better feed this man before he becomes faint.”

“Right away, captain.” As Flenn was getting to his feet his shirt parted at the chest and the green-striped head of a carble peered out. •Flenn hastily covered the furry creature with his hand and pushed it back into concealment.

“What have you got there?” Toller snapped.

“Her name is Tinny, captain.” Flenn brought the carble out and cradled it in his arms. “There was nobody I could leave her with.”

Toller sighed his exasperation. “This is a scientific mission, not a… Do you realise that most commanders would put that animal over the side?”

“I swear she won’t be any trouble, captain.”

“She’d better not. Now get the food.”

Flenn grinned and, agile as a monkey, disappeared into the galley to prepare the first meal of the voyage. He was small enough to be completely hidden by the woven partition which was chest high to the rest of the crew. Toller settled down to refining his control over the ship’s ascent.

Deciding to increase speed, he lengthened the burns from three to four seconds and watched for the time-lagged response of the balloon overhead. Several minutes went by before the extra lift he was generating overcame the inertia of the many tons of gas inside the envelope and the rip line became noticeably slacker. Satisfied with a new rate of climb of around eighteen miles an hour, he concentrated on making the burner rhythm — four seconds on and twenty off — part of his awareness, something to be paced by the internal clocks of his heart and lungs. He needed to be able to detect the slightest variation in it even when he was asleep and being spelled at the controls by Zavotle.

The food served up by Flenn was from the limited fresh supplies and was better than Toller had expected — strips of reasonably lean beef in gravy, pulse, fried grain-cakes and beakers of hot green tea. Toller stopped operating the burner while he ate, allowing the ship to coast upwards in silence on stored lift. The heat emanating from the black combustion chamber mingled with the aromatic vapours issuing from the galley, turning the gondola into a homely oasis in a universe of azure emptiness.

Partway through the meal littlenight came sweeping from the west, a brief flash of rainbow colours preceding a sudden darkness, and as the crew’s eyes adjusted the heavens blazed into life all around them. They reacted to the unearthliness of their situation by generating an intense camaraderie. There was an unspoken conviction that lifelong friendships were being formed, and in that atmosphere every anecdote was interesting, every boast believable, every joke profoundly funny. And even when the talk eventually died away, stilled by strangeness, communication continued on another plane.

Toller was set apart to some extent by the responsibilities of command, but he was warmed nonetheless. From his seated position the rim of the gondola was at eye level, which meant there was nothing to be seen beyond it but enigmatic whirlpools of radiance, the splayed mist-fans of comets, and stars and stars and ever more stars. The only sound was the occasional creak of a rope, and the only sensible movement was where the meteors scribed their swift-fading messages on the blackboard of night.

Toller could easily imagine himself adrift in the beaconed depths of the universe, and all at once, unexpectedly, there came the longing to have a woman at his side, a female presence which would somehow make the voyage meaningful. It would have been good to be with Fera at that moment, but her essential carnality would scarcely have been hi accord with his mood. The right woman would have been one who was capable of enhancing the mystical qualities of the experience. Somebody like.…

Toller reached out with his imagination, blindly, wistfully. For an instant the feel of Gesalla Maraquine’s slim body against his own was shockingly real. He leapt to his feet, guilty and confused, disturbing the equilibrium of the gondola.

“Is anything wrong, captain?” Zavotle said, barely visible in the darkness.

“Nothing. A touch of cramp, that’s all. You take over the burner for a while. Four-twenty is what we want.”

Toller went to the side of the gondola and leaned on the rail. What is happening to me now? he thought. Lain said I was playing a role — but how did he know? The new cool and imperturbable Toller Maraquine…the man who has drunk too deeply from the cup of experience… who looks down on princes… who is undaunted by the chasm between the worlds…and who, because his brother’s solewife does no more than touch his arm, is immediately smitten with adolescent fantasies about her! Was Lain, with that frightening perception of his, able to see me for the betrayer that I am? Is that why he seemed to turn against me?

The darkness below the skyship was absolute, as though Land had already been deserted by all of humanity, but as Toller gazed down into it a thin line of red, green and violet fire appeared on the western horizon. It widened, growing increasingly brilliant, and suddenly a tide of pure light was sweeping across the world at heart-stopping speed, recreating oceans and land masses in all their colour and intricate detail. Toller almost flinched in expectation of a palpable blow as the speeding terminator reached the ship, engulfing it in fierce sunlight, and rushed on to the eastern horizon. The columnar shadow of Overland had completed its daily transit of Kolcorron, and Toller felt that he had emerged from yet another occultation, a littlenight of the mind.

Don’t worry, beloved brother, he thought. Even in my thoughts I’ll never betray you. Not ever!

Ilven Zavotle stood up at the burner and looked out to the north-west. “What do you think of the globe now, captain? Is it bigger or closer? Or both?”

“It might be a little closer,” Toller said, glad to have an external focus for this thoughts, as he trained his binoculars on the ptertha. “Can you feel the ship dancing a little? There could be some churning of warmer and cooler air as littlenight passes, and it might have worked out to the globe’s advantage.”

“It’s still on a level with us — even though we changed our speed.”

“Yes. I think it wants us.”

“I know what I want,” Flenn announced as he slipped by Toller on his way to the toilet. “I’m going to have the honour of being the first to try out the long drop — and I hope it all lands right on old Puehilter.” He had nominated an overseer whose petty tyrannies had made him unpopular with the S.E.S. flight technicians.

Rillomyner snorted in approval. “That’ll give him something worth complaining about, for once.”

“It’ll be worse when you go — they’re going to have to evacuate the whole of Ro-Atabri when you start bombing them.”

“Just take care you don’t fall down the hole,” Rillomyner growled, not appreciating the reference to his dietary foibles. “It wasn’t designed for midgets.”