Alston smiled thinly. Helps to have a reputation. "Hello, Tartessian," she said in reply. "Do you speak my language? We have interpreters who know yours."

Swindapa spoke it fluently, although Alston had never managed more than a few words; Tartessian was distantly related to the Earth Folk tongue, and the Island's experts thought both were kin to some Bronze Age ancestor of Basque.

"Alantethol son of Marental is a New Man of the king," the Tartessian captain said proudly. Ah-one of Isketerol's proteges, she translated mentally. "I speak well your Englits tongue. I have to Nantucket itself sailed. Welcome you to our anchorage be!"

"Yoda," Marian thought to herself. "You seek Yoda!"

He looked around, taking in the hull of the Chamberlain in its improvised cradle and the gaping hole where the smashed planking had been removed. She could see his eyes taking in much else, as well- particularly the Islander camp, with its sand-and-palm-tree ramparts, and the snouted muzzles of the frigate's cannon mounted on them. And the dim ranks of the Guard crewfolk standing behind her.

"Tartessos has no claim on these waters, and the locals are under our protection," Alston said.

The man made a dismissive gesture. "Let not civilized men-ah, civilized folk-quarrel over savages," he said ingratiatingly.

If you only knew, Alston thought, fighting not to grind her teeth.

"What are you doing here!" she said.

"Trading!" the Tartessian said, swelling a little with pride. "For jade, jewels, spices, silk, rare woods-widely trading. Also we take a word of the world to our king, and our king's word to the world."

Uh-oh, Marian thought. With that list of ladings, he might well have been as far east as Indonesia, or even up to the Shang ports.

"I see you have storm damage," Alantethol said. "Help sailors should render each other-and my crew has been long at sea, needs shore time, green foods."

He scanned the Islander ranks, checking a bit at the sight of Heather and Lucy between Alston and her partner; especially on Lucy, with her pale milk-chocolate mulatto complexion. I can pretty well hear him think, "How the hell did they manage that? " Marian thought with bleak humor.

"We could share a feast," he went on.

"I don't think so," Alston said dryly. "And as I said, the locals are under our protection."

Alantethol flushed, darkly enough to be visible in the flickering firelight. "The world is the world's world," he said, his accent thickening. "Not for only your Island to say, 'Go here,' 'Don't go there'!"

"And I suggest you sail on," Alston replied. The Tartessian's face looked ugly. "But before you go, observe this."

She took one of the lamps from a sailor and shone it toward the bluff across the harbor, turning it away and back to make the dots and dashes of Morse. Five seconds after the last signal a red spark rose through the darkness from the observation post, arching halfway across the distance between them before the deep thud of a cannon's report reached them. The shell exploded an instant later, throwing up a column of shattered water. Any ship trying to enter the harbor would have more like that dropped right on its deck.

The Tartessian nodded curtly and turned on his heel, sand rutching under the sandal. The longboat surged backward as the crew shoved off, then turned with a flash of oars.

"Mom?" Heather said in a small voice. "Is there going to be trouble?"

"I hope not, punkin," Alston said gently. "Let's go back to the fire."

I hope not, but I think there will be, she thought to herself.

July-September, Year 9 A.E.

Ian Arnstein watched King Shuriash's white-knuckled grip on the hilt of his sword as they walked toward the landing field in the cool dimness of predawn. The ruler's face might have been cast in bronze, but there were beads of sweat on his forehead. The councilor for foreign affairs wasn't all that certain about riding in this wooden balloon himself. In fact, he was probably more worried about it than the Babylonian was; Shuriash knew that the magic of the Eagle People worked. He wasn't burdened with memories of the Hindenburg newsreel, or the knowledge that hydrogen was highly flammable.

And I know that Ron Leaton isn't infallible, Ian thought. He'd spent several exquisitely uncomfortable weeks bending over a sickle, back in the Year 1, because Seahaven Engineering's first attempt at a reaping machine had failed. And he'd seen Marian Alston's fury when it turned out that the first percussion primers decayed in humid conditions.

RNAS Emancipator looked formidably large, sitting here on the flat clay of the landing field outside the walls of Ur Base. Arnstein swallowed and bowed the king and his attendants up the ramp at the rear of the gondola.

"In only a few hours, we will be outside Asshur," he said.

Even then there was a little jostling over precedence in the seating. When it was over, he clipped on his seat belt, a retread from one of the commuter airlines that had flown into Nantucket. The seats were wicker, broader and far more comfortable than those in the deregulated buses-with-wings he'd had to ride in up in the twentieth.

They were seated just behind the working quarter at the head of the gondola and forward of the first of the engine control stations. Lieutenant Vicki Cofflin-captain of the vessel by function-was in her seat at the forward edge of the floor, with an intercom set on her head, checking instruments.

"Three hundred pounds heavy at ground level," she said, snapping a switch. "Feather props."

"Feathered."

"On with engines!"

A coughing roar started up; Arnstein saw the Babylonians flinch. Good ol' internal-combustion noise and stink, he thought-the six motors were burning kerosene, distilled right here at Ur Base, but it was burnt hydrocarbon nonetheless. Outside he could see a crowd of spectators, many of them surged back at the unfamiliar blatting.

"All engines at forty-five positive."

The six crewfolk spaced on either side of the gondola heaved at the wheels that faced them. Through the big, slanting window Arnstein could see the sections of wing and the cowled pods of the engines tilt, pointing the propellers away from the long axis of the dirigible and toward the ground.

"On superheat!"

A clicking, hissing roar as hot air rushed into the central gasbag, inflating it. And a soft, mushy feeling under his backside, as if the dirigible were sliding on a surface of smooth, oiled metal.

"Positive buoyancy! Prepare to cast off."

"Ready to cast off, Captain."

"Stand by engines. Horizontal controls, forty-five degrees." The man at the attitude helm spun his ship-style wheel. "Prepare to release… Release mooring!"

There was a series of heavy chunk sounds as the line-grabs along the keel of the gondola let go, and the Emancipator bounced upward, pushed by the air that outweighed the volume she displaced.

"Engage props, all engines ahead full!"

The six converted Cessna engines roared, pushing the lighter-than-air craft northward and up, into the wind. Acceleration shoved Arnstein back into his seat as the nose rose above the horizon, a sensation he hadn't felt in nearly a decade. King Shuriash swore by the private parts of Ishtar, then exclaimed again in delight, pointing with one calloused swordsman's finger.

"Look! We fly, Ian Arens'hein! We fly like the birds of the air, like the gods themselves!"

Shuriash had four attendants with him-a great concession, considering how important the king's dignity was-and three of them shared the king's childlike enjoyment; they were young noblemen, followers of his son. The fourth was Samsu-Indash, and the elderly priest was sitting rigid in his chair with his eyes clamped shut, lips moving in silent prayer. Ian suspected that the command to attend the king was something of a royal joke. Shuriash was not a cruel man, for an ancient Oriental despot, but he was an absolute ruler, and men forgot that at their peril.