9
This is it, Larry Warner thought. Jesus Christ. Come all the way here on a mucking flying saucer, and get killed in a hot-air balloon. Jesus H. Christ.
The balloon continued to rise. The air inside was cooling, so that it had lost part of its lift, but the balloon’s slightly flattened shape gave additional lift from the updrafts. Warner huddled in the bottom of the basket while he worked this out. Eventually he got up the nerve to look over the edge at the ground below.
It was hard to judge his ground speed. He tried to estimate distances between farms as he passed over them, timing his passage with his watch as he swept across the valley below. It was difficult because there were few roads, and nothing was square. Tran was a planet of horse—and centaur—carts, not automobiles.
After several attempts he got the same result twice. He was probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour, much faster than the best any rescue party could do. If he stayed up no more than an hour, he’d be nearly a day’s ride from the University. The only hope he had for quick rescue was to come down on top of someone friendly—which wasn’t very likely, because he had no control over altitude.
He could rise—a little—by dropping ballast, but as for bringing the balloon down before the hot air cooled and it lost lift—well, that was what rip panels were for, in balloons back on Earth. In theory, he could climb up the netting and slash at the cloth with a knife, to let out some of the hot air. One look at all the empty air between him and the ground cured him of the notion. He wasn’t that desperate yet.
The best course looked to be letting the balloon cool naturally. He could slow its fall if necessary by dropping ballast, rather than by lighting up the fire. Meanwhile he would pull up the rope and make a big loop in the end. He hoped he remembered enough of his Boy Scout knot-tying to make one which would hold. That would give people on the ground a better hold on the rope.
Then—wait until he passed low enough over a village for the rope to reach the ground. Throw the rope out, shout to the people, and hope they understand what he was saying. It would still take luck, but not as much as bringing the balloon down by himself. It was going to take luck to live through this. He’d have to be very lucky to save the balloon for the campaign.
Moving cautiously, with one hand always gripping the rigging, Warner made a complete scan around the balloon. When he looked to the north-northwest, he let out a yell which would have scared any seagulls within a half a mile. Then he took the names of most of Tran’s gods in vain.
He’d completely forgotten about the Labyrinth Range, a tangle of jagged peaks and dense thickets at the head of the Saronic Gulf. They got their name because few who tried finding a path through them ever got out the other side. Sensible people preferred to go around either end of the range.
Warner wouldn’t have any choice. The range was a good seventy miles from end to end, and there was no way at all to steer a free balloon. He would have to go over.
How high? One task of the University was mapping Tran; they were the only geodetic survey the planet had. He’d sent a team of locals out with a crude transit to measure mountain heights—
And if he remembered right, the Labyrinth Range was three thousand meters high.
Nine thousand feet. More than that. A lot higher than he was just now. Twice as high, maybe.
Would it be better to try to land? No. Not in this wind. Neither he nor the balloon would live through the experience. I’ll just have to go over, he thought. Be still, my heart—
’Tain’t funny, another part of him said, but he ignored that. Better to laugh, and not think about it.
He looked down once more to be sure, and decided. The ground was already rising into the foothills of the Labyrinths. He’d have to get up to ten thousand feet and stay there for at least an hour. The Labyrinths were thirty miles across at their widest point. If he came down anywhere inside them, he’d freeze or starve to death before they found him, if anyone could be persuaded to go looking, and assuming he was lucky enough to survive landing on a glacier . . .
Get the rope up first. Can’t dump that. Need it. Have to come down on the other side.
Which is the Pirate Lands, more or less claimed by Rome but in practice abandoned to anyone who wanted to live there. They weren’t worth the troops it would take to garrison them. And beyond there are salt marshes, far too wide to cross. It’s the Pirate Lands or nothing . . .
So. First things first. Get a fire going, then pull up the rope. He took three fire bricks from the rigging and stuffed them into the fire pot. His Zippo was filled with naphtha, and hard to light, but eventually it burned, and once he had flame the bricks caught nicely. The resin in the bricks was extracted from something the natives called volcano-bush. It grew in patches in the forests to the south. People said that in late summer, when the bushes were full of resin, lightning striking a patch could make it go up like a bomb, acres at a time. In winter and spring the bush wasn’t as resin-loaded, but there was still plenty to provide fuel for the balloon’s firepot.
He had to lay on six more bricks before the balloon was rising fast enough to suit him. He was sure he’d overdone it. There was undoubtedly a long lag between making heat and getting lift. But the mountains were coming closer and closer, and it was better to be too high than too low.
The fire blazed hotter and hotter. Soon he had to flatten himself against the side of the basket to keep from being scorched. He hoped the firepot wouldn’t crack or the basket catch fire.
At least there seemed to be plenty of wind over the Labyrinths. He saw a plume of snow trailing from one peak in his path. Unfortunately that peak was also still above him. He threw on another brick, then counted what was left of his fuel supply. About half gone. Better try dumping ballast for a change. There was also the second water bag, but everything he’d been taught said that drinking water is the last thing to go.
He dropped two sandbags, then the mountains were on him.
The balloon came closer to the range; then, suddenly, it began to rise, plummeting higher and swifter than Warner had ever seen.
“Updrafts!” he shouted. Of course there’d be an updraft on the windward side of the mountains. It lifted him so fast that his nose began to bleed, and his ears hurt dreadfully until he could make them pop. Even the fillings in his teeth hurt.
By noon he’d left the Labyrinths behind him, after crossing them with several thousand feet to spare. Now the problem was cold. He’d been dressed for a summer day in Tamaerthon, and the temperature up here was well below freezing. The thinner air of Tran meant the temperature dropped off faster with height. It also meant that his present altitude was the equivalent of the tops of the Alps or Rockies on Earth, high enough to make breathing hard.
“Hoo-hah,” he shouted. “Mucking bastards. Join the army and see the world, they said. Hell, they said the world. Didn’t say dogmeat about any other worlds. Recruiting officers. They always lie to you—”
There was a terrible temptation to do something, but he was just rational enough to know he was suffering from oxygen starvation. Better to sit still and rage at the world. Presently he began to sing “The Friggin’ Falcon.”
When the balloon descended to a lower altitude, Warner could think again. This time he had few choices. His fire bricks were nearly gone, and if he didn’t come down here, he’d be into the salt marshes.
The cold dry air at high altitude had left him thirsty. He pulled the plug on the water bag and drank until he was clear-headed and hungry. He munched a piece of dried meat from his ration pouch and composed a mental memo, suggesting that the next Shalnuksi ship be asked to bring a few parachutes for the Balloon Squadron.
Now that his fingers were thawed out, he could tie a large bowline in the end of the rope. He was just in time. The balloon sank so rapidly that he knew that something would break if he hit the ground this hard. The last brick went into the fire and the last of the ballast went overboard. Then he threw the loop over the side. The ground below was forested now. If he could lasso a treetop he could pull himself down, and have something to tell Elliot besides. The sergeant could use a lariat as well as an assault rifle! He’d even roped a centaur on a bet.
Warner wasn’t Elliot, but then the treetops weren’t centaurs. They stayed put, and eventually Warner got lucky. The loop caught a branch and went tight. By now the balloon had lost so much lift that Warner’s muscles were enough to pull it down into the trees. The minute the basket was at the level of a good stout branch, Warner grabbed it with both hands and swung himself into the tree.
The branch promptly bent under his weight, letting him dangle until he lost his grip and dropped to the branch below. It bounced him like a ping-pong ball on to the next branch, and that one let him slide down on to the ground, a drop of ten feet onto leaves and needles. Warner hit with a paratrooper’s five-point roll.
The first thing he did when he got his breath back was kneel and kiss the solid ground. The second thing he did was look up.
Four bearded men looked back at him. They wore homespun breeches and leather shirts. Two carried crossbows, one a spear, and one an ax. None of them looked ready to use the weapons, but none of them looked particularly friendly either.
Warner knelt and kissed the ground again, then stood up, holding his hands out to show he bore no weapons. After a moment the man with the bushiest beard laid down his crossbow, knelt, and also kissed the ground. The others followed him. Then they all stood up. The leader pointed upward at the balloon now draped over the treetops, then at Warner. Warner nodded. The leader made what Warner recognized as one of the signs against evil spirits, then raised his crossbow.
Warner shook his head sharply. They probably thought the balloon was a monster which had carried him off. “No,” he said aloud. “Do not hurt it.” He hoped they’d understand him. Most of Tran spoke dialects of the same language, but some of the dialects were pretty far apart.
“It—is yours?” asked the leader.
So he wouldn’t have to conduct the discussion in sign language. “Yes. It is my sky-beast. A wizard who is my enemy cast an evil spell on it, so that it fell from the sky. I must stay with you for some days, until I can call other wizards to my aid. They will come, take off the evil spell, and reward you well if you help me.”
He looked sternly at them. “They will also punish you if you do not treat me well. The beast will see everything which happens among you, and tell the other wizards.”
“You have nothing to fear,” said the leader. “We are of Two Springs village, we live by law.” He fumbled in his pouch and brought out a cake of what looked like ground-up nuts. Warner ate half of it. There were nut shells as well as meats in the cake, but that didn’t matter. They had fed him, and that made him their guest. More than unknown wizards would punish them now if they harmed him.
He turned back to the balloon, raised his arms, and recited a few Army regulations in English. Then he smiled at the men. “The beast has seen what you did, and is glad. Now let us go to your village.”
“Your beast will be safe?” said one of the men.
“It will be now that it is on the ground,” said Warner. Right now the last thing he wanted to do was straw-boss a gang of Pirate Land villagers into lowering his balloon from the top of a fifty-foot tree. He wanted a drink, a meal, and a girl, and not to have to think about balloons for a while.