"What can I do?" Sturm said to Wingover.
"You could throw out the anchor when we say."
"I can do something, too," Kitiara said.
"Why don't you go to the engine room and help Flash and Birdcall? They can't tend the engine and cut the power cable at the same time," said the gnome. She raised her sword until the hilt was level with her chin. "Cut it with this?" she said.
"Certainly."
"Right." Kitiara slipped the sheath over the blade and started down the abbreviated ladder. "When you want the cable cut, hit that crazy horn," she said. "That will be my signal."
"Kit," Sturm said quietly, making her pause. "May Paladine guide your hand."
"I doubt that I'll need divine aid. I've chopped through thicker things than cable!" She smiled crookedly.
There was nothing in view now but Lunitari. Though Wingover didn't change course, the moon seemed to sink from overhead to bows-on. As the minutes sped by, the red landscape spread to every horizon. Soon the airship was flying with the purple sky above and the red soil below. The altitude gauge was working again.
"Seventy-two hundred feet. Four minutes to contact," said Wingover. A line of jagged peaks flashed by. Wingover spun the wheel hard to port. The wings on the starboard side flicked past the sharp spires with scant feet to spare. The Cloudmaster careened farther, almost onto its side. Soft thumps and muffled yells came from the dining room.
"Whoa-oh-oh-oh!" Wingover cried. "More bumps coming up!"
The prow smashed into a lofty pinnacle and carried it away. A cloud of red grit and dust hit the wheelhouse windows. Wingover frantically pushed levers and turned the wheel. The flying ship went nose up, then tail up. Sturm staggered back and forth. He felt like a pea being rattled in a cup. The cliffs fell away to reveal a landscape of flat mesas divided by deep ravines. The ship was down to a thousand feet. Sturm opened the door. Melted ice ran along the deck outside.
"I'm going aft!" he said.
Wingover bobbed his head rapidly in reply. He stepped out the door just as Wingover banked the Cloudmaster in that direction. Sturm almost pitched headfirst over the rail. The scarlet world roared past at terrifying speed, much faster, it seemed, than when they were cruising through the high clouds. He felt a rush of vertigo, but it quickly succumbed to his will. Sturm staggered aft, bouncing from the rail to the wall of the deckhouse. He glimpsed a queerly distorted face at one of the dining room portholes. It was Fitter, his bulbous nose and ruddy lips smashed flat against the pane. The wind whipped at Sturm as he neared the anchor. The hinged tail bowed and flexed under Wingover's control. Sturm wrapped an arm around the tail's hinge post and held on. The tableland was replaced by a featureless plain. The dark red soil was smooth and unrippled. At least Paladine had favored them with an uncluttered place to land the flying ship! Sturm let go of the rudder post and cradled the anchor in his arms. Bellcrank had done a good job; the big hook weighed nearly as much as Sturm. He wrestled it to the rail. They were very low now. The ground resembled a sheet of marble, painted the color of blood. Do it, Wingover. Blow the horn now, thought Sturm. They seemed too low. He's forgotten, he thought. We're too low. He forgot to sound the horn! Or had he himself failed to hear it in the rush of wind and the pounding of his heart? After a second of indecision, Sturm heaved the anchor over. The multicolored rope, woven from everything Roperig could find — cord, curtains, shirts, and gnomish underwear — spilled after the hook, loop after loop. Roperig said he'd made 110 feet of cable. More than enough. The skein rapidly shrank. With a snap, it ran out, and the heavy scrap metal anchor streamed out behind the flying ship. Sturm had dropped it too soon. He moved forward, watching the hook drop closer and closer to the red soil. By the door to the wheelhouse, Sturm paused, expecting the anchor to bounce and shatter as it hit, but it did neither. The anchor sank into the surface of the moon, plowing a wide, deep furrow. He threw open the door. Wingover had his hand on the horn cord.
"Don't do it!" Sturm yelled. "The ground below — it's not solid!"
Wingover snatched his hand away from the cord as if it had burned him. "Not solid?"
"I dropped the anchor, and it's flowing through the plain as though it were in water. If we land, we'll sink!"
"We don't have any time left. We're less than a hundred feet up now!" Sturm went to the rail, staring desperately at the soft ground. What to do? What to do! He saw rocks.
"Hard to starboard!" he sang out. "Solid ground to starboard!"
Wingover spun the wheel. The right rear wing touched Lunitari. It dipped into the dust and came out unharmed. Sturm could smell the dirt in the air. The rocks thickened, and the smooth, scarlet dust gave way to a stony plain.
Aa-oo-gah!
The Cloudmaster quivered like a living thing. The leather bat-wings lifted in a graceful arc and froze there. Sturm threw himself through the door and landed on his belly. He covered his head tightly with his hands. The wheels touched, spun, and snapped off with brittle, wrenching sounds. When the hull of the flying ship plowed into Lunitari, the bow bucked, rose, and jerked to port. Sturm careened across the deck. The Cloudmaster tore along, trailing a wake of dirt and stones. Finally, as if too tired to continue, the flying ship settled to a creaking, grinding stop.
Chapter 9
"Ane we dead?" Sturm uncovered his head and lifted it. Wingover was jammed through the spokes of the steering wheel, his short arms squeezed tightly against his chest. His eyes were just as tightly closed.
"Open your eyes, Wingover; we're all right," said Sturm.
"Oh, Reorx, I'm stuck!"
"Hold on." Sturm grabbed the gnome's feet and pulled. Wingover protested all the way, but when he was finally free, he forgot his discomfort and said, "Ah! Lunitari!" The gnome and the man went out on deck. The rear door of the dining room banged open, and the other gnomes piled out. Wordlessly, they surveyed the barren landscape. Aside from a distant hump of hills, Lunitari was flat all the way to the horizon. One gnome gave a high chortle of delight, and they all scampered inside. Sturm heard things flying as they sorted through the pillows for their tools, instruments, and notebooks. Kitiara appeared on deck with Flash and Birdcall. They hadn't been able to see from the engine room, being too busy to stare out the porthole. Kitiara had a fine goose-egg bruise over her right eye.
"Hello," said Sturm. "What happened to you?"
"Oh, I knocked my head against an engine fitting when we crashed."
"Landed," he corrected. "Did you break the fitting?"
His rare attempt at humor left Kitiara silent for a moment. Then they threw their arms around each other, grateful for their lives. The ramp in the starboard side of the hull dropped down, and the whole gang of gnomes boiled out onto the red turf.
Kitiara said, "I guess we'd better go down and look after them, before they hurt themselves."
The gnomes were lost in their specialties by the time Kitiara and Sturm joined them. Sighter scanned the horizon with his spyglass. Bellcrank and Cutwood were filling jars with scoopfuls of red dirt. Rainspot stood apart from the rest, his nose and ears tuned to the weather. He reminded Kitiara of a hunting dog. Stutts was rapidly filling pages in his pocket notebook. Wingover walked around the hull of the Cloudmaster, kicking the tight wooden planks now and then. Roperig and Fitter examined their anchor line and measured the amount that it had stretched when pulled taut. Birdcall and Flash were in a heated discussion. Sturm overheard something about 'wing camber variance' and listened no further. He scooped up a handful of Lunitarian dirt. It was flaky, not granular like sand. As it fell from his fingers, it made a tinkling sound.