"P-precisely. The lightning is vital for the operation of oui m-machine." Stutts smiled and patted the arm of his chair "Isn't it a b-beauty? It is called the C-Cloudmaster." "What does it do?" "It f-flies." "Oh, of course it does," Kitiara said with a chuckle. "Very ingenious of you gnomes. What does that have to do with Sturm and me?" Stutts's small face flushed a deeper shade of pink. "Ahem. W-we've had a bit of b-bad luck. You see, in calculating the op-optimal lift-to-weight ratio, someone failed to consider the effect of the Cloudmaster coming to r-rest on soil in an advanced state of hydration." "What did you say!" "We're st-stuck in the mud," said Stutts, turning pink again. "And you want us to dig you out?" asked Kitiara. "For which we will g-gratefully fly you to any point on Krynn that you wish to go. Enstar, B-Balifor, or far Karthay -" "The Plains of Solamnia were where we were headed," said Sturm. "That's as far as we need to go." Kitiara swung an elbow into Sturm's ribs. "You're not taking this little lunatic seriously, are you?" she hissed from the corner of her mouth. "I know gnomes," he replied. "Their inventions work with surprising regularity." "But I don't -" Stutts hopped up. "You'll want to d-discuss it. May I suggest you clean up, have a good m-meal, and then d-decide? We have a cleansing station on board like nothing you've s-seen before." "I'm sure of that," Kitiara muttered. They agreed to bathe and dine with the gnomes. Stutts pulled a light chain that hung from the ceiling by the steering wheel. A deep-throated AH – OO – GAH! echoed through the flying ship. A young gnome in greasy coveralls and with very bushy red eyebrows appeared. "Show our g-guests to the cleansing station," said Stutts. The bushy-browed gnome whistled a string of notes in reply. "No, one at a t-time," Stutts said. Bushy-brows whistled again. "Does he always talk like that?" queried Kitiara. "Yes. My c-colleague -" Here he recited about five minutes of gnome-name. "- has evolved the theory that spoken 1-language was derived from the songs of birds. You may call him -" Stutts paused and looked at the bushy-browed fellow, who tweeted and chirped. Stutts continued, "-Birdcall." Birdcall took Sturm and Kitiara below deck to the stern. There, with whistles and gestures, he indicated two cubicles on either side of the corridor. The doors bore identical signs that read: Rapid and Hygienic Cleansing Station Perfected and Provided to the Flying Ship Cloudmaster By the Guild of Hydrodynamic Masters and Journeymen And the Apprentices of Mt. Nevermind Level Twelve Sancrist Ansalon Krynn Sturm looked from the door to Kitiara. "Do you think it works?" he asked. "Only one way to find out," she replied, pulling the filthy towel from her head and dropping it on the floor. She stepped through the door and it swung shut behind her with a soft click. The tile walls inside the cleansing station were covered with writing. Kitiara squinted at the hand-painted script. Some of it ran sideways, and some of it was upside down. Most of the writing concerned proper and scientific bathing procedure. Some of it was nonsense – she saw a line that declared, "The absolute value of the density of raisins in the perfect muffin is sixteen." And some of the writing was rude: "The inventor of this station has dung for brains." She peeled off her outer clothing and put it in a convenient wicker basket. Kitiara stepped to a raised wooden platform. There was a ghastly, rubbery hissing sound, an water began to spray from a pipe above her head. It caught her by surprise, so she clamped a hand over the spoutin end. No sooner had she stopped one spray than another started from the wall on her left. That one she plugged with a finger. Then the real melee began. With mud and water trickling down her face, Kitiara heard a rattling and squeaking behind her. She twisted around without unstopping the spouts. A square tile on the wall had popped open, revealing a jointed metal rod that was unfolding and reaching out for her. On the end of the rod was a round pad of fleece, rapidly spinning. Wheels and pulleys set along the jointed rod made the sheepskin turn. "What a time to be without a sword!" Kitiara said aloud. The rod wavered and came toward her. It was a moment of decision. She accepted the challenge and released the pipes. Water gushed out, sluicing the mud from her body. Kitiara grappled with the whirling fleece, grabbing it with both hands. The pulleys whined and the cords twanged. Finally she succeeded in snapping the rod off at the first joint. The water stopped. Kitiara stood, panting, as the water drained through slots in the floor. There was a knock on the door. "Kit?" Sturm called. "Are you finished?" Before she could reply, a heavy piece of cloth dropped from the ceiling over her head. She yelled and threw fists at her unseen attacker, but all she hit was air. Kitiara pulled the cloth off her head. It was a towel. She dried off and wrapped herself in it. Sturm was in the corridor, likewise swathed in a dry blanket. "What a place," he said, grinning more widely than Kitiara had ever seen him do. "I'm going to have a few words with Stutts!" she declared. "What's wrong?" "I was attacked in there!" Stutts appeared. "Is there a p-problem?" Kitiara was about to voice her outrage, but Stutts wasn't actually speaking to her. He bustled on by and opened a panel in the wall. Inside, a rather harried-looking gnome lay in a tangle with a three-legged stool. At the gnome's waist level was a hand-crank, labeled Cleansing Station Number 2 – Rotary Washing Device. "Is that what I was fighting?" Kitiara said. "Looks that way," said an amused Sturm. "The poor fellow was just doing his job. The fleece is like a washcloth, only he does the scrubbing for you." "I can do my own scrubbing, thank you," she said sourly. Stutts mopped his face with his sleeve. "This is all v-very distressing. I must ask you, Mistress Kitiara, to not d-damage the machinery. Now I shall have to write a report in qui-quintuplicate to the Aerostatics Guild." "I'll keep an eye on her," Sturm said. "Kit has a tendency to bash things she doesn't understand." Birdcall came down the corridor whistling furiously. Stutts brightened. "Oh, g-good. Time for d-dinner." The gnomes dined in the rear half of the deckhouse. A long, plank table was suspended from the ceiling, as on an ocean-going ship, but the gnomes had 'improved' on the sailors' arrangement by hanging their seats from the ceiling, too. They swung happily from side to side. Thus, Sturm and Kitiara had to squeeze into narrow chain swings just to sit at the table. Dinner proved ordinary enough: beans, ham, cabbage, muffins, and sweet cider. Stutts apologized; they had no scientifically trained cook on board. The warriors were grateful for that. The gnomes ate rapidly and without conversation (because it was more efficient). The sight of ten bowed, balding heads, accompanied only by the sound of spoons scraping on plates, was a little unnerving. Sturm cleared his throat and said, "Perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves -" "Everyone knows who you are," said Stutts without looking up. "I s-sent out a memorandum while you were b-being cleansed." "Then you can introduce your crew to us," said Kitiara. Stutts's head snapped up. "They're n-not crew. We are c-colleagues." "Pardon me!" Kitiara rolled her eyes. "You are p-pardoned." He spooned the last of his beans swiftly into his mouth. "But if you insist." Stutts slipped from his swinging seat and walked down the row of eating gnomes. He gave a yawningly elaborate profile of each of his colleagues, including the name by which "those not of the gnomish race" could call each one. Sturm distilled all of this into a short mental list: Birdcall, chief mechanic in charge of the engine, Wingover, Stutts's right-hand gnome; in charge of actually flying the machine, Sighter, astronomer and celestial navigator, Roperig, expert with rope, cord, wire, cloth, and so forth, Fitter, Roperig's apprentice, Flash, collector and storer of lightning, Bellcrank, chief metal worker and chemist, Cutwood, in charge of carpentry, woodwork, and all non-metal parts, Rainspot, weather seer and physician by designation. "How did you come to build this, uh, machine?" asked Sturm. "It is part of my Life Quest," said Wingover, a taller-thanaverage gnome with a hawklike nose. "Complete and successful aerial navigation, that's my goal. After years of experimenting with kites, I met our friend Bellcrank, who has discovered a very rarefied air, which, when enclosed in a suitable bag, will float and support other objects of weight." "Preposterous," said Sighter. "This so-called ethereal air is humbug!" "Listen to the stargazer," the tubby Bellcrank said with a sneer. "How do you think we were able to fly to this point from Caergoth, eh? Magic?" "The wings supported us," Sighter replied with heat. "The lift ratios clearly show -" "It was the ethereal air!" retorted Rainspot, who sat by Bellcrank. "Wings!" shouted Sighter's side of the table. "Air!" cried Bellcrank's allies. "Colleagues! C-colleagues!" Stutts said, holding up his hands for quiet. "The p-purpose of our expedition is to establish with scientific accuracy the c-capabilities of the Cloudmaster. Let us not argue needlessly about theories until the d-data is available." The gnomes lapsed into sullen silence. Rain drummed on the skylight over the table. The hostile silence lingered for an embarrassing length of time. Then Rainspot lifted his eyes to the dark panes and said, "The rain is stopping." A few seconds later, the steady thrumming ceased completely. "How did he know that!" asked Kitiara. "Theories differ," said Wingover. "A committee is meeting even now on Sancrist Isle to study our colleague's talent." "How can they study him when he's up here?" Sturm wondered. He was ignored. "It's his nose," Cutwood said. "His nose?" Kitiara asked. "Because of the size and relative angle of Rainspot's nostrils, he can detect changes in relative air pressure and humidity just by breathing." "Hogwash!" Roperig said. "Hogwash," echoed Fitter, the smallest and youngest of the gnomes, from his place by Roperig. "It's his ears," continued Roperig. "He can hear the rain stop falling from the clouds before it reaches the ground." "Unmitigated tommyrot!" That was Sighter again. "Any fool can see it's his hair that does it. He can feel the roots uncurl when the moisture in the air falls -" Bellcrank, sitting opposite Sighter, snatched up a muffin from the table and bounced it off his rival's chin. Flash and Fitter pounced on the fallen muffin and broke it open. "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen," Flash counted. "What's he doing?" Sturm asked. "C-counting raisins," answered Stutts. "That's his current project: to determine the world average density of raisins in muffins." Kitiara dropped her face into her hands and moaned. The dinner debacle over, the gnomes left the flying ship to dismantle their equipment in the meadow. Kitiara and Sturm, now dry, dressed in enough clothing to hike back to their campsite in the fig orchard and pick up their gear. The storm had blown itself out, and stars showed in the ragged holes between the clouds. "Are we doing the right thing?" asked Kitiara. "These gnomes haven't got all their bootlaces tied." Sturm glanced back at the queer machine lying cockeyed in the muddy field. "They are lacking in common sense, but they're tireless and creative. If they can get us to the high Plains of Solamnia in a day, then I, for one, don't mind helping to dig them out of the mud." "I don't believe that thing can fly," she said. "We never saw it fly. For all we know, the storm blew it here." They reached the sodden remains of their camp and packed up their scattered belongings. Kitiara hoisted Pira's saddle on her shoulder. "Blast that horse," she said. "Raised her from a filly, I did, and she never looked back once she got loose. I'll bet she's halfway to Garnet by now." "Tallfox was a bad influence, I fear. Tirien warned me that he was skittish." "It may be that Tallfox had the right idea," Kitiara said. "How so?" said Sturm. She slung the damp bedroll over the saddle. "If the gnomes can do half the things they claim, we may end up wishing we'd run away in the storm, too." Chaptea 6 1,081 Hours, 29 Minutes "Higgher! Higher! Get that balk in place!- Sturm grunted against the massive weight of the gnomes' flying ship. He and Kitiara strained against a rough-hewn lever they'd made over the gnomes' protests. Crude levers! the gnomes protested. Bellcrank claimed that any gnome could invent a device ten times better for lifting heavy objects. Of course, it would take a committee to study the stress analysis of the local wood, as well as to calculate the proper pivot point for raising the ship. "No," Kitiara had insisted. "If you want us to help get your ship out of the mud, then we'll do it our own way." The gnomes had shrugged and rubbed their bare pates. Trust humans to do things the crudest way. The gnomes rolled several large rocks up to the hull. These would be the fulcrums. After Sturm and Kitiara had made the ship level, the gnomes shoved short, thick timber balks into pla