"Well, I'm glad they're enjoying themselves," Sighter said sourly. "But can we get underway, ourselves?"
Sturm waved to Kitiara and called for her to come down.
After several mock diving attacks at the rubble, the gnomes, and Sturm, Cupelix landed and Kitiara jumped to the ground.
"Thank you, dragon," she said. Her face was flushed. She pounded Sturm on the shoulder and said, "Well, let's get going. No need to stand around here all day."
The humans and the gnomes trekked to the tethered fly ing ship. In a moment of creative vandalism, Flash and Bird call had agreed to sever the useless wings and tail, so the ship presented an austere, clipped appearance. Kitiara was smiling and humming a marching song.
"Pick up your feet, soldier," she said, linking an arm in
Sturm s.
"What are you so pleased about?" he said. "The ship may not take flight."
"Believe that we will fly, and we will."
"I'll think lightheaded if it will help." She laughed at his morose tone.
The ship was reloaded with what food and water the gnomes collected, and a few items for emergency use – spare lumber, tools, nails, and so forth. Sturm bent down and saw that the keel was firmly set in the red dirt.
The gnomes filed up the ramp. Sturm and Kitiara paused, each with one foot at the ramp, the other on the soil of the red moon.
"Will anyone ever believe we were here?" he asked, tak ing in the panorama."It all seems like a wild dream."
"What difference does it make?" Kiiiara replied. "We know what we've done and where we've been; even if we never tell another soul, we'll know."
They walked up the ramp and hauled it up behind them.
When the hatch was secure, Sturm went up to the main deck. Kitiara disappeared into the hold.
Cupelix swooped in, beat his wings hard and alighted gently beside the Cloudmaster. "Glorious, my friends! I am reborn – no, born for the first time! Freed of the stone sar cophagus in which I dwelt, I am a new dragon.
"Henceforth, I am no longer Cupelix, but Pteriol, the Fly er!"
"Pleased to meet you, Pteriol," said Fitter.
"We'd best be off," interrupted Sturm. "While it's still light."
'Yes, yes," said Stutts. "Listen, all of you; each fellow is to stand by the mooring ropes. When I give the word, slip the knots and let us rise."
"Tell them to pull in the ropes. They're all we've got," advised Roperig.
"And pull in the ropes!" Stutts said. "Everyone ready?"
The gnomes piped their readiness. "Very good. All hands, slip your ropes!"
They managed to get most of the lines loose at the same time, though Rainspot at the stern had a hard knot and lagged behind. The ship rolled sideways, the hull planks groaning.
"We're too heavy!" Wingover shouted.
The distinct sound of splitting wood erupted below their feet. The starboard side rose, throwing everyone to port.
Sturm banged the back of his head against the deck house.
Then, with an ear-piercing crack, the Cloudmaster righted itself and lifted into the air.
"Halloo!" called Pteriol. "You've lost something!"
Sturm and the gnomes filled the rail. They were rising very slowly, but from a height of fifty feet, they could see a wide section of the hull planking and a mass of dark metal on the ground.
"The engine!" Flash cried. Birdcall uttered a hawkish scream of dismay.
They rushed from the ladder down to the hold. Near the deck hatch, Flash fell into the arms of Kitiara. She was whis tling a Solacian dance tune.
"Quickly!" said the excited gnome. "We've lost the engine! We must go back and get it!"
Kitiara stopped whistling. "No," she said.
"No? No?"
"I don't know anything about aerial navigation, but I do know this ship was too heavy to get off the ground. So I arranged for the extra weight to stay behind."
"How'd you do that?" Sturm asked.
"Sawed through the hull around the engine," she said.
"It's not fair! It's not right!" Flash said, blinking through angry tears. Birdcall made similar noises.
Sturm patted the two on their shoulders. "It may not be fair, but it was the only thing to do," he said gently. "You can always build another engine once you get back to Sancrist."
Stutts and Wingover squeezed past Kitiara and started down the ladder. "We'd better inspect the hole," said Stutts.
"The hull may be seriously weakened. Not to mention drafty."
Drafty was an understatement. A yawning hole, twelve feet by eight feet, showed where the lightning-powered engine had been.
"My," said Stutts, peering down at the receding ground.
They were already a hundred feet up. "This is rather inter esting. We should have built a window into the bottom of the ship from the first."
"Keep that in mind," Sturm said, who kept well back from the hole. "We'll have to patch this somehow, if only to keep ourselves from tumbling out." He wasn't too surprised by
Kitiara's deed. It was typical of her: quick, direct, and a bit ruthless. Still, they were off the ground at last.
Pteriol's brass scales glistened as he passed under the ship.
The dragon circled in a rising spiral, wings flapping slowly.
The Cloudmaster moved very slowly westward, away from the fallen obelisk.
Wingover stepped forward until his toes were off the edge of the hull timbers. He pushed back the swath of bandages that shrouded his head. His disturbing black eyes focused on something far below.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing at the distant ground.
"I can't see anything," Stutts said.
"There's someone down there walking."
"A tree-man?" suggested Sturm. "It is daylight."
"Too small. It walks differently, more like -" Wingover scrubbed his eyes with his small fists. "No! It can't be!
"What, what?"
"It looks like a gnome – like Bellcrank!"
Sturm frowned. "Bellcrank is dead."
"I know! I know! But it looks just like him. His ears have this funny shape." Wingover brushed his own ears. "But now he's red all over!"
There was a shout from the upper deck. Sighter had spot ted the walking figure with his spyglass. Sturm, Stutts, and
Wingover hurried up. The astronomer gnome identified the figure as Bellcrank, too.
Fitter shivered. "Is it a ghost?" he asked plaintively.
"Hardly," Sighter responded. "It just stumbled on the turf."
"Then he's alive!" said Cutwood. "We have to go back for him!" Flash, Roperig, and Birdcall all seconded this notion.
Stutts cleared his throat to get their attention.
"We can't go back," he said sadly. "We've no control over direction or altitude." Rainspot began to sniffle, and Cut wood dabbed his eyes on his sleeve.
"Isn't there anything we can do?" Sturm asked.
Just then, Pteriol flashed by the port side, banked steeply, and rolled over the top of the bag. Everyone on the Cloud master felt his telepathic whoops of delight.
"The dragon! The dragon can fetch him!" said Rainspot.
"He might," said Kitiara.
"You're his favorite. You ask him," said Cutwood.
The brass form arrowed past the starboard rail, the wind from his wings stirring the drifting ship into a slow eddy.
"Hai, dragon. Cupelix! Suffering gods, I mean Pteriol!" Kiti ara yelled. The dragon swept under the stern and raced along the underside of the ship.
"He can't hear me," she said, peeved. "Big, dumb brute."
"He's drunk with freedom," Sturm said. "Can't blame him, after all the centuries he spent in that obelisk."
"We're losing Bellcrank!" Fitter cried as the ship floated over the valley cliff walls.
The tiny red figure shrank from even Wingover's power ful sight and was lost in the scarlet terrain. The gnomes watched, wordless, as the Cloudmaster drew away from their lost friend. Amid quiet weeping, Cutwood broke away and went below deck. He returned shortly with a hammer, a saw, and a pair of pliers. He threw these items overboard.
"Why did you do that I" Sturm said.
Cutwood turned his round pink face up to the taller man.
"Bellcrank will need tools," he said.
Sighter, Stutts, and Wingover left the rail. Flash and Bird call lingered a while longer, then they, too, departed.
Roperig pulled Fitter away. Rainspot and Cutwood stayed, even as the valley fell farther and farther behind.
"It's so hard to believe," Rainspot said. "Bellcrank was dead. We buried him."
"Perhaps there's some truth to what the dragon said," Kiti ara offered. Cutwood asked what she meant. "He said noth ing ever died on Lunitari."
"You mean that wasn't Bellcrank down there, just some thing that looked like him?"