Glawen asked innocently: "Are you acquainted with either Titus Zigonie or his wife Simonetta — born, I am sorry to say, a Clattuc?"
“I know neither of them personally. Their gallant conduct provides me all the evidence I require. They are clearly fighting the strong and good fight for justice and democracy.”
Glawen turned to Egon Tamm, “Sir, if you will excuse me, I must now be returning to the Station. Thank you, Dame Cora, for lunch. Glawen bowed to the others in the parlor and departed.
CHAPTER II
Midnight was two hours gone. Araminta Station was quiet and dark, save for a few yellow lamps along Wansey Way along the beach road. Lorca and Sing were gone behind the western hills; across the black sky streamed the coruscating sparkling flow of Mircea’s Wisp.
In the shadows to the sled of the airport hangar there was furtive movement. A door opened; Glawen and Chilke slid out the modified Skyrie. The frame had been fitted with floats and a cabin; the swamp crawler had been strapped to the cargo deck; fairings had been attached wherever possible.
Glawen walked around the vehicle and saw nothing to alter his mood. Chilke said: “One last word, Glawen. I have in the office a bottle of very fine very expensive Damar Amber, which we will drink on your return.''
“That seems a good idea."
“On second thought, perhaps we should break into it now, just to make sure of it, so to speak.”
“I prefer to think that I will be returning'' “That is a more positive approach," said Chilke. ”You might as well get going. The way is long and the Skyrie is slow. I'll keep Benjamie hard at it in the warehouse taking inventory so you should be safe from that direction."
Glawen climbed into the control cabin. He waved his hand at Chilke and took the Skyrie aloft.
The lights of Araminta Station dwindled below. Glawen set off on a westward course which would take him to the side of the high Muldoon Mountains at minimal attitude, across the continent of Deucas, across the great Western Ocean to the shores of Ecce.
The lights became faint and glimmered away in the east; the Skyrie drifted through the night sky at its best speed. With nothing better to do, Glawen stretched out on the seat, wrapped himself in his cloak and tried to sleep. The lightening sky of dawn aroused him. He glanced from the window to find forested hills below: the Syndics, according to his charts, with Mount Pam Pameijer looming high to the south.
Late in the afternoon Glawen passed the western coast of Deucas: a line of low cliffs with lazy blue swells crumpling into ribbons of white spume at their feet. Cape Tierney Thys jutted west; beyond lay the ocean. Glawen reduced altitude; the Skyrie flew onward, southwest by west, fifty yards above the long blue swells of the Western Ocean. The course should bring him to the east coast of Ecce where the Great Vertes River entered the ocean.
The afternoon passed; Syrene dropped below a clear horizon, leaving dainty white Lorca and pompous red Sing to rule the western sky; two hours later they too sidled down and out of sight and the night became dark.
Glawen checked his instruments, verified his position on the pre-plotted course and again tried to sleep.
An hour before noon of the following day Glawen noted distant clouds rearing into the western sky. An hour later a low dark line appeared at the horizon: the coast of Ecce. Glawen reverified his position on the chart and was assured that directly ahead lay the mouth of the great Vertes River, at this point perhaps ten miles wide. Exact measurements were impossible, by reason of the vagueness of distinction between water and land of the surrounding swamp.
As Glawen approached the water below changed color, talking on an oily olive-green luster. Ahead the Vertes estuary became evident; Glawen swung somewhat to the north so that he might skirt the northern shore. Dead trees, logs, snags, tangles of brush and reeds floated on the current. Below appeared a bank of slime grown over with reeds; he had arrived at the continent Ecce.
The river flowed through a miasma of swamps, floats of water-logged vegetation, dull blue, green and liver-colored; occasionally fingers of soggy marshland supported a growth of sprawling trees, holding foliage of every shape up toward the sky. Through the air a hundred sorts of flying organisms wheeled and darted, sometimes diving down into the mud to emerge with a writhing white eel, and sometimes into the water, or occasionally one pouncing down upon another. Upstream on the river floated a dead tree. Perched in one of the branches was a disconsolate mud-walker a gangling half-simian andoril eight feet tall, all bony arms and legs and tall narrow head. Tufts of white hair surrounded a visage formed of twisted cartilage and plaques of horn, with a pair of ocular stalks and a proboscis on its spindly chest. Beside the drifting tree the river surged; a heavy head on a long thick neck rose above the surface. The mud-walker squealed in horror; the proboscis its chest squirted fluids toward the head, but to no avail. The head showed a gaping yellow maw; it jerked forward, engulfed the mud-walker and sank beneath the surface. Glawen thoughtfully raised the Skyrie so that it flew somewhat higher above the river.
Now was that time of day when the heat reached its oppressive maximum, so that the denizens of Ecce tended to become inactive. Glawen himself grew uncomfortable, as heat penetrated the cabin, taxing the competence of the cooling unit Chilke had installed. Glawen tried to ignore the sweltering conditions and concentrate on what must be done. Shattorak still lay a thousand miles to the west; Glawen could not hope to reach the base before dark, and nighttime would not be optimum for his arrival. He slowed the Skyrie to a hundred-mile-an-hour drift along the river, which allowed him opportunity to survey the unfolding panorama.
For a time the landscape consisted of olive-green river to his left hand and swamps to his right. On the slime, families of flat gray animals slid about on flaps attached to their six legs. They browsed on young reeds, moving sluggishly until a heavy tentacle with an eye at the tip thrust up from the mud, at which they darted away at astonishing speed, so that the tentacle struck down into the mud defeated.
The river embarked on a series of meandering loops, first far to the south, then back an equal distance to the north. Glawen, consulting his charts, struck off across the intervening tongues of land: for the most part dense jungle choked over with trees. Occasionally a rounded hummock rose to an elevation of as much as fifty feet. Sometimes the summits lacked vegetation, in which case each was inhabited by a heavy-headed beast with a lithe slate-gray body: a creature similar to the bardicant of Deucas, thought Glawen. As the Skyrie drifted past he noticed that the summit was cropped clean of vegetation by a band of waddling russet rodents, bristling with short heavy spines. The stone-tiger surveyed the troop with a lofty detachment, and turned itself away, evidently without appetite for the: creatures: a surprise to Glawen; on Deucas the bardicant devoured anything which came its way with undiscriminating voracity.
From the west drifted heavy gray banks of clouds, trailing curtains of rain across the landscape. A sudden squall struck the Skyrie and buffeted it sidewise, rocking and sliding, followed a moment later by a freshet of rain, so that Glawen could no longer see so much as the river below.
For an hour the rain streamed down upon the land, then drifted away to the east, leaving open sky overhead. Syrene floated low toward a tumble of angry black clouds; Lorca and Sing pursued their own erratic dance off to the side. To the west and slightly north, Glawen made out the silhouette of Shattorak: a dim brooding shadow on the horizon. Glawen took the Skyrie down at a slant to the river to fly close beside the right bank, almost grazing the surface, to make the Skyrie as inconspicuous as possible to any detectors which might be active on the summit of Shattorak.