Novato was high enough now that the blue tower itself vanished into nothingness before it reached the ground. Although she assumed the tower was of equal width all the way to the top, it was as though she were in the middle of an incredibly elongated blue diamond, a diamond that tapered to infinitely fine points above and below.
The sun had moved visibly toward the western horizon now. Looking down, Novato could see a thick black shadow at the eastern end of the forest tracts. The whole interior of the lifeboat darkened and brightened in turns as it passed the blue rungs of the ladders. Occasionally, she saw a puff of white gas erupt from one of the cones projecting from some of the ladders’ rungs.
Novato let her eyes wander out to the horizon line — which, she realized with a start, was no longer a line at all. Instead, it was bowing up. Her heart pounded. She was seeing — actually seeing — the curvature of the world she lived on. She’d long known that the Quintaglio moon was a sphere, but she’d known it indirectly — from seeing ship’s masts poke above the horizon before the ships themselves became visible, from seeing the circular shadow her world cast on the Face of God, from experiments done measuring the angles of shadows cast at different latitudes. But to actually see the curvature, to see the world’s roundness — that was spectacular.
And then, a short time later, she became aware of something even more spectacular. It was late afternoon, the sun still well above the horizon. Nonetheless, the sky was growing darker. It had started as lavender and, without Novato really noticing it, had deepened to violet. Now it was well on its way to black. What could make the sky black while the sun was still out? A flaw in the optical properties of the lifeboat’s metal hull, perhaps? Unlikely.
Novato mulled it over while the lifeboat continued its steady climb, Fra’toolar’s coastline now visible all the way to Shoveler’s Inlet. She knew that water droplets could refract sunlight, splitting it into a rainbow of colors, and she’d long suspected that the sky was purple because myriad droplets in the air scattered light. But if no such scattering was going on, then there was no humidity in the air this high up. Well, water was heavy, of course, so moisture would tend to settle toward the ground. She was well above the clouds now — perhaps they marked the highest level at which water vapor was a constituent of air.
Later that day, Novato watched the most spectacular sunset of her life: the brilliant point of light touched the curving limb of the world, the world-spanning body of water stained purple for hundreds of kilopaces along its edge. The sun’s setting was protracted by the lifeboat’s continual upward movement, and Novato savored every moment of it.
With the sun gone, moons blazed forth in full nocturnal glory. Myriad stars became visible, too. Soon, in fact, there were more stars than Novato had ever seen before. The great sky river was thick and bright, instead of the pale ghost she was used to, and the stars were so numerous that to count them all would be the work of a lifetime. She thought of Afsan, dear Afsan, who had enjoyed no sight more than the night sky. How he would have been moved to see stars in such profusion!
But once again Novato was puzzled. Why should so many more stars be visible? And suddenly she realized something else: the stars, all those glorious stars, were rock-steady, untwinkling. From the ground, stars flickered like distant lamp flames, but these stars burned steadily. With so many visible, it was hard to get her bearings; the normal patterns of constellations were all but lost amongst the countless points of light. But at last she found bright Kevpel, the next closest planet to the sun after the Face of God. She got out her far-seer and, steadying herself by leaning back on her tail, brought it to bear on that distant world.
Spectacular. Kevpel’s rings were visible with a clarity Novato had never before experienced. The planet’s disk was clearly striped, its latitudinal cloud bands more distinct than she’d ever seen, even with bigger far-seers. And Kevpel’s own coterie of moons — why, she could count six of them, two more than she’d ever glimpsed with an instrument this size.
Had this first day of her trip up the tower taken her that much closer to Kevpel? Nonsense. Indeed, the angle between the tower’s shaft and Kevpel’s position along the ecliptic was obtuse: she was in fact slightly farther away from that planet than if she’d observed it from the ground.
But, why, then, did the heavens blaze forth with such clarity?
And then it hit her: the black daytime sky, the incredible sharpness of the stars, the lack of distortion when viewing the planets.
No air.
This high above the world there was no air.
No air!
She felt her chest constricting, her breathing becoming ragged. But that was madness: she could hear the gentle hiss of the air in the lifeboat being recirculated and replenished. She was sure that at least some of the opaque equipment she could see in the transparent hull was somehow maintaining breathable air. She tried to calm down, but it was terrifying to think that only the clear walls around her separated her from, from … emptiness.
But Novato did manage to steady herself, and as she did so her heart grew heavy. The Tak-Saleed. The Lub-Kaden. Wasted erfort. Gliders couldn’t help get her people off their doomed moon. An airship was of no more use for traversing the volume between worlds than was a sailing ship. A whole new approach would be needed.
A whole new approach.
The lifeboat continued its ascent.
*17*
"Angle the sails!" shouted Keenir. "Slow the ship!"
Crewmembers ran to do the captain’s bidding. Toroca was up in the Dasheter’s lookout’s bucket, the far-seer Afsan had given him in his hands. He scanned the waters to the stern. There still seemed to be some forty ships in pursuit. By letting them approach more closely, Toroca and Keenir hoped to be able to get a count of how many Others might be aboard each of them. It took a while for the ships to draw visibly nearer. There, on that ship — decks crawling with Others. And on that one, a line of perhaps fifty Others leaning against the ship’s wooden gunwale. And on the lead ship, Others furiously scrambling to one side and struggling now with a piece of heavy equipment.
As he scanned ship after ship, Toroca’s heart leapt as he saw one Other who looked a bit like Jawn.
Suddenly, thunder split the air. The view in Toroca’s eyepiece shook wildly. The mast tipped way over. Toroca was slammed against the sides of the lookout’s bucket. He lowered the far-seer.
Another thunderclap. Smoke and flame erupted from a large black cylinder on the foredeck of the lead Other ship. For an instant, Toroca saw something large flying — flying! — through the air, then the water just astern of the Dasheter went up in a great splash. Something round and heavy had fallen short of hitting the ship by a matter of paces.
Keenir’s gravelly shout, from below: "Full speed! Increase the gap!"
Footsteps pounding on the decks.
The snap of the two unfurled leather sails.
Another explosion from the tube on the lead ship, but this time the object — something round — smashed into the waves perhaps twenty paces astern. Toroca carefully placed the far-seer in its padded shoulder bag and made his way down the web of ropes to the deck below. Keenir was waiting.
"What was that?" shouted the captain.
Toroca, still rattled, held on to the mast for support. "They’re like those handheld fire tubes I told you about, but much bigger…"
"Did you see the smoke?"
Toroca nodded. "Thick and dark, like from the blackpowder we use for rock blasting. But they … they channel the force of the explosion, and use it to hurtle metal balls."
"Aye. If they’d connected, the Dasheter would have been halfway to the bottom by now. We’ll have to be careful not to let them get that close again."