"Eh? Oh. Yes, I suppose so. In any case, men Outside sometimes go after other men the way chasers pursue brunwhal."
He went silent, continued staring at the Spiderfish.
Rickli knew he had pushed as far as he dared, yet couldn't resist asking, "Would you go back now? If you had the chance?"
Hakim studied him a moment, looked back to the sky, said nothing. Rickli shrugged, surveyed the fleet again.
Thomas had been thinking about it, he knew. The man couldn't help it, no more than he could help thinking about serving in chasers, despite LaFata. The Earthman man was crippled too. It just wasn't anything as obvious as a missing kg. Perhaps it could be called a broken heartline home.
Landing, for those who had never seen it, appeared on the horizon as the most outstanding anomaly of the sea, a great hump rising from the water like the back of some mythologically huge brunwhal
"That's the Ship," Rickli told the Shipwrecked Earthman, when the thing finally became visible from helm level. Excited crewmen had been scampering up and down the rigging for hours. But not Hakim. He had a positive terror of heights.
"Strange, for a man who flew between the stars.”
"Jesus, how'd they bring her down in one piece?"
"They didn't, really." Rickli scanned the fleet. By now, every vessel had hoisted at least one black sail. Some looked like the dark birds of death Hakim had called them. The chaser crews were getting impatient, waiting for Weatherhead's permission to begin their race to the ancient wreck. "That's why we're still here."
The Vessel had been built at the close of Old Earth's Twenty-second Century, equipped with crude hyper generators, to take out certain political favorites before an anticipated collapse of civilization. Almost two kilometers long, she had never been meant to enter atmosphere. Rickli was unsure of the circumstances that had brought her to, and had forced her landing upon, Quiet Sea. Only the augurs knew. He cared only that it had been managed and that his ancestors had survived.
Thomas cared, mostly from curiosity, but could get no more from Rickli.
"Ask the augurs when we get there," Manlove kept telling him. "They'll spend a month talking to anyone willing to listen."
He thought he understood Thomas's interest. The Ship was the nearest a connection Outside as existed on Quiet Sea. A hopeless, centuries-out-of-date connection, but certainly something more concrete than shared species-hood.
Outsiders, judging by Hakim, set great store by artifacts and possessions. The Earthman still, at times, mourned some small item lost when his ship had been looted. Rickli had spread the word among the captains, but little had turned up. Everything convertible had long since been made into something useful.
Weatherhead released the chasers. With a strong following breeze they were soon dwindling in their race to the hump.
"You really miss it that much?”, the Earthman asked.
Rickli smiled. "It shows? I think it's just not being able, It was my life, you know."
"I understand." Thomas glanced at the sky. "Those old-timers had guts. People out there nowadays, in their shoes, would just give up."
"It was a chosen crew. They knew they couldn't go back before they started.".
"A definite advantage. None of us can, but few of us realize it." After a pause: "You know, I think what I miss most, more than land, is birds. They were always a symbol of freedom." His expression became faraway. Rickli reached out and, for an instant, let his hand rest lightly on the Earthman's shoulder.
Thomas had told him a dozen times that his fellows would not be coming to rescue him. They had had no idea where to look.
It was almost dark when Rifkin’s Dream dropped her stone anchors. In the morning she would move to one of the stone quays whiskering the dry land the Children of the Sky had built around their Ship.
"Seems to me," said the Earthman, gazing at the island that had taken centuries to create, "that it would've been easier to poulder. More land for less fill."
Rickli had to have it explained. Thomas told him about dikes and sub-sealevel land recovery.
"Suggest it to the augurs. They might be interested."
"I'm not sure I want to go anymore." Hakim nervously caressed his talisman. Since his narrow escape, he had kept it with him always.
Rickli smiled. Of course he would go, just as he himself would visit a chaser if invited. Every man tried to mend his heartlines.
"They've made a lot of headway since I was here last," Rickli said the following morning, as Rifkin's Dream warped in to a low stone pier. "They've doubled the land area. They didn't used to work that hard at it."
The Earthman observed without comment. Several vessels were already offloading ballast to be added to the fill. The Ship itself was completely surrounded. Curious sea people were looking it over, some lining up at an open hatchway for an interior tour.
"Rickli, it sounds defeatist, but why bother? You seem to have adapted."
"We did without for centuries. It was just a dream thing. Ships would come on pilgrimage and everyone would bring a stone as a symbolic gift. They piled up. Then the augurs built a little sawmill on the pile. It made cutting sandweg so much easier that people started thinking it might be handy to have an island just for that. So they started bringing bigger loads of stone. Didn't push it, though, because they were used to doing things the old way. Then the augurs built a bigger sawmill, that handled about half the sandweg used in the fleets, and a smelter where they turned out almost a tonne of metal a month."
He took out the knife that, with the captaincy, he had inherited from Dymon Tipsword. "This's a genuine Wintermantel. Better than anything they make here, but it took the man a month, sometimes, to make one blade."
Hakim laughed sourly. "The glories of industrialization." "It'ssobad? Look there. Places where they can take a ship out of the water for repairs. And ways where they can build a ship in a tenth the time it takes at sea, with a quarter of the men." "No. I'm a cynic. What’re those buildings down there? Beyond the drydocks and shipyard." "I don't know. They're new. Must be important, though. That's a lot of sandweg to hold out of ship construction. "Uhm. Curious." It wasn't till later that Rickli realized he had missed the specific that had caught the Earthman's eye. The buildings had glass windows. Hundreds of them, especially on top.
Partial starts on other buildings lay scattered over the manmade island. The augurs seemed to have a big program in mind. Rickli frowned. Providing the materials cost the fleets time and materials they could use themselves. He didn't understand. Unless there were rewards worth the cost, as with the sawmills and smelters.
Thomas didn't know what he wanted. Sometimes he would start for the pier, then would pace, then would return to wait till Rickli had fulfilled his duties. Then he would grow impatient again, only to repeat the cycle.
At last Rickli felt able to go. He left the ship to the duty section and, with Thomas's help, slowly advanced up the pier. He felt uncomfortable, naked, defenseless, so wide had the world expanded. And he felt dizzy. For the first time in a decade he was on footing that did not sway and roll with the restlessness of the sea.
"This isn't going to cut it," said Thomas. "I'm going to make those crutches."
They had argued about it before. Rickli didn't want them. But practicality began to alter his mindset.
"Where're you going?" he asked. Hakim was turning right, away from the rusty mountain of the Ship.
"I want to look at something."
But they never reached the windowed buildings. Rickli's leg bothered him too much. At his request they paused to rest in the shade of an oddly designed hull in the last stages of construction.
The Earthman studied it, finally asked, "How much glass do they make here, Rickli?"