But now we would turn the productions of their own imaginative genius against them. For if only a flying galleon of Zanadarian design could penetrate the remote and cloud-wrapped fortress of the Sky Pirates, we had here the means by which it might well be possible to achieve such a goal.
“Ingenious it is―but can it be repaired?” I asked urgently. The aged philosopher pursed his lips judiciously, then nodded firmly.
“I am confident of it,” he assured me. “Look here, komor: the catapult missile sheared the control cupola cleanly away from the deck surface―but it did not breach the hull. The supply of buoyant vapor remains thus intact; it only requires that we reconstruct the pilot cupola anew and reconnect the cables.”
“Can this be done?”
“Without question it can,” he responded with a vigorous nod. “I shall assemble my students and disciples into a work crew, and we shall if necessary press into service every carpenter and wheelwright and mechanic in all of Shondakor. You will have your flying galleon in ten days, that I promise you!”
To a man whose beloved is the helpless captive of implacable foes and who is helpless to fight to free her, ten days can be an eternity. Such was the case with me.
I passed the time, however, in training a force of Shondakorian warriors in the techniques of flight. There were half a hundred and more of these gallant swordsmen, volunteers all, who were more than willing to risk their lives in the rescue of their beloved princess. Indeed, virtually every fighting man of the Ku Thad had volunteered to serve in the crew of the sky ship―even the aged warriors and those who bad been sorely wounded in the battle that freed the Golden City from the grasp of the Black Legion. Lukor and Valkar and I had examined these aspirants, choosing the youngest, the most daring, the most skillful fighters, thus narrowing the selection down to a hand-picked regiment of seasoned veterans, disciplined and fearless and utterly dedicated to the rescue of Darloona.
These men, some of them, would serve at the wheels. The interior hull was hollowed, and there the hands of many men were needed to lend their strength to the wheel system that manipulated the jointed wings. Koja trained these men in the technique, while Valkar and Lukor and I trained the others in the manifold ship duties they must master if we were to navigate the skies of Thanator and arrive safely in the city of the Sky Pirates.
By keeping busy at such important tasks as these, I managed to pass the ten-day eternity more painlessly than I might otherwise. It still seemed like an eternity to me; but it did pass.
And at last we were ready to depart.
I had effected one slight improvement in the designs of the unknown Zanadarian genius, for I planned for an eventuality even he had never contemplated.
I had caused to be erected on the foredeck a catapult of my own design to be used in defending our craft against the actions of another galleon.
The need for such a precaution had never occurred to the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, for they were alone and unequaled in their mastery of the skies of Callisto. No enemy nation possessed the knowledge or the ability to design similar craft, and thus weapons for a ship-to-ship aerial battle were unheard of and unknown.
When I displayed my sketches for such a device to Zastro his keen eyes sparkled with appreciation, for he instantly comprehended the uses to which the weapon would be put. At the time he remarked that not only would the Zanadarians have no defense against the actions of my catapult, but they would be helpless to fight back.
Since we would be pitting the resources of our one lone flying ship against the entire aerial navy of the City in the Clouds, the slight technological advantage given us by the possession of this unique weapon might well prove invaluable. And thus his craftsman built the engine from my plans and installed it upon the foredeck at the prow.
My knowledge of so antiquated a weapon may seem surprising―for no terrene army has employed such a device since the Middle Ages. But in my boyhood I was fascinated by the ingenious military weapons perfected by the ancient Romans, and my father, himself an engineer, encouraged my enthusiasm by aiding me to design and build model catapults and ballistae. Some of these miniature war engines were designed to fire arrows, others projected stone missiles. The skills and the knowledge of these antique weapons had never left me, and upon this occasion I had cause to be thankful to whatever benign and foresighted divinity had implanted in my youth the enthusiasm for this hobby.
For my design I settled upon a slight modification of the standard Roman siege catapult. The modern meaning of the word “catapult” differs from the ancient usage. Today we think of a catapult as a curved wooden bar, bent under pressure, which, when released, propels a stone ball held cupped at the extremity of the bar. This weapon fires up, the projectile arcing high, to bypass a city wall and fall straight down upon the buildings of the besieged city beyond the wall. This design was pointless for my purposes.
The ancient siege catapult, however, was quite different. It fired an arrow or other missile horizontally and resembled more a crossbow than what we think of as a catapult. This design was the one I selected. The ancient Roman catapult consisted of a sturdy base whereon was mounted a rectangular frame. The horizontal bottom-beam of this frame held a long wooden trough in which the barbed missile was lodged. This trough could be elevated or lowered by the adjustment of a simple ratchet wheel.
This was the weapon I caused to be constructed on the prow deck of our flying galleon.
The standard Roman catapult of this design could fire a twenty-six-inch arrow, weighing half a pound, and had an effective range of four hundred yards.
My modification of this design permitted the use of a heavier arrow of forged steel weighing about six pounds. The effective firing range was considerably reduced, but a metal arrow was required for the simple reason that I intended to employ my projectiles for the purpose of punching a hole through the laminated paper hulls of enemy sky ships, to damage their buoyancy. To this purpose I had the ironsmiths of Shondakor laboring at their forges, making for me a quantity of heavy steel arrows whose length and barbed shafts made them resemble nothing less than a sort of fantastic harpoon.
We experimented with the device and perfected our technique. The effective range of the weapon was about three hundred yards, which would enable us to fire upon Zanadarian craft at a distance beyond the range of the enemy’s archery. Still, I was amazed that the catapult could fire its harpoons to so great a distance. The mathematics simply did not work out, and I was at a loss to explain the mystery. The simple answer may have been that the Thanatorian woods were more resilient than their terrene equivalents or that the tension cords I used had a far greater elasticity than anything the ancient Romans had been able to employ in similar weapons. Indeed this was so, for we employed thick cords made from the “spiderwebs” found in the jungles of the Grand Kumala.
These monster spiders were the size of small dogs.
The Ku Thad word for the species was ximchak. Their web strands were the thickness of heavy fishing-line and could be drawn incredibly taut without fear of snapping. From the thickness of these strands, I determined I would prefer not to encounter the spinners thereof. I have nothing in particular against insects―as witness my friendship for the arthopode, Koja―but a spider the size of a small dog is simply too much spider for my taste.
At any rate we installed our weapon and camouflaged it with a collapsible frame over which we stretched a bit of canvas. And we rested secure in the knowledge that we possessed a weapon that would prove an admirable deterrent in case we were pursued by the Sky Pirates.
It was a clear windless day when we launched forth on our venture. The Thanatorian year consists of nothing describable as seasons, so I cannot further detail the time. It may have been spring, summer, fall, or winter, for aught I could ascertain. The timelessness of life on Thanator reminds me inescapably of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ descriptions of the world of Pellucidar, an imaginary region beneath the Earth’s crust.