Soon they were both able to move the vessel accurately and make it perform complicated maneuvers within their line of sight, and then to send it into orbit and bring it down again. With the other chart to guide them, they learned how to position the vessel during the night at various ground locations specified by their instructor and, in daylight, above different seaports and cities where they were able to remain invisible by interposing it between the sun and would-be observers on the ground When they were able to do that consistently with a placement error of less than twenty paces, they were very pleased with themselves until Ma'el told them gently mat they had passed the first and easiest examination.
"… When we were in the clear and open space around your moon," Ma'el went on to explain, "I introduced you briefly to interdimensional travel. This is a rapid and safe form of travel provided you ensure that you do not materialize the ship inside a planetary body or a sun. In future, however, you will be called on to move through the hyper dimension, not over a distance of thousands of miles but by a few paces. You must learn how to move the vessel with precision into an enclosed space, the inside of a building, for example, or into a buried cavern without having to demolish the intervening walls. This would be necessary if you wished to conceal the vehicle from the local inhabitants or, if they proved to be unfriendly, to call it to your assistance for the purpose of rescue and evacuation.
"When you are ready we will begin…"
They began in the late spring, alternating the lessons between them day by day, but late summer had given way to midwinter and the desert was cold in the daylight hours and frigid at night before the old man pronounced them ready for their final examination for precision of control. Sinead took hers first.
Declan had lost count of the times they had each sent the vessel through the solid masses of the tall, rock pinnacles and the strange, flat-topped mountain that dominated their landscape. Each time the operation had been accompanied by a sharp detonation and an expanding circle of blue light as the vessel entered its self-created fold in space beyond one face of the obstruction and emerged on the other, with a comfortable margin for error on either side. During the final stages of the examination, however, the allowed clearances were gradually reduced to no more than a small fraction of the vessel's overall length, no more than a few paces, beyond the entry and exit positions.
Sinead, her hands and arms moving with such smooth and beautiful precision that her bones might have been made of water, was able to do it. Declan was not.
Avoiding Sinead's eyes and feeling his face hot with shame, Declan said, "Ma'el, I don't think I can do this. I'm afraid of rematerializing the ship inside the rock and damaging it" He held up his hands and then indicated the chart on the ground. "The full-size control screen on the ship is difficult enough for me, but I'm too ham-fisted to operate a half-sized one like this, at least, not with the precision you require, and I do not want to try. I'm sorry, in this matter I am craven."
Ma'el inclined his head. "The effect of one solid body materializing inside another would not only destroy both objects," he said gently, "it would cause a detonation which would remove a large proportion of the crust of your world, allow the core magma to overflow onto the surface and convert the atmosphere and oceans into superheated steam, and destroy all forms of life on the planet…"
He heard Sinead join him in a quick intake of breath, but before they could say anything, Ma'el went on calmly, "…The vessel's systems include a fail-with-safety device that is designed to prevent such a catastrophe from happening, but by its very nature it is as yet untried. And you are in no sense craven. There is a difference between cowardice and caution, which is the recognition and acceptance of your personal limitations. Caution saves many of the lives that unthinking bravery wastes. You are excused this test without blame or reproach, so you should ease your mind.
"Sinead," he added, "return the vessel to us here, then both of you rest and tomorrow you will break camp and prepare for departure…"
–
They flew eastward over the storm-tossed ocean, without seeing any sign of the fabled Adantis after which it had been named, and crossed the west coast of Hibernia to come to a stable hover above the city of Sligo. They had positioned themselves between the late afternoon sun and the gaze of any curious city dwellers and so had been rendered invisible, but they themselves could see far and wide through air washed clear by a recent rain squall. Declan's eyes roved inland and eastward across the gray expanse of Loch Gill to the Lachagh Hills, north to the long ocean rollers that broke white against the base of Roskeragh Point, southward to the Slieve Gamphs, shivering in wonder that he was able to view the land in this godlike fashion. To the west he could clearly see An Leathros, the hill above the strand that the Saxon visitors called Strand Hill, whose gentle, seaward facing slopes bore the tombs of the past kings of Connaught, and above them on the dark mountain of Knocknareagh, the burial chamber of the famed and infamous Queen Maeve herself, whose exploits in war were surpassed only on the scented battleground of her bed. Looking at the burial markers, their westward facing stone surfaces orange-gray in the setting sun, Declan shivered again without knowing why.
"What reason," he said to Ma'el, "have you for coming to this place of the heroic dead?"
"I have already said that it is a place of power for me,"
– the old man replied in his usual inscrutable fashion, "where Iwill be able to renew myself and my magic before we set off again on the journeys that will enable me to complete my work. My buried laboratory is here."
"What is a laboratory?"
'Tonight you will enter one," Ma'el replied, "so that a description in words would be wasteful of our time." He pointed suddenly. "Sinead, your target is a circle thirty paces in diameter that is centered at the intersection of the lines joining those two, pale-colored grave markers, there and there, and a perpendicular line raised to that dark, square rock, just there…"
"It looks like an ordinary stretch of grassy hillside," Sinead said.
"… Our vessel's dock and servicing mechanisms," he continued, "as well as my laboratory are under that intersection point. We will land at night using our dark light system. If anyone should chance to see us, well, this area has witnessed many strange sights over the years. Horseless flying chariots, screaming and hissing banshees crossing the night sky, the flight of the Fairy King to name but a few. The witness would remain silent because his words would not be believed.
"Compared with yesterday's examination in piloting," he ended reassuringly, "your three-dimensional space for maneuver is generous."
Sinead nodded and Declan looked down again at the standing stones, thinking about his unhappy past and of the things that might have been had his father not disowned him, then he shrugged angrily and said, "It is not a place where I shall ever lie."
Sinead turned to look at him for a long moment, her eyes blinking rapidly as if she was feeling a sudden sadness. But before she could speak, Ma'el raised a hand to point through the control canopy and she returned her attention to the scene below.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ma'el Report. Day 112, 197…
The technical aspects of the training are reaching completion so that their further instruction has become a process of general education and discussion which, inevitably, leads to questions that I am unwilling to answer.