As a result of the discovery, Ruff and Widget, the giant hamsters, had been saved from the dinner table. Gaye promised never to lock herself in a room again, and there was enough ammunition for the giff to have the gnomes practice with their crossbows for several days without threatening the whole supply. Gomja had shaken his broad head when he had told Teldin, Aelfred, and the others of the situation, putting it down to the gnomes' ability to have their left hands not know what their right hands were doing at any given time.
"One last volley, lads!" Gomja ordered, cranking his enormous bow's string back. A few firearms, too, had been among the supplies in storage, and Gomja had taken all of them from the moment he'd laid eyes on them. "The scorpion's too close for us to stay in the open. We're going to spin the ship to put the scorpion beneath us and hope we can drop something on it from the jettison before they get aboard! It's going to be blood and fire, but they'll not try to take us without dying for it! Are you with me?"
The gnomes, who had been peaceful maintenance workers only a month before, gave out a mighty cheer and waved their shields and crossbows in the air. Gomja gave them a wide, savage grin, his huge blue face flushed with anticipation of the coming battle. He gave a quick look at Teldin. "Last chance to get below, sir!"
"Not a chance," Teldin answered. He thought of the days when he had been a mule skinner in the War of the Lance, a naive soldier who hunted for glory and found only death and sorrow. There was no glory even now-but there was the chance to save his friends, and he meant to pay back a part of the debt owed him by the forces that had hunted him.
Gomja nodded with satisfaction. "Prepare to fire!" he said, raising his crossbow once again.
Teldin aimed and thought he saw something coming at him from the scorpion. The object flashed by-and a moment later cracked as it broke against the deck. A half-dozen or more other missiles also slammed into the ship. A gnome to Teldin's left gave an agonized cry and fell over the railing, gone. The other gnomes gasped in horror.
"Steady!" Gomja said in a commanding voice. "Now, fire!"
Teldin looked down the sights of his crossbow-and felt a peculiar clarity of thought. Time slowed down. It's about time the cloak started working again! Teldin thought jubilantly.
Teldin's senses were now sharpened to nearly unbearable levels. Suddenly he saw the scorpion ship as if it were only twenty yards away instead of hundreds. He heard odd noises, the tiny sounds of the joints in his body moving and the rush of blood in his ears. He smelled his own sweat, the unwashed bodies of the gnomes, the heavy scent of the giff, even the aroma of the wood of his crossbow. He was drowning in a torrent of sensations.
He held the crossbow steady, quickly selecting a target: an ogre crewing a ballista on the scorpion's main deck, below the ship's upraised tail. Teldin fixed the ogre's face in the sights, then squeezed the trigger. The crossbow released its bolt with a lazy thump.
Time returned to normal. The flood of sensations died. Teldin lowered the crossbow and tried to see what he'd done, but the scorpion ship was too far away.
Teldin turned to say something to Gomja, but a bright light from the bow of the ship distracted him. The titanic whirlpool on the crystal sphere was right on them. The ship was flying through the center of it, into a pure blue sky.
Teldin gaped. The giff and several of the gnomes saw the sight, too, and stopped moving.
Directly ahead of the Perilous Halibut, in the midst of the blue sea, was a huge, bright yellowish-white star. Teldin could look at it directly for only a second before shielding his eyes. It appeared to be twice as large as other suns he had seen. At the same moment, Teldin had a peculiar feeling that everything was slowing down. He realized the ship had dropped to tactical speed. What was going on? he wondered. The ship behind them wasn't within range to do that!
"Oh, wow!" came Gaye's voice, directly behind Teldin. "Oh, wow, it's beautiful!"
Teldin looked back, startled to hear her voice-and a blast of wind hit him from the bow, building rapidly in strength. Teldin staggered and crouched low, then grabbed the railing, as did almost everyone else. Bolts and weapons stacked on the deck swiftly blew away, falling behind the ship in a shower, few crossbows and shields were lost as well, but fortunately none of the gnomes. Three gnomes clung to the deck ballista. Gomja merely stood firm, hunched down a bit as the white lapels and flaps on his uniform snapped in the wind.
Teldin could hardly believe it-they'd entered an atmosphere upon entering the crystal sphere! No wonder they were at tactical speed. The ship's speed continued to drop, allowing a degree of movement on the deck, though Teldin hardly trusted himself to stand. He looked aft again-and saw the inside of the crystal sphere they had just entered.
The scene behind them could have come straight from his homeland on Krynn. He looked down on an endless green countryside, lined with roads and checked with cultivated fields and clusters of small houses. Forests stretched away to all sides, with a few round lakes dotting the landscape.
There was no sign of the portal, however. No phlogiston. No scorpion ship. Just grassy hills and a dirt road.
Teldin gaped, unable to imagine what had happened.
People lived on the inside of the sphere itself.
"I've never seen anything like this." Gaye sighed, her eyes as big as cartwheels as she clung to the low railing. She stared aft again, then gasped. "It's a gate! Here they come!"
Teldin looked back and saw, for the briefest moment, a huge, circular opening into the phlogiston around the scorpion ship. Then the gateway vanished, and the scorpion ship was driving up from the ground to catch them in the air.
Not only did people live on the inside of this crystal sphere, Teldin realized, but they would never be disturbed by entering vessels. The ships must have been gated past the crystal sphere and directly inside it. But then how did anyone ever get out of this sphere?
"Shields up, if you've got them!" Gomja bellowed. "Helm, turn us over!"
Teldin thrust all other questions aside. "Get back below!" he said, suddenly realizing Gaye's danger. "How'd you get up here, anyway?" He reached out to grab her and force her back below, noticing an open hatchway in the vertical "shark's fin" of the ship. So that was it.
Gaye squirmed out of his reach and ran against the wind toward the bow. Teldin started to give chase, then gave up. If she wanted to stay outside and get shot, it wasn't his problem.
He looked back just as the black ship began rotating. Suddenly he saw the tail catapult on the scorpion fire again. The rock it hurled was right on target.
"Flatten!" Gomja cried, ignoring his own advice. "Hang on to the railing!"
The Perilous Halibut continued to rotate. Teldin threw himself flat again, eyes fixed on the rock as it came at him- and flew by to the left by a matter of twenty feet at most. Teldin felt his stomach churn with terror.
"Jettison!" Gomja shouted. "Jettison away!"
There was a deep thumping sound that ran throughout the ship, and a spray of metallic shards and debris was launched from the rear port of the ship, spreading out in a glittering cloud as it flew toward the scorpion. Teldin noticed no major change to the orcish ship itself as the jettison struck home; the scorpion was now close enough that he could see the shrapnel bounce off its hull. He saw no casualties being taken by the shot, however. Then the scorpion vanished below the deck's "horizon," hidden by the Perilous Halibut's own mass in case the ores fired again.