She nursed her jaw and stared at him sulkily.
Laedo addressed the hidden controller. “We’ve been trying to report to Klystar,” he said. “But he isn’t on this world any more. He’s left. Hand control of the station over to me.”
Chatter-chatter-chatter. Parchment shuddered from the machine and floated floorward.
Must report to Klystar, the burned-in words read simply. A light came on, showing that the drive unit had been energised.
There was a slight swaying sensation which was probably visual in origin, for the scene on the viewer swivelled to make the ground a vertical wall. The station had righted itself.
The drive acted in a direction parallel to the floor, in the same manner as on a surface or ocean vessel.
The horizon slid away and vanished. In an amazingly short time, the planetoid’s atmosphere thinned and became black space thick with stars.
Erspia-2 dwindled.
Laedo slumped in one of the control board’s two chairs, asking himself if he had really thought this thing through. His main concern had been to get Histrina sway from the planetoid before she started killing again. His hope that he could actually persuade the station to give him control of the drive was, he realized, forlorn.
“Now where are we going?” he wondered out loud.
But this time, the machine didn’t answer.
FOUR
War of the Worlds
Gauzewing and her lover Flit would delight to make love in the orchards and in the bowers, and in the scented pools and wild woods, but most of all in the air, which was where they disported now, wings beating in time together as they flew at a leisurely pace through fluffy cloud and emerged into flashing sunlight. Pivoting on the breeze, Flit seized his sweetheart. They hovered with bodies pressed close together, wings quivering, squeezing in rhythmic ecstasy. Then, the final rapture spent, they parted to go tumbling and spinning like sycamore seeds, recovering to soar and dip just above the level of the treetops.
Flit alighted on a bough which presented itself like an elegantly extended hand in the roof of the forest.
Gauzewing joined him and they sauntered to the cushioned pad of a giant green leaf. There they lay down and nestled together, gazing overhead.
It was always a fascinating sight. First, easily within flying distance, were scuds of fluffy cumulus. Far, far higher, looming over everything like a vast roof, was the upper world, with its rivers, its mountains, its seas and green plains, all upside down.
The upper world had its own clouds, too, which appeared to crawl over its surface, small and white.
Often they seemed to merge with the larger clouds of the lower world, creating a criss-cross movement.
Gauzewing averted her eyes, resting her head on Flit’s shoulder. The upper world was awesome, but menacing. At night tiny flares and spots of light could be seen. These were said to be fires which the denizens of the upper world, the gnomes, used to smelt metals from ores they dug out of the ground in deep tunnels, and to make all their fiendish contraptions, such as the catapults with which they flung rocks to the lower world to try to wreak havoc. There had been none of the bombardments lately. When they began again, the fairy folk would know the gnomes were preparing to come parachuting down in another of their attempted invasions.
Hazily she watched as, approaching from the distance, a troupe of men-fairies came flying in formation, bearing spears and bows. For a while they wheeled about, practising stabbing with their spears and shooting arrows. All men regularly had to spend a few hours training in the militia, in case the gnomes came back. But their manoeuvres were half-hearted. Soon they would descend into the foliage to lounge and rest.
Then Gauzewing jerked her head up and stared in shock. Beyond the flying warriors, soaring swiftly on, came a huge round shape. It glinted in the light of the two suns, clearly made of metal. She had never seen anything like it, and as it neared it swelled and swelled, growing huger and huger.
She trilled a scream. “Gnomes! Gnomes!”
Flit was staring too. He seemed paralysed. Overhead the militia, responding to the orders of their sergeant, whose voice floated down faintly, turned to face the monster. But their nerve soon deserted them, and they fled.
Laedo, when the projector station came in sight of what he came to think of as Erspia-3, screwed up his eyes in astonishment.
The planetoid was like a split pea, divided right through its equator. The two hemispheres were poised in space, separated by about ten miles.
He had little time to study the phenomenon in detail, because the station was already sailing into the gap.
Two immense flat landscapes were revealed, each inverted in relation to the other. Standing on either, one would see an upside-down land in the sky. Laedo thought of the ancient fairy-tale of Jack the Giant-Killer.
His respect for the engineers of the planetoid cluster—or engineer, if it really was the work of a single being—increased still further. Whoever had sculpted Erspia-3 was supreme in the use of inertial fields, able to keep the two halves of this world in position by means of invisible pillars of force.
The projector station had selected one of the two landscapes and was skimming below what now became the ‘lower’ cloud layer. A lush Eden spread out before Laedo’s gaze. It was a little reminiscent of Erspia-2, but with less colour. These were not orchid forests, but verdant woods with immense, spreading trees.
“I wonder if there are people here,” Histrina murmured, looking over his shoulder.
“We’ll find out soon, I imagine. If there are, you had better behave yourself!”
He frowned. A flock of birds, or some other flying creatures, had appeared ahead. He blinked. For a moment they looked almost like flying humans. Then they appeared to become startled and flew off.
A mass of treetops approached. The station gyrated, swerved, then made for a clearing through which there ran a silvery stream. It was effecting a more controlled landing than it had managed on Erspia-2.
Gently, with hardly a bump, it set down right way up.
“No need to check the air,” Laedo murmured. “There will be people around somewhere. All these worlds have been designed for human habitation.”
“People…” Histrina echoed greedily. She licked her lips.
“I told you to behave yourself!” Laedo snapped. “I won’t stand for any more of your crazy behaviour!”
She pouted. “But I want to have fun.”
“Don’t we all.” Laedo inspected the scenery on the viewscreen. The trees were gargantuan, much bigger than on Earth or Harkio. They were spacious, too. One seemed to be able to peer through the forest for an indefinite distance. The enormous boughs spread and intertwined in all directions, fit to make pathways through the air. The leaves looked pretty near large enough to bear a man’s weight.
The ‘sky’ did not appear on the screen. Probably he could see it by raising the viewing angle, easily done by fiddling with the control slides, but he decided to reserve that pleasure for his first excursion outside. It must be quite a sight.
“You know something? I’ll bet people round here live in the trees. They’re big enough. I don’t see any tree houses, though. Perhaps we’re in an uninhabited part. Okay, Histrina, let’s take a look outside.”
He led the way to the hatch. This time there were no complications in reaching the ground. As soon as he opened the hatch the stairway extended itself.
They stood on the platform and gawped. Above them reared the ‘sky’, but it was not a sky. It was another landscape poised upside down, like a map stretched out overhead. The sight was stunning in its stupendousness but somehow not oppressive. After a while, Laedo thought, one might cease to become aware of the other terrain.