And yet all of them marched forward readily enough and gave the impression they would fight, though I knew that as likely as not half or all would run at the first shot. I sought and got a position well in the rear of their straggling column, so that I could better judge the number of deserters. There seemed to be none, and most of these sailors turned warriors appeared to find the prospect of a pitched battle a welcome change from their usual drudging.
As always in every sort of war I have known, there was delay in place of the expected fight. For a watch or more, we trooped through the bewildering interior of the ship, once entering a vast, echoing space that must have been an empty hold, once halting for an unexplained and unnecessary rest, twice joined by smaller parties of sailors who appeared human, or nearly so.
To one who had directed armies, as I have, or taken part in battles in which whole legions withered like grass cast into a furnace — again, as I have — it was a great temptation to look on our marchings and our halts with amusement. I write “temptation” because it was one in the formal sense of being wrong because false. The most trivial skirmish is not trivial to those who die in it, and so should not be trivial in any ultimate sense to us.
Let me confess, however, that I surrendered to that temptation, as I have surrendered to many another. I was amused, and still more amused when Sidero (plainly hoping to put me in a position of safety) created a rear guard and ordered me to take charge of it.
The sailors assigned to me were obviously those he felt least able to bear themselves with credit when our ragtag force went into action. Of ten, six were women, and all of them women far smaller and less muscular than Gunnie. Three of the four men were undersized and, if not actually old, at least well past the zenith of their strength; I was the fourth, and only I had a weapon more formidable than a work knife or a steel crowbar. On Sidero’s orders, we walked — I cannot say marched — ten chains to the rear of the main body.
Could I have done so, I would have led my nine hands, for I was eager that any of the poor creatures who wished to desert should do it. I could not; the shifting colors and shapes, the floating light of the ship’s interior, still bewildered me. I would have lost all track of Sidero and the main body at once. As the best available alternative, I put the most nearly able-bodied seaman ahead of me, told him what distance to maintain, and let the rest trail along behind us if they would. I admit to speculating on whether we would so much as be aware of it, should those ahead make contact with the enemy.
They did not, and we were aware of it at once.
Looking past my guide, I saw something leap into view, hurl a spinning, many-pointed knife, and spring at us with the heavy-shouldered bounds of a thylacosmil.
Though I do not remember feeling it, the pain of my burn may have slowed my hand. By the time I had my pistol clear of the holster, the jiber was hurtling over the unlucky seaman’s body. I had not increased the pistol’s setting, but Sidero must have; the gout of energy that struck the jiber blew him apart, pieces of his dismembered body flying by my head in a paroxysmal flock.
There was no time to glory in victory, even less to aid our guide, who lay at my feet drenching the jiber’s hydra-knife with blood. I had no more than stooped to look at his wound than two score jibers surged from a gallery. I fired five times as fast as I could press the trigger.
A bolt of flame from some contus or war spear roared like a furnace, splashing blue fire across the bulkhead in back of me, and I turned and ran as fast as my bad leg would permit for half a hundred ells, driving the remaining sailors before me. As we fled, we could hear the jibers engaging the rear of the main body.
Three pursued us. I shot them down and distributed their weapons — two spears and a voulge — to sailors who declared they knew how to use them. We pressed forward past a dozen or more dead, some of them jibers, some Sidero’s.
A whistling wind sprang up behind us, nearly snatching the tattered shirt from my back.
Chapter XIV — The End of the Universe
THE SAILORS were wiser than I, putting on their necklaces at once. I did not understand what had taken place until I saw them.
Not far from us, the explosion of some dreadful weapon had opened the gangways to the void, and the air that had been held in this part of the ship was rushing out. As l got my necklace on, I heard the slamming of great doors., a slow, hollow booming, like the war drums of titans.
No sooner did I snap the catch of my necklace than the wind seemed to vanish, though I could still hear its song and see mad swirls of dust storming off like skyrockets. Around me, only a tempered breeze danced.
Creeping forward — for we expected at any moment to come upon more jibers — we reached the spot. Here if anywhere (I thought) I would be able to see enough of the structure of the ship to learn something of its design. I did not. Shattered wood, tortured metal, and broken stone mingled with substances unknown to Urth, as smooth as ivory or jade but of outlandish colors or no color. Others suggested linen, cotton, or the rough hair of nameless animals.
Beyond this layered ruin waited the silent stars.
We had lost contact with the main body, but it seemed clear the breach in the ship’s hull would have to be closed as soon as possible. I signaled the eight remaining hands of what had been the rear guard to follow me, hoping that by the time we arrived on deck we would find a repair gang at work.
Had we been on Urth, the climb up the ruined levels would have been impossible; here it was easy. One leaped cautiously, caught some twisted beam or stanchion, and leaped again, the best method being to cross the gap with each leap, which would have been madness elsewhere.
We achieved the deck, though it seemed at first that we had achieved nothing; it was as unpeopled as the plain of ice I had once surveyed from the highest windows of the Last House. Huge cables snaked across it; a few more trailed upward like columns, still mooring, far aloft, the wreckage of a mast.
One of the women waved, then pointed to another mast, whole leagues away. I looked, but for a moment could see nothing but a mighty maze of sail, yard, and line. Then came a faint violet spark, wan among the stars — and from another mast, an answering spark.
And then something so strange that for a moment I thought my eyes had deceived me, or that I dreamed it. The tiniest fleck of silver, leagues overhead, seemed to bow to us, then, very slowly, to grow. It was falling, of course; but falling through no atmosphere at all so that it did not flutter, and falling under an attraction so weak that to fall was to float.
Hitherto, I had led my sailors. Now they led me, swarming up the rigging of both masts while I stood on deck, entranced by that incredible spot of silver. In a moment I was alone, watching the men and women of the command that had been mine flying like arrows from cable to cable, and sometimes firing their weapons as they flew. Still I hesitated.
One mast, I thought, must surely be held by the mutists, the other by the crew. To mount the wrong one would be to die.
A second fleck of silver joined the first.
The shooting away of a single sail might be an accident, but to shoot away two, one after the other, could only be intentional. If enough sails, enough masts, were destroyed, the ship would never reach its destination, and there could be only one side that wished it should not. I leaped for the rigging of the mast from which the sails fell.