Zavotle sighed. “I wish that somebody had brought science texts from Land, Toller—we have lost most of our store of knowledge, and nobody has had time to start rebuilding it. I have to go by memory, but I believe that Farland is twelve million miles from us at the nearest approach, and forty-two million when it’s at the opposite side of the sun. Naturally, we would have to wait for it to come near.”
“Twelve million,” Toller breathed. “How can we think of flying a distance like that?”
“We can’t! Remember that Farland moves. The ship would have to travel at an angle to meet it, so we have to think about flying perhaps eighteen million miles, perhaps twenty million, perhaps more.”
“But the speeds! Is it possible?”
“This is no time to be faint-hearted.” Zavotle took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pouch and began to scribble figures. “Let us say that, because of our human frailties, the outward journey must be completed in not more than… urn… a hundred days. That obliges us to cover perhaps 180,000 miles each day, which gives us a speed of… a mere 7,500 miles an hour.”
“Now I know you are toying with me,” Toller said. “If you considered the journey impossible you should have said so at the outset.”
Zavotle raised both hands, palms outward, in a placatory gesture. “Calm yourself, old friend—I am not being frivolous.
You have to remember that it is the retarding of the air, which increases according to the square of the speed, which holds our airships to a snail’s pace and even limits the performance of your beloved jet fighters. But on the voyage to Farland the ship would be travelling in almost a vacuum, and would also be away from Overland’s gravity, so it would be possible for it to build up quite an astonishing speed.
“Interestingly, though, air resistance could also aid the interplanetary traveller. If it weren’t for the necessity of returning we could plunge the ship into Farland’s atmosphere, jump clear of it when the speed had been reduced to an acceptable level, and descend to the surface by parachute.
“Yes, it’s the necessity of coming back which forms the main stumbling block. That is the nub of the problem.”
“What can be done?”
Zavotle sipped his wine. “It seems to me that we need… that we need a ship which can divide itself into two separate parts.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely! I visualise a command station as the basic vessel. Let’s call it a voidship… no, a spaceship… to distinguish the type from an ordinary skyship. Something the size of a command station is necessary to accommodate the large stores of power crystals and all other supplies needed for the voyage. That ship, the spaceship, would fly from the weightless zone to Farland —but it could never make a landing. It would have to be halted just outside the radius of Farland’s gravity, and it would have to hang there, stationary, until it was time for the return journey to Overland.”
“This is like having wedges driven into one’s brain,” Toller complained, struggling to assimilate the shockingly new ideas. “Do you see the spaceship dispatching something like a lifeboat to the planetary surface?”
“Lifeboat? That’s the general idea, but it would have to be a fully fledged skyship, complete with a balloon and its own power unit.”
“But how could it be carried?”
“That’s what I was getting at when I said the spaceship would have to be able to divide itself into two parts. Say the spaceship is made up of four or five cylindrical sections, just as a command station is now—the entire front section would have to be detached and converted back into a skyship for the descent. There would have to be an extra partition, and a sealable door, and…” Zavotle shuddered with pleasurable excitement and half-rose from his seat. “I need proper drawing materials, Toller—my mind is on fire.”
“I’ll have them brought for you,” Toller said, motioning for Zavotle to sit down again, “but first tell me more about this dividing of the spaceship. Could it be done in the void? Would there not be a great risk of losing all the ship’s air?”
“It would certainly be safer to do it within Farland’s atmosphere, and easier as well—that’s something I need to ponder over. It may be, if we are lucky, that the atmosphere is so deep that it extends beyond the radius of Farland’s gravity, in which case the operation would be relatively straightforward. The spaceship would simply be hanging there in the high air. We could detach the skyship, inflate the balloon and connect the acceleration struts—all in a fairly routine manner. It is something which should be practised in our own weightless zone before the expedition starts.
“On the other hand, if the spaceship has to wait outside the atmosphere, the best course might be for it to descend briefly to a level where the air is breathable, and only then cast the skyship section adrift. The skyship would of course be falling while its balloon was being inflated, but—as we know from experience —the fall would be so gradual that there would be ample time to do all that was necessary. There is much to think about…”
“Including air,” Toller said. “I presume the plan would be to use firesalt?”
“Yes. We know it puts life back into dead air, but we don’t know how much would be needed to keep a man alive during a long voyage. Experiments will have to be done—because the quantity of salt we’ll have to transport could be the principal factor in deciding the size of the crew.”
Zavotle paused and gave Toller a wistful look. “It’s a pity Lain isn’t with us—we have need of him.”
“I’ll fetch the drawing materials.” As Toller was leaving the room his memory conjured up a vivid image of his brother, the gifted mathematician who had been killed by a ptertha on the eve of the Migration. Lain had possessed an impressive ability to unveil nature’s hidden machinations and predict their outcome, and yet even he had been seriously in error concerning some of the scientific discoveries made on the first flight from Land to the weightless zone. The mental image of him was a reminder of just how presumptuous and reckless was the plan to fly through millions of miles of space to a totally unknown world.
A man could very easily die attempting a journey like that, Toller told himself, and almost smiled as he took the thought one step further. But nobody would ever be able to say it had been a commonplace death…
“I’m trying to decide what irks me most about this Farland business,” King Chakkell said, gazing unhappily at Toller and Zavotle. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m being manipulated… or if it’s the sheer lack of subtlety with which the manipulation is being conducted.”
Toller put on an expression of concern. “Majesty, it dismays me to hear that I’m suspected of having an ulterior motive. My sole ambition is to plant the flag of…”
“Enough, Maraquine! I’m not a simpleton.” Chakkell smoothed a strand of hair across his gleaming brown scalp. “You prate about planting flags as though they were capable of taking root unaided and producing some manner of desirable crop. What yield would I get from Farland? A meagre one, I’d say.”
“The harvest of history,” Toller said, already beginning to plan the Farland project in detail. Chakkell’s display of peevishness was a sure indication that he was about to give his consent for the construction and provisioning of the spaceship. In spite of his show of doubt and indifference, the King had been seduced by the idea of laying claim to the outer planet.
Chakkell snorted. “The harvest of history will not be gathered in unless the ship successfully completes both legs of the voyage. I am by no means convinced that it will be able to do so.”