The night was warm. The darkness was complete and total, for seldom did the stars appear visibly in the skies of this planet, so thick were the silvery mists that enveloped the World of the Green Star. The roar of hunting beasts, the hiss of predatory reptiles, the shriek of their startled prey, soon rendered the impenetrable darkness hideous. But so great was our fatigue from the cumulative tension and exertion of the day, that before long we sank into slumbers so deep that we slept undisturbed till daybreak.
According to the chart I had from Hoom, over three thousand farasangs lay between the Dead City of Sotaspra and the Yellow City of Ardha.
The farasang is a unit of measurement unique to the Laonese race, and I find it impossible to translate the term into its nearest Terrene equivalent. This inability to render farasangs into miles is due largely to the peculiar modes of travel common on the World of the Green Star.
Consider, if you will, a civilization that does not dwell upon the continental surface, but miles aloft, in jewel-box cities built in the branches of colossal trees. Some of these cities are three or four miles above the surface of the planet; indeed, I believe the Secret City of Siona’s band to have been at least five miles above ground level.
On the planet of my birth, for humans to have dwelt in comfort at such mountaintop heights would have been a physical impossibility, as the atmosphere of the Earth thins out with height and becomes too rarified and bitterly cold to sustain human life after a few miles.
But conditions are different on the World of the Green Star. The position of trees and other vegetation in the biosphere of the Earth is to replace oxygen in the atmosphere. Beasts and birds and men absorb oxygen from the air and breathe out carbon dioxide. But vegetation inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.
On Earth the trees grow only to minimal heights, the tallest being the mighty Redwoods of California. But on the World of the Green Star the trees grow four or five miles into the sky, and the size and quantity of their leaves is of comparable enormity. A single tree, on the Green Star World, may bear a dozen times the leaf-surface of a Terrene forest, and produces that same multiple in the quantity of oxygen it releases into the air. Moreover, the oxygen-exhaling leafage is mostly to be found at the greatest heights, among the tops of the trees. On Earth, the thin and rarified stratosphere begins at a comparable height; but on the World of the Green Star, the thickest and most oxygen-rich layer of the atmosphere is found at that height.
Thus it is not really strange that the Laonese cities are built many miles above the surface of the peculiar planet, nor that they encounter no difficulty in breathing at a height comparable to the peak of Mount Everest.
Now, to display what bearing these matters have on the nature of the farasang as an untranslatable unit of distance-measurement, consider again what I have already stated as regards the fact that the inhabitants of this world never, or never willingly, at any rate, descend to the continental surface of their planet. Hence they have no conception of a distance-measurement based on geographical interval. On Earth, a mile is the measurement of ground-surface between two positions. But the Laonese farasang bears little relationship to such a concept, being a measurement of the time-interval between places.
It is, quite simply, the average flying-time between two places. I suppose its relationship to miles could be established by a laborious mathematical calculation, but I have no way of establishing the comparable data. Thus, to say that Sotaspra is three thousand farasangs distant from the city of Akhmim the Tyrant is to describe the time required to fly between the cities, figured according to the average flying-velocity of the most common Laonese steed, which is the zaiph, the enormous and very beautiful dragonflies the people of this world have tamed and broken to the saddle in lieu of horses.
And lacking any precise method to measure the passage of time on a world devoid of clocks or wrist-watches, I cannot even render the term into its Terrene equivalent in minutes or hours. Based on my own experience, I have concluded to my satisfaction that a farasang is approximately forty minutes of flight; but as the skysled flew many times more swiftly than any zaiph, I cannot even be certain of that. To further complicate matters, the period of daylight on the World of the Green Star seems to me considerably longer than the average of twelve hours wherein we divide a day on Earth. I gather that daylight is at least sixteen hours long on the Green Star World; but here, too, I am unable to be exact. Because of the cloud-cover, and the heavy canopy of foliage, the Laonese cannot with any particular exactitude locate the position of their sunstar. The solar illumination becomes greatly diffused as it passes down through the eternal veil of silvery mists that envelops the planet; it diffuses yet more as it filters through the hundred-mile-wide masses of lucent gold foil foliage each mountain-tall tree bears up.
I gave up all attempts to calculate the distance we traveled in our flight. The mental system of the Laonese—and of the Kaloodha, as well, it seemed—have something in the nature of a built-in biological clock, whereby they can estimate with considerable accuracy the passing of farasangs and of fractions of farasangs. The body of Karn of the Red Dragon people doubtless contained such a natural timepiece as well, but I, the intruding spirit, did not know how to “read” it.
At least, I assumed this to be the fact. It must have been so, or else the very employment of the unit of distance would be of no particular use to them, and they would have been forced to invent some mechanical means of measuring time to justify their use of the unit.
It was, at any rate, an interminable succession of diurnal flights and nocturnal moorings before we came into the vicinity of Ardha. During the flight we became much better acquainted, as you might imagine, and there was some slight difficulty about this which I suppose I should have anticipated; but I did not, and at first it annoyed and rather hurt me that my companions seemed to prefer each other’s company to mine and very frequently conversed, as it were, “over my head.”
It suddenly came to me why this should be so. I was a grown man and had played a leading role in the destruction of Sarchimus and in our escape from the Scarlet Pylon.
But, in the eyes of my companions, of course, I was only a scrawny, half-grown boy!
I have had occasion to mention earlier in this narrative some of the difficulties peculiar to the juvenile body I now inhabited; like any boy, I tended to be shy and inarticulate when among my elders, such as the imposing Sarchimus. Now, because of the adolescent body in which my spirit had found its home, I found myself to a certain degree excluded from the conferences and discussions that occurred between Zarqa and Prince Janchan.
Zarqa, of course, had endured for countless millennia, and in his eyes even the prince was a child. But Janchan was at least of mature, responsible age, whereas I was but a wild boy from a primitive tribe. Thus at length, although I came to understand their tendency to talk over my head, discussing matters and making plans without bothering to consult me, treating me at times as if I weren’t even there, I could not help being mildly humiliated by the experience. I feel certain that both Zarqa and Janchan would have been shocked and disturbed had they once guessed how this natural tendency of adults to converse with adults hurt and humiliated me. I know that Zarqa held a very special affection for me, as Karn of the Red Dragon had been the first human to sympathize with his unfortunate lot and to make a kindly gesture toward him. And Janchan was unfailingly polite to me, and surely considered us friends and comrades. Nonetheless, it rankled—nor was there anything I could do about it, barring a foolish attempt to explain to them that I was a wandering spirit from a distant planet who had chanced to enter and animate a boy’s fresh cadaver.