Renegade of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #8
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Renegade of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
Far from his adopted home, the Golden City of Shondakor, Koja, self-exiled insectoid of the Yathoon Horde, has blundered into the savage land he had renounced, accompanied only by little Taran, ward of Prince Jandar. Lost in the treacherous scarlet plains, the two are hurled to separate, unnamable fates —Taran forsaken in shackles, along with the lovely Princess Xara, while the renegade Koja is locked on a perilous course of vengeance for the evils done to his clan. All destinies collide at the Great Yathoon Games in the hidden valley of Sargol — the impenetrable citadel girdled by a seething mote of flames.
In the spine-tingling tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lin Carter again transports us to a strange and sublime landscape pulsating with the flash of swords, secret splendors, and ever-lurking danger.
Then―
“There it is again!” the boy exclaimed. Then, sorrowfully, “Now it’s gone.”
Koja said nothing, his. chitinous features expressionless, his huge glittering black eyes inscrutable. He stared at the rushing leagues of grassland passing by beneath them. The light which Taran had glimpsed might well have been the campfire of a traveler or a huntsman, or firelight gleaming through the window of a farmhouse. There was really no way of making sure …
However, Koja thought he knew.
They flew on through the night. After another hour or so, smaller and dimmer moons began to ascend the skies. The first to lift above the horizon was a dim redgold moon called Kuavad, or Semele, followed before long by the stark white disc of Daravad, or Leda.
After the Gold Moon and the White Moon had risen, tiny Antiope and Danae, and the all-but-invisible spark of Taygete climbed into the sky. These are the outermost of the moons of Jupiter, and lie out beyond the orbit of Callisto itself, and they are very much smaller than the giant inner moons, some of which, like Ganymede or lo or Callisto, are large enough to be considered small planets.*
Their light was too feeble to visibly augment the moonlight.
But then the dimness of the moonlit night of Callisto gave way to a ruddy, yellow flush like a dimmer dawn as the giant bulk of Jupiter floated up over the horizon, soon occupying nearly a quarter of the sky. Vast and round, its tawny yellow-orange surface banded with belts of ruddy ochre, it glared down at the flying craft with its angry red eye, like some obese and dreadful divinity. It is from the presence of that eye, the Great Red Spot in the southern hemisphere, that the Callistans drew the name Gordrimator―which translates literally as “World of the Red Eye.”
By the brilliance of Jove’s light, which made the night almost as luminous as day, Koja could see the landscape clearly, and his heart sank within him as he realized that his worst fears were all too well founded.
Ahead of them, directly in the path of their flight, the scarlet meadows were silver-threaded by the meandering paths of twin rivers.
It was the twinkle of momentary reflections of the many moons in the narrow waters of the twin rivers that had made the flashing lights which the keen eyes of Taran had glimpsed.
The boy had never seen the twin rivers before, and looked down at them with surprise and curiosity.
“What are they, Koja-chan?” he inquired interestedly.
His features unreadable, his voice emotionless and without inflection, Koja explained that they were the Juru-ajand and the Akka-ajand. The boy screwed up his features in puzzlement at this answer, so the Yathoon warrior patiently explained further.
Shondakor is built on the eastern shore of the Ajand, a river that flows north to Soraba and empties into the Corund Laj. But south of the Golden City, the stream divides into twin rivers known to the Thanatorian geographers as the Greater and the Lesser Ajands.
“Then we’re flying south, is that it?” inquired Taran.
“Almost precisely southeast, I should say,” corrected Koja solemnly.
He did not at that time elaborate on his information. He saw no reason to worry the lad more than he was already worried.
But he could have remarked that the reason why Taran did not recognize this part of Thanator was that the Ku Thad seldom penetrated this region.
For the Ku Thad knew that it was a very dangerous place.
The southlands of Callisto are the dominion of the great nomad Hordes of the Yathoon. These savage warriors exist in perpetual enmity, both with each other and with all of the other inhabitants of Callisto.
The Yathoon nation is divided into five great Hordes or Clans. Nominally, each Horde is independent, and is ruled by its own lord, an akka-komor, or high chief. But actually the five Hordes are under the absolute command of the mighty Arkon, who is the sole and only Warlord or Emperor of the Yathoon nation as a whole.
Little is known in cities such as Shondakor or Tharkol or Ganatol of this mysterious and enigmatic personage.
But although Koja had lived for years in Shondakor, he was not a Shondakorian.
He was a Yathoon; and he knew all too well how dangerous and despotic was the cruel and absolute monarch of the Yathoon nation―into whose territories they had inadvertently blundered!
The erratic flight of the Lankar-jan continued on. Driven by its whirling rotors and lifted upon the invisible wings of the wind, the little aircraft arrowed on ever deeper into the unknown and unexplored southlands of Callisto.
Aboard, Koja―a renegade self-exiled from his true Clan, and thereby under perpetual sentence of death and Taran―a Shondakorian youth in the Sky Navy of the Golden City―flew to an unnameable fate.
For each of them, discovery by one of the Yathoon Hordes meant death.
And, with their aircraft out of control, there was nothing they could do about it.
But far behind them, to the northwest, a burly and indefatigeable beast clung doggedly to their trail.
Bozo the othode knew that his friends were in danger. And, as long as a spark of vitality remained in his massive body, the faithful Callistan hound would pursue that trail.
Never before had the loyal othode followed a trail he could neither sense nor smell. Never, since the very dawn of time, had an othode of Callisto attempted to track a flying thing.
But Bozo refused to yield to circumstance, or to permit the novelty of this adventure to faze him.
He would follow the trail of the Lankar-jan through the skies into the unknown southland until the last breath left his body and Death itself stole the final atom of strength from his indomitable and courageous heart.
4 Marooned Above the Plain
Neither Koja or Taran got any sleep that night. For that matter, neither did Fido.
The othode pup was cold and miserable and hungry. Long before this unseemly hour he would have dined ravenously from a bowl of ground meat mixed with warm milk and crept into his bed of straw in the palace stables to curl up cozily by the warm and breathing bulk of his mighty sire, Bozo.
None of these pleasurable events, to which Fido was comfortably accustomed, had occurred. And, while Fido did not know for certain, he sensed dimly that he had done something to twist awry the normal sequence of events. He crouched miserably on the floor of the cockpit, whimpering plaintively to himself, the nap of his purple fur roughed by the cold winds of this altitude.
He was very uncomfortable. And in his heart of hearts the son of Bozo resolved never―never―to mess around with flying ships again, if he could possibly avoid it.
Koja and Taran were cold and miserable and hungry. The boy was less cold than he might have been at this height, for the Sky Navy had taken into consideration such hazards of flight when they had designed the uniform issued to sky cadets. His tight blue trousers were snug and warm, his tunic was made of heavy cloth, and his silvered sky-boots were lined with the Callistan equivalent of fleece. And his cape, although rather short, was woven of warm blue wool.
Nor did Koja suffer particularly from the cold. His chitinous armor was proof against the chill winds of this height, and the unique circulatory system of his arthropod anatomy protected him as well.
But they were both hungry, and there was nothing that either of them could do about that.
With dawn, everything looked brighter. Koja could see well enough by the light of day to climb back into the tail assembly and disengage the engine, which had a set of alternate controls designed for manual use.
This reduced their airspeed, although nothing much could be done about the height at which they flew. True, standcocks were affixed to both of the pontoons and a quantity of the levitating gas wherewith the pontoons were charged could be bled off. However, once the hydrogen-like gas had been discharged into the atmosphere, it could not be replaced. And the aileron and rudder controls, and those which governed the pitch and tune of the rotor blades, by whose combined means the little gig could have been brought down to the surface, were out of operation.