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.
They were soaring over the southernmost extremities of the Great Plains of Haratha, and seemed to be heading almost exactly southeast. If they continued in this direction they would fly over the Black Mountains, which Koja knew to be infested by the Yathoon Hordesmen. Eventually, he also knew, they would approach the regions of the South Pole. Little was known about the polar regions, save that they were clad in snow and ice.
Were they to continue on their present course until they reached the polar regions, snow crystals would accumulate on the aircraft, forming ice, which would drag the ornithopter down to a disastrous collision with the frozen plains. Either that―a swift, terrible death in the crash―or a slower, more agonizing, indefinitely prolonged death awaited them, as they froze to death by gradual but inexorable degrees.
Neither prospect sounded very inviting.
Koja kept these grim ruminations to himself rather than trouble the boy with them. But he knew that their only real hope lay in bringing the Lankar-jan down to a safe landing now―or somehow manage to turn it around. In regard to this second possibility, it seemed all but impossible: the steering mechanism was hopelessly disarranged. And the ship could not be steered manually, by any conceivable manipulation of the ailerons or the tailfin rudder.
If at all possible, he meant to land safely before they reached the Black Mountains. If they were to crack up among the southern peaks, there would be no way to elude capture by the warriors of the savage Horde.
Koja knew all too well the secret that had lain hidden among those grim and ominous peaks for immeasurable ages. He knew also with what fierce tenacity, with what alert and tireless vigilance, the Yathoon warriors guarded all modes of access to those mountains, wherein reposed the ultimate secret of their race, and that portion of the surface of Thanator they deemed most sacred.
By mid-morning the forward velocity of the Lankar-jan unaccountably slowed to a mere fraction of its former speed. This unexpected respite cheered Koja immensely, as the reduction in their speed delayed the fateful hour when they would reach the frowning ramparts of the mountain wall and gave him more time in which to accomplish the required miracle of somehow bringing the aircraft down in one piece.
It was Taran who explained the new slowness of their flight. With the engine shut off, the vessel continued to accelerate through momentum alone, somewhat boosted by the strong tailwinds they had experienced all night. The friction of the atmosphere sufficed to retard the velocity of the ornithopter, and the winds had died to a gentle breeze.
Perhaps I should clear up one point here that may be puzzling. While the great flying ships of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, and their recent offspring, the aerial galleons of the Sky Navy of the Three Cities, are true ornithopters, the little scoutcraft, such as Taran’s gig, were not; but I am so accustomed to the employment of this term that I find it difficult to continuously monitor my pen.
An ornithopter, in fact, is a flying vessel that navigates the firmament on the same motive power as that which enables a bird to fly: that is, by flapping its wings. On the ships of the Sky Navy, hinged and jointed vans, manipulated by an ingenious contrivance of wheels and cables, accomplish this action. But the mechanism is far too cumbersome and complicated to be used on the smaller gigs and scoutcraft. They have wings, of course, for stability in flight and maneuverability, but these are fixed and rigid.
The true ornithopter is one of the most interesting inventions of the human imagination. Leonardo da Vinci sketched plans for them in his secret notebooks, but it was reserved for an unknown, unsung genius of Zanadar to create them in actuality, and even then they were only made possible by the fortuitous discovery of a natural gas akin to helium or hydrogen, found among the White Mountains of the northern hemisphere of Callisto.
By noon the wind had died completely, and the Lankar-jan drifted alone in the heavens, making no particular progress in any direction, but coming no closer to the surface of Thanator.
As I have already mentioned, Koja could have “bled” some of the levitating gas from the twin pontoons by merely unscrewing the standcocks for a time. He was not yet prepared to do this because the gas, once released into the atmosphere, could not be replaced. And the scoutcraft, with its flying abilities left unimpaired, was their only real hope of returning to Shondakor with any swiftness or safety.
To attempt the long journey north on foot would mean traveling overland through Yathoon country, which was perilous in the extreme. It would also mean a lengthy and fatiguing journey of many korads. It seemed foolish to disable their craft, thereby making it an absolute necessity that they walk back to Shondakor, and Koja was determined not to do this unless all else proved hopeless.
For the moment, then, they were reprieved.
But they were still marooned in the sky.
Taran, filled with the ebullience of youth, was considerably more optimistic about their chances than was Koja. He pointed out that they could very well be rescued at any time now.
“‘Cause last night folks must have noticed that we weren’t there,” the boy chirped. “Fido, tool Also, my captain will have seen the berth roster by this morning, an’ he’ll know I didn’t get the Lankar-jan back to the docks like I was s’posed to. He’ll know something’s wrong! And then they’ll just come looking for us…
Koja made a noncommittal reply; privately he felt events would not progress quite as simply as that. The palace was a huge place with many courtiers, visitors, and officials, and it was easily possible to go days without running into Valkar or Ergon or Tomar and Ylana, or without anyone thinking something might be wrong because you didn’t see them.
In time, of course, Koja knew quite well that he would be missed, and that eventually his friends would become worried and then alarmed over his prolonged and unexplained absence. And the same was true of Taran―sky cadets cannot just vanish into nowhere without their officers noticing the fact.
But cadets do occasionally take off and go on the Shondakorian equivalent of A.W.O.L., he knew, for boys will be boys even on Callisto. And there was absolutely no reason for anyone to connect Koja, Taran, and Fido! Three separate disappearances were no more remarkable than one, and even if a search for the missing three was to be launched, no one could guess where they were or in which direction they had gone. Koja estimated that they had come at least one hundred korads from Shondakor aboard the runaway scoutcraft by this time. They had flown for about ten hours, he assumed, before the engine was shut off and the tailwind died, leaving them adrift. That meant that their average velocity had been about seventy miles an hour, which was really better than could have been expected, since the gig’s motor was still a fairly primitive device not able to maintain great speed for long.
No one would reasonably expect them to have come so far, even by aircraft.
And to search an area on the surface of the jungle Moon for one hundred korads in every direction, with Shondakor as their starting point, meant there were an awful lot of square korads that must be combed to find them.
Such a search, even a concerted one with many parties out, would consume days, probably weeks. And, again, Koja reminded himself of that dire factno one could reasonably expect them to have come this far.
It looked quite hopeless.
Daylight had warmed the air and they no longer suffered from the cold winds, but they were by now very hungry, having missed dinner, breakfast, and lunch, and would soon become hungrier, with no prospect of another meal in sight.