The six TV windows showed them the north, east, south, west, above and
below. As the island was resting upon solid dirt there was, of course,
nothing to see beneath.
"We'll remedy that. But first I think we'd better see if these screens
give expanding and contracting views."
He fiddled around with the levers. When he depressed the second one,
the room jumped. Hastily replacing it in neutral, Green said, "Well,
we know what that one does. I'll bet the people outside think they had
a slight earthquake. They've seen nothing yet. Hmmm. Here, I think, is
the one I want."
He twisted a knob on the right-hand arm. All the TV's began narrowing
their field of vision. Reversing the knob, however, made them spread
out their view, though the objects in them, of course, became smaller.
It took him five minutes more of cautious testing before he felt
justified in beginning operations. Then he raised the island off the
ground about twenty feet and rocked it back and forth. Lady Luck leaped
for his lap and cowered down in it. Grizquetr, bracing himself against
the table, turned pale.
"Relax, kid," called Green. "As long as you're going along on the ride
you might as well enjoy it."
Grizquetr grinned feebly, but when his father told him to stand behind
him so he, too, could learn how to operate, he gained color and
confidence.
"When we get to Estorya I may have to leave this chamber, and I'll need
somebody who can see me through the TV's and answer my signals. You're
the candidate. You may be only a kid, but anybody who can calmly talk
of slipping a knife through a man's ribs has what it takes."
"Thank you," breathed Grizquetr in all sincerity.
"Here's what I'll do," said Green. "I'll roll this island back and
forth until the soldiers are thoroughly panicky and seasick. And the
walls around the cave are tumbled down. Then we'll lower to earth again
and give the rats a chance to desert the ship. But we're no sinking
ship, not us. After everybody that's able has fled to the plains, we'll
take off at top speed for Estorya."
Fascinated, the boy watched the screens and saw the soldiers run off
into the early morning light, yelling, their eyes and mouths bulging
with horror. Some, wounded, crawled off.
"I feel sorry for them," said Green, "but somebody's got to get hurt
before this is over and I'd rather it wasn't us."
He pointed to the 'scopes, which still indicated the ring of towers.
"As long as this island was on automatic it couldn't pass those
inhibitories. But I've by-passed that with this switch. Now, we go
ahead, and not over the towers, as we could easily do, but through
them. I think we've got the weight behind us."
There was a slight shock, the rooms trembled, then the towers before
them were gone and they were speeding across the plain. Minute by
minute Green increased their rate, until he thought they must be making
about a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour.
"Those dials are probably telling me my speed," he said to Grizquetr.
"But I can't read their alphabet or numerical system. It doesn't
matter."
He laughed as he watched 'rollers wheel hard aport or hard to starboard
in a frenzy to get out of their way. The rails and ratlines were lined
with white faces, like rags of terror fluttering in the breeze of the
island's passage.
"If there were time to send a message, I imagine we'd encounter the
whole Estoryan fleet," said Green. "What a battle that would be!
Rather, what a massacre, for this craft is built for eating up whole
navies."
"Father," said Grizquetr, "we could be king over the whole world, we
could rule the Xurdimur and take tribute off every 'roller that sailed!"
"Yes, I suppose we could, you little barbarian, you," replied Green.
"But we won't. We're using this for just one purpose, rescuing the
Earthman and your mother and sisters. After that...."
"Yes?"
"I don't know."
He fell into a reverie as the plain beneath raced past, the white
sails of the 'rollers blooming from small patches to great flags, then
dwindling as swiftly.
Finally, rousing from his thoughts, he began to explain a little to the
boy.
"You see, many thousands of years ago there was a great civilization
that had many machines that would seem to you even more magical than
this one. They traveled to the stars and there found worlds much like
this one, and they put colonies upon them. They had swift ships that
could jump across the vast abyss between these worlds and so keep in
fairly close touch.
"But something happened, some catastrophe. I can't imagine what it
could be, but it must have happened. While it would be interesting to
know the cause, all we can know is the effect. Travel ceased, and as
time went by the colonies, which were probably rather small to begin
with, lost their civilization. The colonies must have been rather
dependent upon supplies shipped to them, and they must have had a
limited number of highly trained scientists and specialists among
them. Anyway, whatever the reason, they relapsed into savagery. And
it was not until ages had passed that some of these colonies, utterly
without memory of their glorious heritage, except perhaps disguised
in myth and legend, attained a high technology again. Others stayed
in savagery; some, like your world, Grizquetr, are in the transition
stage. Your culture is roughly analogous to the ones that existed on
Earth between 100 A.D. and 1000 A.D. Those dates mean nothing to you,
I know, but let me assure you that we present-day Terrestrials regard
those times as being, well, rather hazardous and, uh, unreasonable in
their conduct."
"I only half-understand you," replied the boy. "But didn't you say that
nothing of the wisdom of the ancients survived on your planet? Well,
why had it done so on ours? These islands must be the work of the old
ones."
"Correct! And that's not all. So is the Xurdimur itself."
"What?"
"Yes, it's obvious to me that this planet must once have been a
tremendous clearing-house and landing field for spacecraft. These
plains couldn't be natural; they must have been leveled out by
machinery. A laboratory-born grass was planted that had all the
characteristics needed to hold the soil together and keep erosion
away. Plus the fact that the islands themselves were, you might say,
caretakers, and kept the whole field spruced up.
"Gods! I can imagine what a traffic this planet must have had to build
such a landing-field! Ten thousand miles across! The mind boggles
before the thought. They must have done things on a big scale then.
Which makes it all the more difficult to figure out how they could have
come to ruin. Will we ever know what force wrecked them?"
Grizquetr, of course, had even less of an answer than Green. Both
were silent for a while; then they cried out simultaneously when the
pointed tips of the white towers surrounding Estorya glittered upon the
horizon. One of the screens began flashing a series of cone shapes that
indicated the towers.
"If the island were still on automatic it would be forced to go around
the entire nation," said Green. "But I'm running it now, and we're
paying no attention to those towers."
"Knock 'em down!"
"That's just what I intend to do. But not right now. Let's see. Wonder
how high we can go. Only one way to find out. Upsydaisy!"
He pulled back the lever and the island began rising, though still
maintaining its horizontal attitude.
"The ancients, like us moderns, knew how to build anti-gravity
machines. And they also must have kept building their spaceships in the
conventional rocket-form long after there was any need for it. Perhaps,
though, they did so in order for the islands to have a more definite
radar image. Maybe. No one really knows."
He spoke to himself, meanwhile glancing at the screen which showed him
the plains and the city of Estorya beneath, ever-dwindling as their
height increased.
"Do me a favor, Grizquetr. Run out to the cave's mouth and tell me if
those walls have fallen over. And on your way back, close the door to
this room. It's going to get colder very quickly, and the air will be
thin. But I imagine that this room is equipped with automatic heat and
oxygen. If it isn't I want to find out now."
The boy began running back. "The walls are all shaken down, all right!"
he said, breathlessly. "And the Fish Goddess fell over, and her head
almost blocks up the cave's mouth. I wriggled through without any
trouble. I think you can squeeze through."
Green felt a little sick. That possibility had not occurred to him.
It would have been ironic if the statue had completely blocked the
entrance and he'd had to stay inside until he starved to death. The
Estoryans, of course, would have considered his death a case of
poetical justice.... No, he wouldn't have died, either! He'd just have
gone back to the controls and rolled the island over on one side until
the statue's head came loose. But what if the big stone blocks from
the tumbled wall had fallen down behind the statue so that they wedged
her too tightly to be released? He sweated at the thought and glanced
fondly at the black cat. He wasn't superstitious, not at all, but it
seemed to him that his luck had been better since she'd adopted him. Of
course, that wasn't the scientific attitude to take; nevertheless he
felt comforted just knowing she was around.
By now, the whole nation of Estorya could be encompassed in one glance.
And the sky was getting darker.
"We're high enough." He stopped the island. "If anybody didn't get off,
he must be dead by now, the air's so thin. And I was right. We do have
automatic heat and air-providers. Very comfortable in here. I only wish
we had something to eat."
"Why not lower us to the height where I can go out and find food in the
garrison's kitchens?" said Grizquetr. "Nobody'll be alive to stop me."
Green thought that was an excellent suggestion. He was very hungry,
for he always had to eat for two, himself and the Vigilante. If the
symbiote within his body provided him with more than normal strength
and powers, it also demanded fuel on which to operate. And, deprived
of food, it would survive by living upon Green's tissue. A Vigilante
wasn't all advantage; it had its dangers.
He lowered the island to about two thousand feet, set the controls on
neutral, then decided that it would be safe to go out with the boy.
Just as he got to the doorway, however, he began feeling uneasy and
wondering what he would do if, somehow, the door closed and he couldn't
get it open again. That would be a fine situation, to be stuck two
thousand feet in the air, and no parachute!
Perhaps he was silly, absurdly apprehensive, but he wasn't going to
take any more chances. Grinning sheepishly, he told the boy to go on by
himself. He'd decided to study the controls more closely and think out
his strategy in finer detail.
When Grizquetr returned with a basket loaded with food and wine, Green
swore at himself for his moment's weakness, then forgot it. After all,
discretion was the better part and all that, and he was only playing it
smart.
Greedily, he devoured the food and drank half a bottle of wine, knowing
the Vigilante would use alcohol before food and that little of it would
remain in his bloodstream before being consumed. Between bites, he told
Grizquetr what he planned.
"We'll descend as soon as we're finished eating. I'll write a note, and
you'll drop it over the side upon the steps of the palace. The note
will inform the King he'd better release his prisoners, unharmed, just
outside the windbreak. There we may easily pick them up and then take
off like the proverbial big bird. If he refuses we will proceed to
lower the island upon the Temple of the Fish Goddess, crushing it and
her jewel-encrusted golden idol. And if he still isn't convinced we'll
then smash the palace, not to mention toppling over the entire ring of
towers around the country. Of course, before we drop the note we'll
knock over a few anyway just to show him we're not bluffing."