The Rings of Salammis

Kronos - Part 5

"You found it?" asked Pondar.

     "No," the nervous wizard admitted, "but I found something else. I think it might be a spaceship."

     He waited apprehensively for Pondar's reaction, but the older wizard merely scowled. "A spaceship," he said flatly.

     "I have to tell Saturn," insisted Weeden frantically. "He must know about this. It could be the Rossem Shipbuilders coming back. The first of an invasion fleet!"

     He struggled to pull himself free but the elder wizard held onto him tightly. "Why don't I have a look at it first?" he suggested. "Saturn has a short temper and he won't be pleased to be called up here on a false alarm."

     "It's not a false alarm," protested Weeden indignantly. "It's definitely artificial and it's thousands of miles out in space. What else could it be?"

     "I'll decide that for myself when I see it," insisted Pondar firmly. "Now let's go find your laboratory."

     Weeden's laboratory was in the observatory, up on the surface of Kronos. He needed gravity to grind his powders and mix his potions, and he needed access to the surface of the tiny moon to test his creation. He had moved into one of the abandoned dormitories, built for the Agglemonians who had originally conceived the observatory, but unused by the Beltharans who preferred to take quarters in the city of Kronosia, a hundred yards below. The large room, which had once housed half a dozen Agglemonian observers in the same crowded and squalid conditions experienced by sailors aboard ship, was now filled with junk and litter, therefore. The kind of detritus that most wizards took half a lifetime to accumulate. Where does he get it from? thought Pondar in amazement. He doesn't go back to Tharia that often. He must bring back armloads of the stuff after each trip!

     A bulky airlock, made of steel and with a circular handle in the oval door. stood against the external wall, beside the window that looked out over the barren, desolate rockscape and a Necklace of Vacuum Breathing hanging on a peg. Weeden must take the helm outside, he realised, to test it under the open sky, away from the interfering clutter of the observatory. It caused him to feel a grudging respect for the awkward, nervy wizard. Not everyone could look out at the too close, utterly lifeless horizon or up into the terrible, empty sky without feeling their souls shrink away in terror, and fewer still could actually walk out into that awful desolation. I suppose he has to have something to make up for his other deficiencies, he thought, not without a little amusement. Maybe that's it. He's probably spent too long out there and started seeing things. I should assign Tassley to help him for a day or two, let her work her wiles on him for a change. Probably do wonders for him.

     The Helm was sitting on its own little pedestal, beside a cluttered table made of planks of wood laid across empty beer casks; items small enough to be carried easily up the long, winding staircase from the teleportation chamber in Kronosia. Weeden had evidently failed to master the teleport spell, and now that he looked Pondar saw that there was nothing in the room too large for an averagely strong man to carry.

     The Helm was based on the helmet of a Beltharan General's dress uniform, with added silver and gold ornamentation and carefully placed garnets, all made with the precision of a master craftsman to allow it to hold the necessary magic spells. Here and there around the room were a number of similar helms, evidently earlier attempts with traces of residual magic lingering on them that prevented them from being re-used. The jewels and precious metals from which they were made would have made them worth a King's ransom in any city on Tharia, but Pondar dismissed them from his mind, just as Weeden had. If the financing from Belthar dried up, they might sell them to raise funds, but at the moment they were, so far as Weeden was concerned, just embarrassing reminders of his earlier failures.