The Worlds of the Sheaf

Lost in Space - Part 1

     "What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?" asked Borlin, staring out at the infinite stars with a strangely vacant look in his eyes. He looked almost like a man who was beginning to slip into a hypnotic trance, and was only aware of this on a distantly remote level from which he was losing the struggle to stay awake.

     "A flashing light," replied Matthew who was in a similar mental condition but was trying to give the appearance of alertness for the sake of discipline. "I don't know what it is or why it's so important, Callan didn't tell me. He probably doesn't know himself. We've just got to watch out for a flashing light and report in the moment we see it."

     "Well, at least we can talk to each other," the squad leader said, returning his attention to the stars surrounding them. "This is one of Saturn's better ideas."

     He was referring to the senior wizard's idea of surrounding the entire ship with a Globe of Force that could be filled with air, allowing crewmen to float around on the railed walkway without needing to wear Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing. The Globe of Force was generated by the Orb of Skydeath Protection, an artifact that had been designed to protect the ship against a strange force, found only in space, that was lethal to living creatures. While the magics that powered it were still being researched, though, Saturn had considered the possibility that the Ship of Space might come under attack from the hostile natives of any world they visited, and he had added some magics of his own that allowed the orb to generate other kinds of defensive shields.

     In other words, he had turned it into an Orb of Proofing, similar to the ones that had helped to defend Fort Dirk and Fort Bow during the Fourth Shadowwar. Similar to the one that Matthew himself had helped obtain for Fort Battleaxe and that had been vital in holding back the Shadowhordes during the war. That orb had been used to seal the city when the Ilandians had been forced to abandon it, and the central part of the city had been left completely impenetrable for ten long years until the magics powering the orb had finally failed. Sealing a city apparently placed a much heavier burden upon the orb than its normal usage. A fact that hadn't been known at the time.

     The Jules Verne therefore boasted some quite formidable magical defences, but it wasn't until the ship was actually in flight that Saturn had realised that one particular defensive spell could be put to an unexpectedly practical use. The Jules Verne was therefore now surrounded by a shell of air about six feet deep, wide enough that Matthew couldn't have reached the edge of it even if he leaned right over the railing with his arm outstretched to its fullest extent. He wasn't entirely happy with it, though. He kept remembering Thomas telling him on several occasions that magic was essentially unpredictable and that any spell stood a chance of failing without warning at any time. Also, he kept thinking about the wizards tending the orb, and how the spells it generated could be cancelled with a single word. What if that word was spoken by accident?

     He remembered his first visit to the city of Kronosia during the war. His discovery of the park caverns that had been opened to vacuum by the impact of a comet fragment two hundred years before and that had still been filled with the corpses of the people who had died there. He remembered their twisted, agonized postures. How they had crowded around the airlocks in panicked desperation as they felt the air around them growing thin. How they had trampled over each other as the agony in their lungs stripped the veneer of civilisation from them, turning good, decent people into stampeding animals.