The Gem Lords

The False Cleric - Part 2

When Saturn came back aboard he ordered Thomas Gown to the ship's external walkway, outside the hull, to see if he could sense any Rossemian magic, and he was just about to enter when Tana Antallan arrived.

"May I join you outside?" the shae asked.

"Of course," Thomas replied. "Want to stretch your legs?"

"I wish to see the stars. The worthy Saturn made a strange comment to the Captain when he came back aboard. He said the stars looked 'wrong'."

"Wrong?" said Thomas curiously.

"That was his word," Tana replied. "I had already formed that opinion from seeing them in the scrying mirror but I thought this strange universe might be affecting its operation. I need to see them with my own eyes."

"Okay," the wizard replied as they took Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing from the locker inside the airlock and placed them around their necks. "Tell the truth, I'd welcome the company. Being out there always scares the willies out of me."

Thomas opened the inner door, led the way in and closed the inner door when the shae was also in. Then he opened the hole in the outer door to let the air out. The procedure was by now so familiar that Thomas was barely aware of the change in sound quality as the air pressure dropped, and he hardly noticed the drumming of his heart in his ears as the airlock reached full vacuum. When the shae man opened the outer door the younger wizard preceded him out with a well practised tug on the rings set in the wall, preparing himself for the graceful swing towards the handrail where he would anchor himself with one hand, floating gently like a balloon while he took his first look around.

Instead, he fell flat on his face with a blistering curse and Tana Antallan, following close behind, fell across him, hitting his head on the heavy ballista, still lashed in its storage position. Thomas's mouth shaped the words "What in the name of..." as the shae man rolled off him, feeling his head for any sign of blood. "What happened?"

"There is gravity here!" said Tana Antallan. The vacuum failed to carry his words but Thomas read his lips. "It feels like normal Tharian gravity, but how is that possible?"

Thomas cimbed back to his feet, rubbing at a bruised knee, and stamped his feet a couple of times, feeling the weight of his body. "Gravity!" he muttered. "Where'd that come from?" He walked around on the walkway, the first time he'd ever been able to do so, and he was surprised by how the sensation of gravity changed his perception of the ship. The curve of the hull was now definitely above him. A huge sphere poised to roll over and crush him, but a worse sensation was waiting for him when he went right up to the railing and looked down, at the stars below him.

Every time before when he'd done this, there'd been no sensation of down. The stars were just 'across' from him but in a lower direction. Now, though, he had the terrifying sensation of standing on the very edge of a precipice that went down and down and down... A wave of vertigo swept over him. His hands locked on the railing until his knuckles hurt and he was frozen in place by sheer, paralyzing terror...

Hands gently but forcefully prised his fingers away from the railing, and then the shae man took him back inside the airlock and closed the door, shutting out the terrifying vision of depth and emptiness. Tana Antallan stared with concern into Thomas's face, and the wizard saw him mouthing words at him, asking him if he was alright. Thomas swallowed back the bile that filled his throat and took a moment to regain his composure. Then he nodded back at the shae man, patting his shoulder reassuringly. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then went back outside, this time warning himself not to look down.

He remembered a briefing he'd attended shortly after his first involvement with the Rossem Project, when the Ship of Space had still been under construction. A wizard had been describing what the finished ship would look like and pointing out various features of its design on a wall chart that showed it in cross section. Thomas remembered him saying that the railed walkway would have gravity, so that people would be able to walk around on it even when the ship was in space, and that the same magics would protect it from extremes of temperature. Problems caused by the various magics of the ship interfering with each other had meant that some changes had had to be made, though, and one of the changes was that the gravity field had had to be confined within the ship's hull, leaving the walkway weightless.

Was it possible that their passage through the portal had jolted the ship's magics somehow, restoring the gravity field to its original specification? It must have happened after Saturn came back aboard. He hadn't fallen flat on his face because of unexpected gravity. Perhaps it took a few moments for an object from another universe to begin obeying the local laws of physics. He tried to ask Tana Antallan, but mouthing the words and making hand gestures was totally inadequate for communicating such a difficult concept. It would have to wait until they were back inside.

In the meantime, he concentrated on his magic sense. All the magics of the Jules Verne made a clamour that was impossible to ignore, but he knew from experiments with the Rossem meteorite that he could single out the unique 'flavour' of Rossemian magic even in the midst of dozens of conventional magics. He concentrated hard, therefore, straining for the slightest trace of it in nearby space.

He was still doing so when the airlock door opened again and Titus Drusero, the new Flight Leader, emerged with two of his men. They strode confidently out, having been warned by Tana Antallan back in the airlock about the presence of gravity outside the ship, and the three soldiers manned the ballista, setting it up in its ready configuration and loading a bolt. Outside the other three airlocks, other teams of men were manning the other ballistae, and Thomas wondered what they would do if an enemy ship approached from directly above or directly below. The ship's defences were designed to defend the ship against threats within a planet's atmosphere as they dropped off or recovered the scout ships, and such threats had been expected to come from alongside, not from above or below. In deep space, though, three dimensional thinking was required, and this had been lacking in the men who'd designed the Jules Verne. If another ship of space were ever built, however, Thomas had no doubt that it would be designed differently.

Tana Antallan also emerged from the airlock again and stood by the railing, looking out at the stars. Thomas saw his brow furrowing with concern, and it was a concern that he shared. Saturn was right, he saw. The stars were different. Wrong. He felt none of the sense of wonder that he felt when he stared up at the friendly stars of Tharia. These stars gave him the strangest feeling of falsehood, as if they weren't really stars at all, which was ridiculous. They were points of light in the sky, which is what stars were. How could they be anything other than stars? They reminded him, strangely, of the illusory stars that appeared on the domed roof of deck one at night. Part of the outdoor forest illusion that helped the ship's shae folk to endure confinement within a steel ball. It disturbed Tana Antallan so much that he hurried back inside, his tiny, frail form trembling and shaking.

Thomas closed his eyes, trying to ignore the stars, and concentrated on his magic sense. He could sense no trace of Rossemian magic, though, which proved only that there was nothing within several miles of them. Elsewhere, things might be different, but they wouldn't know that until they went and looked.

So far, though, they'd found nothing that threatened the ship. Found no reason not to proceed with their mission. The wizard went back in through the airlock, therefore, and went to give his report to the Captain, but before the massive steel door closed behind him he turned and looked back at the strangely alien stars, and he shivered with a fear he couldn't understand.