Chapter 27

“Oh, you beauty, you doll, you lovely Lady Luck! Whatever would I do without you!” shouted Green. He started forward to caress the cat but, alarmed, she jumped from the table and sped across the room.

“Come back, come back!” he called. “I wouldn’t hurt a single one of your lovely black hairs! I’ll feed you on beer and fish the rest of your life, and you’ll never have to put in a day’s work!”

“What’s the matter?” said Grizquetr.

Green hugged him, then sat down in the chair.

“Nothing, except that that wonderful cat showed me how to activate the equipment. You do so by brushing your hand across this screen. See, I’ll bet you do the same when you want to de-activate it!”

He touched the screen. The whistle sounded again, the metal ball ceased glowing and the screens went dead. Once again he touched it, and life came back.

“Nothing to it. But chances are I’d never have found out how simple it was.”

He began sobering up. “Down to work. Let’s see...”

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.”