"As far as I can see, the storm is pushing us almost exactly on course to where we were going," he said. "Although—"
Just then the light outside dimmed like a theater right before the curtain went up.
"—the trip is likely to be a bit lively. Ground speed around seventy mph."
"Here it comes," Tyler said, watching the onboard radar. "Just about—"
The Vepaja pitched forward, and then went tail-down. Mark felt his stomach lurch as the fall put him in free fall for an instant; then weight crushed him down into the cushions. A white noise roar overtook the howl of the wind, the sound of heavy rain drumming on the fabric; then a louder harmonic set his teeth shivering in sympathetic vibration as pea-sized hail began to lash it as well. The world outside was pitch-black now, except for the flashes of lightning—and those were coming at intervals of about four seconds. Marc tore off the earphones as a blasting hash of static nearly deafened him.
A second later, lightning flashed again, close enough to make the small hairs on his arms stand up and sparks jump nearby. The screens went crazy for an instant and then blanked. The Vepaja spun end-for-end, and then went through a corkscrew that threw them all against their harness like sacks of flour as the great flexible framework screamed in protest. Far away, something snapped with a monstrous tunngggg sound.
"Structural failure in ring seven! Hull fabric's going!" Tyler shouted. "Upper starboard quadrant. Vitrac, Blair, Whitlock!"
Marc hit the quick-release catch of his harness, then gripped the seat arms with paralytic strength as a rolling heave left his feet pointing at the opposite bulkhead for an instant. When down returned to the floor, he cast loose and clawed his way back to the exit.
"Ladies first!" he called, as Blair braced himself on the other side of the door. "Jadviga!"
The Englishman gave him a curt nod as they braced themselves with one hand on the bracket and the other outstretched to grab. The EastBloc officer let go of her seat and made a staggering run across the deck. Both men's free arms snapped out like mechanical grabs and caught her by the shoulders of her green overalls. Another surge tried to sweep her backward and into the forward windows of the control cabin; Marc felt his fingernails rip and his shoulder-joints crack as his hand closed with desperate strength. Then the Vepaja pitched back, and they half-threw her into the corridor. She tumbled bruising-hard against the wall, grabbed a bracket, and began to haul herself hand-over-hand towards the midships ladder.
"Hi, guys!" Cynthia called, half-heard through the roar of noise all around them.
Then she leaped. The timing was impeccable, but the airship spoiled it with an unexpected buck, and she slowed as if invisible bungee cords had suddenly snapped taut. Marc released his handhold, pivoted, and caught Blair's wrist. The other man's hand snapped closed on his wrist in turn, hugely strong, and Marc let the same surge throw him out into the cabin like a snapping whip. His right hand clamped down on Cynthia's wrist, and he poured all his consciousness into the need to hold on…
Seconds later the airship rolled back.
"Shee-it, that hurt," Cynthia shouted through the noise, holding on to a stanchion with one hand and shaking the other to restore circulation. "But going through the window would have hurt a lot more. Thanks, guys!"
She went down the corridor. Marc looked back as Blair swung him around again, and caught the Englishman's look of admiring relief at Cynthia's back as she preceded them. Then he turned to Marc for an instant, mouthed, Thank you! and made an after-you-Alphonse gesture.
Too cold, was Marc's thought as soon as they were all inside the loud cave of the hull.
He knew why: Pieces of the outer covering were off, and the storm-driven air ramming in was bringing the temperature down. They were high enough that they'd have needed bottled oxygen on Earth. Pressure fell off less rapidly here, which was a good thing, because they needed to be high lest they be caught in a sudden downdraft. Everyone strapped on padded helmets of strong, boiled 'saur hide with lights, loaded themselves with tools and kit, and headed up into the dark vastness of the hull. The headlamps speared through the dimness, flicking across the bulging surfaces of the lifting cells and the twisting regularities of the hull-frame and its bracing.
"Merite!"
That was Blair, blurted out in shock and surprising Marc a little even among the pounding urgency of the moment. He'd read the lips for the meaning. Being inside the hull right now was like being inside a darkened bass drum beaten by a million demented chimps. Jadviga settled for pointing with her headlamp.
Merde, Marc thought himself.
Number seven ring girder—one of the circular members that spanned the hull—had indeed cracked. And the splintered ends were rubbing against the surface of the adjacent gasbag. The problem was that the only way to get to it in the violently pitching aircraft was over the gasbag. They all climbed up the ladder to the axial walkway and paused for a second, clinging like baboons to a branch as the Vepaja heaved in three dimensions and looking at the rippling net-covered surface. A fine spray of water filled the air as they climbed, coming in bitterly cold through tears in the upper hull surface, and the slick surface of the cell glistened in the light of the headlamps.
Cynthia went first, jumping spread-eagled like a flying squirrel; there just wasn't time for the cautious regulation way. Marc felt his stomach lurch. She skidded over the flexing cell as the airship rolled to one side, then caught her foot in a loop, swung three hundred and sixty degrees, and stopped with arms and legs splayed like a spider's, the headlamp making a pool that underlit her contorted face.
Hey, podna, save some scared for yourself, eh? he thought, and leaped himself.
There was no time for safety lines or anything at all but going fangs-out and hair-on-fire. He scrabbled and caught at the net ropes, at the price of a broken fingernail. The sharp stab of pain barely registered; he tore the loose part free with his teeth and spat it aside. Blair made his jump, and Marc steadied him as the cell flexed and shuddered under the impact. Then they both did the same for Jadviga,
Back in the seventies on Earth, there had been a brief fashion for water beds, liquid-filled mattresses. Marc had tried one for a while, persuaded by a friend who said sex on them was like making love to a woman with infinite buttocks. It had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, but crawling over the surface of the gas cell was disconcertingly like his memories of that brief teenaged experiment. And like that long-ago fashion statement, it made progress difficult; you couldn't push off the surface, even with your knees or elbows. The difficulty got worse as they headed down the side, until it was steep enough for them to have to reverse and climb down. Netting and cell membrane both were slippery with the moisture, and it was even darker here.
When they approached the broken section of rib, they did take a moment to snap their safety lines onto loops in the netting; the muscles in his neck relaxed at the feel of its tug as the Vepaja bucked and twisted. One slip and they'd hit the top of the gondola after an eighty-foot drop.
Communication was by hand signals. Marc managed to get across: He and I will cut the rib; you patch the leaks.
The And everybody, for God's sake, no sparks! had to be left to common sense. The broken rib was flexing inward, and the jagged ends had already cut the netting cords and made rents in the gasbag. Ribs were a triangular truss of three mature shamboo tubes fastened together, each the size of a man's leg. It took a lot to break full-grown shamboo; the stuff had silica fibers in it, making a sort of natural fiberglass. The problem was that that made cutting it nearly as hard.
Blair drew the machete across his back and tapped a point above the break; a cut there would leave the end out of reach of the gasbag, unless the rib fractured again. Marc did likewise below, and they both let themselves hang free, drawing back for the first chop…
Twenty-six hours later, Marc jerked himself back awake. Captain Tyler was talking.
Christ, he's not human, Marc thought.
The c
aptain of the airship merely looked badly beat-up—there were bandages over half his face, some of them showing red spots—and totally exhausted. The other three looked like the recently resurrected dead.
The Vepaja was drifting with the slow low-altitude breeze, just enough way on her to keep her stable. They still had two of the engines functional, but most of the solar collectors had been ripped off the upper surface, and hydrogen reserves for the fuel cells were low. At least the breeze was warm; he could feel it through the place where the control cabin's forward windows had been. That was where Tyler had gotten the cuts on his face, when a freak of the storm had stove them in with a balk of timber. A lot of water had followed, and about half the instruments were out for now, including the shortwave radio transmitter. Right now everything was pleasantly comfortable and above all silent after hours of nightmare struggle inside the pounding hull.
The General must be having kittens, Marc thought inconsequentially, then forced himself to alertness.
"… seams on the gas cells," Tyler finished. "With that and the structural damage, we need to find a quiet spot out of the wind and do as near a complete rebuild as we can. At the very least, we have to get the cells deflated and flushed, then do some real patching. Otherwise the leaks will have us down within two days. I think we can get all four motors functioning again, but three will get us back, and we can use the emergency collector sheets to replace what we lost up top during the storm."
Marc suppressed a whimper at the thought of what they'd have to do to get the airship functional again. It's just the exhaustion talking,
he told himself, blinking at the morning sunlight coming in through the space where the tough armor-glass had been. So tempting to breathe deep of the fresh-scented warm air and lie down to sleep…
"Captain," Jadviga said, frowning. "What about our mission? We are nearly at the location of the distress beacon."
Tyler nodded; exhaustion made his voice harsh. "Nearly as in somewhere within a fifty-mile radius, Mrs. Binkis. Two thousand square miles is far too much territory for five people to survey on foot. We'll do what repairs we can here, then proceed as seems best."
Marc blinked gummy eyes, nodding. The terrain below looked fairly hopeful—rolling coastal plain not unlike that near Jamestown, grassland with scattered oaks, with occasional higher hills and an escarpment inland rising to an uneven plateau. He could just catch glimpses of lakes and rivers there, and not far away a long waterfall drawing a silver line against black cliff and green forest at the foot. The mountains were far south beyond that, just barely visible even from three thousand feet. Intelligence and satellite photography said there were a couple of small cities—more like big walled villages—and some farming along the coast northward, but from where they floated nothing of the hand of man was visible.
Game was there in plenty, mostly mammals, with a clump of Volkswagen-sized armored 'saurs, like giant spiky turtles with bone clubs on the ends of their tails.
Tyler opened his mouth to reply. A flicker moved behind him, and then curtains of living leather blocked the empty windows, on either side of a lean body covered in pale fuzz streaked with jagged strips of brown.
"Get down!" Marc screamed.
Three other shouts tripped on the heels of his. Tyler began to lunge forward out of his chair, but not in time to avoid the stabbing beak of the creature that clung to the nose of the gondola. He screamed himself in shock and agony as the spearlike tip slammed into his shoulder blade. Bone cracked, and there was a wet snapping sound as the sharp peg teeth ripped at flesh and tendon.
Marc shouted wordlessly as he snatched up his machete and attacked, hacking at the thing's bony scarlet-crested head as it tried to drag the thrashing human back out into the air. It shrieked like a steam whistle, and again as Blair came in on the other side, the dulled edge of his weapon bouncing off the thick, coarse hair that coated the pterosaur's snaky neck.
Its taloned feet gripped the lower frame of the window, and the wings were folded to let the snakelike body worm its way into the control cabin. Three long claws tipped the joint of each wing, scrabbling at chair and control panel as it lunged. A carrion reek came with it, bits of rotting meat caught in the hair and teeth.
Both men struck again, and chips of bone flew. Marc grunted with effort as he smashed aside a darting strike of the beak. Tyler moaned as Cynthia darted in under the great head and pulled him free; Jadviga joined her to roll him on his face and frantically pack cloth into the gaping wound. Blood pulsed between their fingers.
"Come on, birdie," Marc crooned, as the thing recoiled a little from the menace of their blades.
"That's right, you evil, scavenging bugger," Blair said, standing at his shoulder. "Do stick your neck out."
They took a step forward, and then the muzzle of Jadviga's shotgun came past his shoulder.
"Christ, no!" Marc shouted, and wrestled the weapon away from her.
The red-dripping fanged beak drove for him again. Blair moved with savage speed, lunging with the point of his machete. It wasn't designed for that, but the rounded point was still sharp enough to gouge into one of the big slit-pupiled eyes of the pterosaur, and throw it sideways—for all its forty-foot wingspan and mad-weasel ferocity, the body between the great membranes was still only forty pounds. It hissed liked an infuriated air-compressor and thrashed itself backwards, hanging on to the sill with its hind feet.
"Let me shoot it!" Jadviga said.
"You crazy couyon!" Marc said, using his hip to bump her away from the weapon. "This airship, she's leaking. You fire a gun here and chances are we go up like a bomb, us!"
Cynthia and Blair called confirmation. Cynthia was still working over Tyler's limp form; the Englishman kept darting forward, holding the machete like a fencing-saber and making lunges at the animal that menaced them. It hissed back at his shouts and made stabs back; beak cracked on steel, and another chip spun away.
"There are more of them out there," Blair called.
"Damn! I know this breed; they hunt in packs. Flocks. Whatever."
He thrust the shotgun back at Jadviga, judging that her blood had cooled enough. Then he darted past the fallen man and into the arms locker. It held bows as well as firearms; arrows were reusable and perfectly good enough for hunting smaller beasts. The one he pulled out was a recurve—they could be left strung—of laminated shamboo and tharg-horn and sinew, with a beech-wood riser. He pulled it out of the clips and seized a quiver as well, hurriedly slinging it over his back.
"Do lend a hand here, old chap!" Blair called.
"Coming, coming," Marc yelled. "Hold your horses."
He edged around Tyler and Cynthia, and then stood behind Blair as the man barred the pterosaur's way with his blade.
Got to admit tie's got guts, him, Marc thought, as he put a shaft to the cord.
"On the mark… duck!" he shouted.
Blair dropped flat to the deck. The pterosaur drew its long neck back in a triumphant S-curve, preparing to drive its bill into his back like a spear. Marc drew the arrow to the angle of his jaw, the bright, pyramid-shaped head shaped out of cargo pod hull material glinting in the dimness.
Snap. The string slapped painfully on his bare forearm. A fraction of a second later there was a thump as it slammed home into the thing's narrow chest, punching through the keel-like breastbone until the scarlet feathers stood out like a dot of color against the pale blue-gray of its skin. The animal fell backward, its talons in a death-lock on the sill of the empty window frame. When they loosed, the great, forty-foot spread of wings fell loosely open, and it tumbled away downward like a newspaper blowing down a street, shrinking to a tiny dot as it spiraled towards some waiting scavenger.
"Get out, everyone out into the corridor!" Marc said.
He set another arrow to the string. Four more of the big predators banked past the opening as he waited, one diving under the gondola and then flaring up, its feet thrusting out to grip the window frame.
Snap.
"We're out!" Blair called crisply.
"Foutre!" Marc panted as he thrust the light shamboo-wicker door closed. "How's the captain?"
"Weak, but I've stopped the bleeding," Cynthia said, looking down at Tyler with worried affection. "It'll be touch and go—I need to do some repair work there."
Jadviga nodded as she handed out the contents of the arms locker; everyone strapped as much as they could carry to their backs. Medical cross-training was common in Jamestown, and according to what Cosmograd had sent she had experience in the field, too. Just then they all looked up at a heavy thump over their heads, and a drumlike pulse as something heavy struck the fabric of the hull.
Blair trotted down the corridor and up the access ladder. He opened the hatch, looked up, closed it again, and jumped down after he pushed the locking lever home. It wouldn't do much good; the ceiling over their heads was wicker and fabric.
"That's not good," he said crisply. "There was one crawling in through a hole in the fabric while I watched, and several more holding on to the outside. Persistent buggers."
Marc nodded. "This breed of flier likes to mob the big pterosaurs, not the Quetzas, the other types that live off fish and such," he said. "They rip them up with diving attacks, force them down, and eat them. Individually they're not as bad as a Quetza, but they don't work alone, and they don't stop once they've started."
Cynthia looked up. "The airship doesn't look much like a pterosaur!"
"It's big and it's flying," Marc said. "These things, they aren't what you'd call too bright. Vicious, yes. Brainy, no. And they'll have smelled the blood—smelled us. They hunt ground-mammals, too."
The Sky People Page 17