"Mr. Aquinar, you stay with me."
"Aye, sir!"
"Does everyone understand?" There was a chorus of assent. He thought briefly about what to do with Fielder. The man seemed out of his mind with panic and dread. Best to keep him here while Melville assumed command of the Kestrel.
"Lieutenant Fielder?" Melville asked. Fielder had been following Melville around, keeping a slight distance. Now his only response was to glare at Melville. "I'd value your appraisal of our situation here. Please speak with Brother Petreckski and the rangers, they will give you their account of all edible plants and creatures. Their input will be vital as to whether we can stay here indefinitely. I hope to make a fresh assessment of the situation on our Ship, and certainly your outside assessment of the situation here will be of value."
This indication that Melville was keeping an open mind to the possibility of evacuating to this world seemed to mollify Fielder. "Very well," he replied, "but you'll see, the situation on the Ship is hopeless." Melville looked at the purser and the rangers, and felt confident that they'd keep the lieutenant occupied. He strode up the hill accompanied by Broadax, Hans, and the middies. Elphinstone joined them, having already designated three of her patients for light duty.
They approached the Keel of the old Swish-tail, now standing like a flagpole, or a mast, surrounded by a platform of white Nimbrell timbers. Melville scrambled up the ladder to the top of the platform, dropped to one knee, placed a hand upon the Keel and concentrated.
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"<>" He turned and saw Sergeant Broadax beam with pride and joy, inhaling deeply on her cigar. He saw the others nod their heads in agreement.
Even Swish-tail, now Broadax's World, agreed completely. <
The Keel was made of a mysterious material carefully guarded by the secretive Celebrimbor shipwrights. This class of shipwrights existed in every race that sailed the seas of Flatland, and the men of Old Earth had joined that club. Ah, but at such a price, thought Melville. The "Crash" was the admission fee the Elder King claimed for Earth to join that club.
One end of the Keel was planted in the living earth. The other end disappeared up into two-space. Nothing of the Kestrel or Flatland could be seen from here, except for a rope ladder that hung down from the Ship above, seeming to be suspended in thin air.
It occurred to Melville that before he climbed up the ladder he should send his monkey on its way. He'd be sad to see the soft, gentle creature go, but it would be cruel to snatch it from its green home into impending battle. Broadax, Hans, and the three middies also moved to set down the baby monkeys that had adopted them. Prior to this the monkeys always permitted themselves to be set aside whenever their presence was unwelcome. Now the result was a comical, ludicrous dance as each of the sailors tried to grab a monkey that didn't want to be grabbed.
The monkeys scampered round and about, up the Pier and back onto a shoulder. They were now in front, now down between legs, then they scrambled under jackets to hang just out of reach between shoulder blades. Melville braced himself against the Keel to grab his monkey and he felt Swish-tail say, <
That was good enough for him. While climbing up the Pier the monkeys were in direct contact with the Ship, and they couldn't hide their true nature from this telepathic contact. "Enough!" said Melville. "We don't have time for this. Let them come if they insist, and let us share our fates."
"Aye," said Hans, " 'Of'n the unbidden guest proves the best company.' "
Melville grabbed the rope ladder and scrambled up, followed by old Hans. His head popped into two-space and lo!, "the gray rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back." And he beheld once again the stunning beauty of the "hidden land forlorn." His ears were caressed again by that strange music, the celestial sounds of Flatland, and his eyes were bathed anew in the endless, vivid blue expanse of the "shoreless seas."
Maxfield Parrish had known these blues. To the east was light, sunrise blue where this solar system's star was influencing the vast plain of Flatland. Immediately around him was a small patch of blue-green that indicated a living world. To the south, west, and north Flatland began to darken into deep blue. In the distance he could see the midnight blue between solar systems. In the far distance he could see the sunrise blue of distant suns, blending together into a brightness that stretched all the way round the far horizon.
He looked once more upon all this beauty, and he knew again where "Kilmeny" had been.
. . . Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew.
But it seem'd as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been;
A land of love and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the land a pure celestial beam;
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, and everlasting dream.
Flatland, or two-space (or the Calacirian, to call it by its Sylvan name), was what the sailors called the universe, the environment, the realm that they sailed in. Flatland was also what they called that blue, two dimensional barrier: the plane, the "sea" that the sailors sailed upon, which contains the whole galaxy.
In two-space the whole galaxy was squashed flat as a disc. Flatter than the flattest disc you can think of. Impossibly flat, since there was no third dimension. Except where they carried it around with them. This was Flatland. On a Ship you could view it from above or below, but the only way to get into real space is to go into Flatland, into the "real" galaxy.
The Keel, and the Elbereth Moss that grew in it and around it, created a field in which a piece of three-space could exist in two-space, in Flatland. Flatland wanted to squeeze you flat. It constantly compressed your little piece of three-space from top and bottom, and that downward, compacting pressure created a "wind" that pushed against their sails. The field of three-space concentrated the gravitational forces of flatland the way a sharp point will concentrate the electrical forces on a charged piece of metal, the way a lightning rod attracts the electrical forces above it. These stronger gravitational forces "above" the ship, on both sides of the plain, caused a downward flow of pressure on the ship that could be "caught" by the sails. The pressure was constant, a steady downward "wind." By using forward-leaning masts and sails they could partially capture the force of this wind, making it possible to truly sail the shoreless seas.
Their galaxy was squashed flat, but other galaxies could be seen above and below them, as stars might hang above a flat earth. Above hi
m hung old friends, spread thickly and densely across the black "sky" of two-space. Hanging directly above was Remmirath, a stunningly beautiful group of galaxies known also as the Netted Stars. All he had to do was look up at the Netted Stars to know that he was on the "upper" side of the galaxy, as convention and tradition agreed to call it. With one glance at this constellation, or any other patch of the Flatland sky, he could immediately orient himself to the cardinal directions.
To the "north" was red Borgil, and directly to the south was the constellation known as the Swordsman. One galaxy, its disc seen from the side so that it made a linear formation, formed the Swordsman's shining belt. Two similar galaxies joined end-to-end to form his gleaming sword, thrusting to the west. The Swordsman was also known as Menelvagor to the Sylvan. Westerness had embraced it as a symbol of their kingdom, their vigorous young empire expanding to the galactic west from their beginning on Old Earth.
Direction of travel across the galaxy was designated as north toward the galactic center, and south toward the galactic rim, also sometimes called Hubward and Rimwards. Viewed from an arbitrarily agreed upon "above," west was to the left, or Turnwise, when facing north. And east was designated to the right or Widdershins.
They had only been able to loosely relate what they found in two-space to what astronomers saw in three-space. The galaxies that hung above and below them in two-space, and the destinations they arrived at, often could not be made to match any "known" location in three-space. It drove astronomers mad trying to relate the sights and destinations of Flatland to what they "knew" existed in the "real" world.
A sailor popped into two-space. He sailed across the endless seas of Flatland. He navigated by the "stars" to a new world. He popped back into three-space, and the stars were different. Who cared about some astronomer's reckoning? He knew where he was, and he knew how to navigate home again. What more could any sailor ask?
Many high-tech worlds flourished in the galaxy, but none of them had ever developed interstellar travel through three-space. Why should they, when the mystery, the beauty and the vast expanse of two-space and its "hither shores" awaited them? Why would any planet expend the vast resources needed to develop and conduct interstellar travel? Any civilization could sail to a virtually infinite number of worlds with no more difficulty than the sailors of eighteenth-century Earth traveled to distant continents. If they learned the secrets of the Celebrimbor shipwrights, and if they were willing to play by the rules of the Elder King.
This, this! was the gift of the Elder King, thought Melville, as he rejoiced in the far flung galaxies that hung so close above him. Flatland compressed distances, so that travel between worlds was practical. It also compacted distances so that the galaxies hanging above him looked as near as the Moon from Old Earth. Like most sailors he never got tired of looking at them. On the world below him he'd almost given up hope of ever seeing them again and now, for a brief moment, he rejoiced in it.
After a sailor's brief, orienting glance at the sea and the sky he turned his head and looked at the Kestrel, dreading what he'd see. The rope ladder hung from the Ship's bowsprit, and from here he could see no damage. All he could see was the bow of the Ship, and only the portion of the bow that was "above" the plain of Flatland, that vast, two-dimensional plain in which the three-dimensional form of the Ship floated. There might well be great damage to her flanks, stern, or below the plain of Flatland, where he couldn't see.
The Kestrel was of the Falcon class, constructed over 100 years prior with her sister Ships, Falcon, Sparrow Hawk, Pigeon Hawk, Peregrine, Meriadoc, and Gyrfalcon. She was what the Westerness Navy was pleased to call a frigate, with three masts extending above and below Flatland.
She was constructed of white Nimbrell timbers, which were coated with the Elbereth Moss, making her a beautiful, pure white. Except where she was painted with red trim on the "red" side, and green trim on her "green" side. She was like a great swan resting in pure blue water.
The old concepts of port and starboard, left and right didn't work when there were essentially two ships, slapped together keel to keel. So convention established that all of one side was the "green-side," while the other side was the "red-side."
Flying from her mainmast, both above and below, she flew the Westerness flag, a four-armed, pinwheel galaxy on a royal blue background.
She carried forty 12-pounder cannon, twenty above and twenty below the plain of Flatland. She was intended as much for cargo, transport and exploration as for war, with a large hold, a large complement, and six cutters. Swish-tail, Sharp-ears, and Wise-nose were on the deck "above" Flatland. Bumpkin, White-socks, and the captain's barge, Fatty Lumpkin, were lashed to the reverse deck, arbitrarily and universally referred to as "below" the vast plain formed by Flatland.
She was down to four cutters now. Swish-tail had been intentionally beached on the world below, her Keel used to form the Pier.
Bumpkin was lost, along with their second mate and a small crew, in an earlier exploration of a nearby world. She'd been beached on a shore and her Keel didn't raise back up into two-space. After several weeks of waiting they had no choice but to bid their comrades a sad farewell. If they hadn't raised a Pier yet, they never would. They marked this spot on their charts as a "reef," warning others away from what treacherously and deceptively looked to be a habitable world.
Melville leaned to look as far as he could down the red-side of the Ship, which was her starboard or right side from above the plain of Flatland. He saw their carpenter, Mister Tibbits in Wise-nose, lashed alongside the Kestrel, where a repair crew was working on a portion of her flank.
"Ahoy Chips!" he shouted.
The carpenter looked up from his work. "Mr. Melville! I'm so very glad to see you, sir!"
The carpenter held a warrant officer's position. He seemed to be the senior officer present, so Melville called out to him, "Permission to come aboard!"
"Aye, sir! Come and join us here, if you will, sir!"
Melville was already scrambling the rest of the way up the ladder to where he could flip up onto the deck. Hans, Broadax, the middies, and finally Lady Elphinstone followed to begin their assigned tasks.
From here he could see that the upper deck had been savaged by the most severe blast of grapeshot imaginable. The white Nimbrell timber of the mainmast was chewed almost all the way through. Great chunks of railing and decking had been blown out of existence. Much of the rigging was recently repaired, with pieces of shrouds and ratline still hanging in shambles.
The Ship's crew all wore work clothing made of old, off-white sailcloth. Sailors hung in the rigging like a flock of dirty white birds, chattering and toiling efficiently. Throughout the Ship, seamen were working under the carpenter's guidance. Several were in the cutter working beside him.
Melville went to his left, toward the red-side, moving around the cutter lashed to the deck on the Ship's bow. He hurried over to the waist and looked down at Chips in the cutter below. He grabbed a bit of railing and hopped carefully down to land beside the carpenter.
Elphinstone went straight to the dispensary to tend to the wounded. Hans, Broadax and the middies went about their tasks, but the two NCOs made a point of staying where they could hear the conversation in the cutter below. Little Aquinar stood immediately above in the Ship, awaiting Melville's orders. Throughout this part of the Ship the sailors continued to work, but they shifted subtly so that they also could see and hear the conversation on the cutter.
"Dear Lord, Chips, what happened?" Melville asked. "What could have done this kind of damage?"
"Aye, sir. But this is nothin' compared to what the bastards did with their damned huge round shot below. May the Elder King curse them to vacuum!"
"Tell me about it," said Melville, putting a hand on the old warrant officer's shoulder.
"Well sir, after we dropped you and your company off in the world below we left and went on a short explorin' trip eastward of here. It was all slow easy sailin'. All Asimov days you migh
t say. Lots of plot and character development but precious little action. The kind of adventure I'd write for myself if I was doin' the writin', if you take my meanin'." The old carpenter leaned up against the cutter's mast and continued with his story, while Melville sat on the railing.
"We was about ready to turn around to come back to link up with you, when we runned into a Guldur ship comin' from the east. It was a mite smaller than ours, and she only had four guns to a side, two above and below. They was big guns, but we reckoned they could only be low velocity carronades. So we wasn't too worried. They signaled to pull up for a talk, and what with Westerness tryin' so hard to stay neutral and keepin' out of the Elder Races' squabbles and all, it never occurred to us that they'd sucker-punch us!" At this point Tibbits began gesturing in accompaniment to his tale.
"But old Captain Crosby was always a savvy one, he was. Our gun ports all had their hatch covers closed, nice and peaceful like, but behind the hatch covers we was loaded with double shot in every gun, manned and ready. But so did the enemy! Lootenant, those guns was no carronades! It shouldn't be possible to build cannon that big. Everyone knows that the Keel charges can't be designed to give that much energy. For hundreds of years it's been so. But they fired at us, right through their closed hatch covers, and did us more damage with one volley than we could with a dozen. I tell you, sir, it ain't natural to have guns that big and powerful.
"They let rip with grapeshot in the two upper guns, and ball in the lower. The captain, Lord bless him, the first mate, and the marine lootenant all met down on the red-side in the upper waist to come over to that Guldur bastard. The grapeshot ripped our red-side like nothin' you ever seen before! The whole boardin' party, an honor guard of six marines, and the bosun pipin' them, all disappeared! We've only got bloody bits and pieces left to bury! Four guns were destroyed, and the crew killed or wounded on two others, leavin' only four guns on the upper red-side. You see what it looks like here, but that's after weeks of fixin' and patchin' while we was on the run, with that bastard right on our tail all the way.
Two Space War Page 8