The chairman said:
The dragon stood up with great effort and disappeared into the bushes. The chairman intoned a song. People sang lazily, in fact no one even bothered to sing the last words. The crowd began to disperse. It was time for me, too. My bus was leaving in twenty minutes.
More or less at the same time as the chief of the Earth's Intelligence Service was sweating before the President, trying to explain why he had still not come up with any solid data, and while the neosatanist Michael Condway was celebrating an imash, the Golden Galley was floating majestically on the outskirts of the Earth's empire. In the headquarters of the Blessed Legions - a skyscraper reaching three kilometres into the sky and hovering five hundred metres above the ground - the Archangel Charles Radziwill strolled the length of the panoramic windows of his office, waiting for the directors of the third and fourth Departments.
First arrived McSonn, who indeed had good reason to be officious; for the last four days he had been trying, in vain, to complete a job for which the Blessed Legions had already been paid fourteen million. For the last hundred and four hours the Department of Governmental Commissions had been labouring ceaselessly to carry out even his most idiotic instructions.
McSonn slipped noiselessly into the Archangel's huge office and sat in one of the armchairs hovering around the old fashioned four-legged conference table. Without saying a word he fastened his eyes on the crucifix hanging above the door and grew still. His friendly spirits informed him of the imminent arrival of Colloni, adding that Radziwill had already dispensed several excommunications today and was in a foul mood.
The Director of the Special Task Force arrived attired, as usual, in the period garb of a hippie. In contrast with the rest of the Blessed Ones who dressed to dissolve in the crowd, he wore clothes that attracted attention, were weird to say the least, thanks to which no one ever suspected him of belonging to the Legions. As a hippie he was a sight to behold: long red hair falling in dreadlocks onto a faded green jacket which, out of necessity, was always open as it had no buttons, nor a zip, nor other fastening. Under the jacket showed a hairy chest with a tattooed cross into which Colloni had locked by way of a magic spell all his powers, a clever trick in as much as anyone wanting to divest him of those powers would have to skin him as well. Freezing one's supernatural powers was very convenient and despite the ban all the Blessed did it. The holster for the controls was hidden in the macrame covering his trousers. On his left ear dangled an enormous earring where Colloni carried his jewel of the Friend.
He was an odd fish and no one in their wildest dreams would have guessed he was the deputy Archangel of the allpowerful Legions.
"God bless you brothers ..." muttered Colloni, seating himself in an armchair.
Radziwill mumbled something in reply and without further ado gave out his orders:
"Colloni is taking over from you, McSonn. As of now We have three days left before the deadline." He bit his lip and looked at his fingernail. He was clearly in a hurry. "You do understand, Colloni, what failure would mean for us. The Blessed Legions always deliver. You have priority. Take all the men you want, do what you want, but remember the deadline. Three days, Colloni, three days!"
Day One
They waited till Radziwill's friendly spirits left the room and all gave a sigh of relief.
"Where has he rushed off to like that?" asked Colloni, taking out a brown leaf of dajerr.
"I think he has a meeting with the chief of Intelligence."
Colloni whistled without stopping chewing, which amazed McSonn. He had taken his fall from grace with the look of a devil drowning in holy water and, like Radziwill, was pissed off with the whole world.
"Stop it," he growled. "You look like a cow "
u A cow?"
"It's an animal."
Colloni shrugged his shoulders and carried on chewing.
"Well, what's up then?" He lost his patience as he started on anew leaf. "Charles said something, didn't he?"
This time McSonn shrugged his shoulders. He got up and walked to the invisible console. The room was plunged into darkness and above the table appeared a section of the cosmos with a fragment of a distant sun.
"Altair," he explained. "Ten days ago, out of the blue, there appeared-.-. . this."
Into the field of vision drifted the bows of a ship. A sea ship. She shone with yellow light, shimmering from the top of her masts to the rough planks of her underside.
"What the hell is this?" Colloni pushed himself off the table.
"The Intelligence has paid fourteen million to get the answer to that question. Paid us. And we still don't know." McSonn shook his head sadly.
Above the table now glowed an enormous galley in its full glory. Such floating craft must have sailed the seas in the past. The three sails fluttered in a non-existent wind and on top of the middle mast, like a small sun, beamed a red lamp. Under the bowsprit, there was a figurehead.
A bird's eye view: the empty deck, the wind-filled canvas of the sails.
"Is this some kind of a joke?" snarled Colloni.
"A joke? If it's a joke it's a very expensive one. The galley measures three thousand kilometres in length. And it's made of gold."
"How much is it worth?" mumbled out Colloni.
McSonn tapped himself on the forehead.
"Are you all there?"
Colloni pulled himself together.
"A galley, you say ... and the oars?"
"According to the latest calculation there are about six hundred billion of them."
"Eh?"
"Six hundred billion. The thing is that while the ship is built to an enormous scale the oars are natural size. It's hard to see them."
"Hallucination? A curse? A spectre?"
"Sorry, old chap," sneered McSonn and looked at his fingernail. "It's late. Got to go. I have a flight to Lalande in two hours. Blessings."
`Blessings ... Blessings ..." muttered Colloni. He had a bitter taste of failure in his mouth. He spat and walked out of the room.
In the corridor and in the lifts people got out of his way. News spread quickly here. Especially bad news. He reached the level housing his section, marched straight into Stadochi's office and ordered him to cancel all arrangements for the next few days. Then, having shown enough of a foul mood to be left in peace for several hours, he locked himself in his dark little room, checked the latest on who was after his soul and logged in to the Brain.
The information on the Golden Galley gathered by McSonn was scarce. Thanks to three automatic satellite probes, orbiting at a safe distance from the ship, it had been photographed to the last detail, measured and weighed. No one knew where it came from, for it had appeared suddenly, but it certainly didn't come out of the anti-Cosmos. Could it be teleportation? It had no means of propulsion, or at least nothing that had been identified. The galley was drifting on the outskirts of the solar system of Altair at literally a pedestrian rate, that is, it was practically stationary. It was composed, down to the last particle - including the sails - of gold; the experts swore by that. The lamp on top of the middle mast was indeed a small sun, locked in a cage the shape of a pyramid, which by some miracle did not melt. This masterpiece was built precisely to the original medieval design, which, if one took into account the ALIENS variant, gave a lot of food for thought.
Twenty four hours after the appearance of the galley, when all attempts to communicate with it had failed, they had sent two raiding ships with Special Task Force troops on board, which had approached the galley to a distance of a million kilometres. Soon after, due to the loss of contact - although the communication system was working perfectly - the ships had to be recalled to base by remote control. The men were alive, but they were in a strange torpor from which they still had not awoken. Except for one man who had gone mad. Colloni logged in to the STF's secret brain and checked the madman's files. One thing that struck him as unusual was the man's extreme religiousness. Apart from that he was like billions of others.<
br />
After the failed landing mission they had tried their luck with automatic unmanned craft. The ships reached about half a million kilometres from the galley and, hard as they tried, would not move an inch further. The machines simply refused to obey. For six days the Intelligence had struggled with this devilry, until in the end they coughed up fourteen million and passed the buck. It so happened that the buck had landed on McSonn's shoulders, but his legs had buckled and so it had ended up in Colloni's lap.
It was half past two when Colloni finished studying the documentation. At the end he found information that had arrived just minutes before. It came from the satellites observing the Golden Galley. It said that the Galley was increasing her speed to 45km/h.
Then, Colloni checked the list of McSonn activities and half the points, together with his own comments, copied onto another grain, were sent to Stadochi with an order to repeat those operations. Stadochi, who had no idea about the existence of the Golden Galley (the information was top secret) but knew his boss was in trouble, didn't bother to be surprised. He carried out the order but there were no revelations. One had to hand it to McSonn - he had done all he could.
At r 5.15 hours Colloni decided to consult his Friend.
Miskialiatol appeared amidst the glimmering of an unearthly mist, surrounded by a sapphire glow and the web of his silver hair that reached to the ground. The brightness of his white robe was dazzling. The mist scattered and Miskialiatol raised his wrinkled face, looked at the dispirited Colloni and sadly shook his head, just as McSonn had before.
"Well, tell me - what am I to do? Not a single point of reference. Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Colloni spread out his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
The Friend, who was informed of everything via the Jewel, sat in the armchair at the other side of the desk.
"Take a closer look at the stem of the Golden Galley," he said in a tired, old man's voice. "I've noticed something disturbing in that hologram. Niej always said you don't pay enough attention to details. The figurehead ... there's something strange about it."
Colloni rocked in the chair for a while consulting his friendly spirits, then sighed and called up the hologram. He enlarged the image of the stem and there it was: the huge golden figure, gleaming against a background of vast darkness.
"Doesn't it remind you of something?"
"Christ!" Colloni hurriedly switched off the image protecting himself against the automatic spell.
"It's Satan!"
"So it is." The Friend got up. "If it has anything to do with the Accursed, you know best what to do," he said, and disappeared.
Colloni rubbed his hands in glee.
At 17.45 his plan was ready.
At i 8.o8, having given relevant instructions, he got into his strat and flew off.
At 19.05 there came information that the Golden Galley had markedly increased her speed.
At 20.40 she was speeding at 79 thousand km/h towards Earth.
At 22.30 Archangel Radziwill returned to the headquarters of the Blessed Legions and ordered an immediate search for Colloni. The search proved futile.
At 24.00 the speed of the Golden Galley reached 134 thousand kn1/h.
Radziwill stomped around his office sputtering curses.
Day two
The Middle-European Natural Landscape Reserve covered a wide area and without a special map it would be difficult to find the lodge where lived the forester, one Mr Rosen. In a hurry, or through neglect, Colloni had forgotten to take the map with him. Of course he could have logged in to the Legions' Brain, but that meant being localised by the Blessed anxious about his whereabouts. The nearest town was half an hour's flight away, which with the return made a whole hour. Circling above the Reserve, Colloni had no intention of going back; it was silly to lose sixty precious minutes. The programmed auto-pilot that searched for any warmer points in that wilderness, led him to three illegal bonfires. Apart from scaring off the tourists, the nocturnal flight above the woods brought Colloni no joy. Having lost his faith in science, he placed his trust in instinct. He switched to manual controls and after twenty minutes' wandering in the darkness, at 01.27 hours his strat sat gently on a small landing pad, next to the forester's lodge which hovered in the air some six metres above the ground.
Colloni put on the strat's piercing alarm signal, which probably woke half the Reserve, including Mr Rosen.
The dark cube suddenly burst with light. The invisible speakers wheezed:
"What the hell is going on out there?"
Not wanting to be outdone, Colloni shouted through the air-tube into the shadowy expanse:
"Mr Rosen! ... I want to talk to you! Now!"
"Go to the devil! It's half past one in the morning!"
"It's urgent! I have come here specially from Sydney! I'm from the Blessed Legions!"
"What!?"
"From the Blessed Legions!"
"Er ... Can you show yourself?"
Colloni, regretting he had not changed, got out of the strat. The low-power, wide beam laser pins sought him out in the dark.
"You ... You're from the Legions?" The forester almost choked with-surprise .
- "That's what I said! I have to talk to you. Now."
"Er ..." Rosen clearly couldn't make his mind up. "And the Sign?"
Colloni took the Legions' badge out of his pocket. He held out his hand and somehow survived. Rosen was finally convinced.
From the building descended a small platform; Colloni hurried towards it, afraid the suspicious forester might change his mind. The spectacular illumination suddenly vanished. For a fraction of a second Colloni lost his sight but he soon regained it as his brain adjusted his eyes to the darkness, and then back to the light as the platform noiselessly slipped inside the lodge.
Mr Rosen was exceptionally mistrustful, waiting in the hall hung full with archaic antlers, a rusting laser gun in his hand. He was not trying to hide; it would have been difficult anyway, given the size of the antique. He led Colloni to a small room full of furs, faded as the jacket of the Blessed One, and sat down in a cosy chair, shooter at the ready.
"You wanted to talk to me about something," he opened the conversation.
"Indeed. A year and a half ago you placed an order for the removal of one neosatanist."
"Oh, yes. All this time, the devil take you, no one showed up!" He banged his huge fist on the armrest which creaked dangerously. The forester was a little self-important man with large hands and an earthy complexion. He looked like a gnome annoyed with the whole world. "Is that the way you treat your clients?!"
The queues for the Blessed Legions were always long, and despite a steady intake of new recruits the Legions were constantly behind schedule. They were unable to keep up with the demand; it could not be helped.
"Mr Rosen ..." said Colloni reproachfully. "But you see I've made an effort, I ve come in the end, haven't I?"
"I pay you for it! Made an effort! In the middle of the night ..."
"Mr Rosen!" Colloni lost his temper. "I haven't come here to listen to your complaints. Either you help me or I'm off to do something else."
Rosen looked at him suspiciously.
"Help? What do you mean?"
"Well ... I need to know where he's hiding, if he has any chums ..."
"Ah, that ... that I can tell you," the forester calmed down. "But ... You're not going to hunt for him at night, are you?"
"And why not?"
"Er ... right. Right. You go south from here till you get to a little river, then to a little valley, than another river and then a stream. Follow the stream till you get to the hills, fly over them and on the other side there will be a big meadow, you'll see it. It's the north end ... that's where I see him most often."
"Most often? Does it mean he can be found somewhere else?"
"Er, no. No."
"Are you sure he's alone?"
"I've never seen anyone else."
Colloni rose from his seat.
"Thank y
ou. I'll try to let you know as soon as I'm done with him."
"May I ask, how much is the fee?"
"The fee?"
"The fee." Rosen licked his lips.
"We'll send you the reckoning grain."
The forester scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders and followed the Blessed One who was already in the hall.
"Forgive me for asking but ... do you all go dressed like this?"
"Sure, all of us."
Colloni descended gently, leaving behind the appalled Mr Rosen standing in the square of light. He jumped off before the little platform reached the ground and ran to the strat.
Following the forester's directions he lost his way several times but in the end he found the big meadow. It was six minutes to three.
Colloni sat his strat at the eastern side of the meadow and immediately jumped out of the machine. He hid behind a large oak tree and from there observed the dark and silent machine. He waited a few minutes and ordered his friendly spirits to search the surrounding area. They returned after a while, having found nothing more disturbing than the corpse of an old werewolf left untouched by the animals. Colloni sniffed the air; he could smell a faint scent of burning klassz. Just as Rosen had said, it was coming from the northern end of the meadow.
The Blessed One crossed himself and sprinkled himself with holy water from a little silver flask, even though he was risking scaring off the neosatanist if the former had completely gone to the devil. Then he placed his friendly spirits around himself and set off walking north along the edge of the wood. The wind blew in his face, carrying ever stronger wafts of klassz. Colloni pulled out the controls, checking with his fingertips, as if from habit, the positions of individual switches.
He reached the place at 03.35. The fire was out, the hut half destroyed by the recent storm, but the neosatanist was apparently in no hurry to mend it. He was a primitive and inexperienced worshipper of evil. Colloni detected no barriers or conditional curses. Only a little dried-out clot of new born babe's blood protected the hut. In one well practised move, Colloni stripped the muscles off his left hand and from his fingernails shot silent laser beams, converging on the lump of blood. Thus the Blessed One burnt his way through. Ghost-like, he advanced on the hut.
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