PART THREE

THE OUTPOURING

I

When northern summer ceased, the weight of ice leaned hard on those gnarled rocks which fearful wanderers had named The Guardians of the Pole. Slanting up either side of an underwater shelf that grudgingly permitted the highest tides to wash over it, they resembled prongsmen turned to stone, their mantles drawn aside and weapons clutched in both their claws.

Few were the mariners who braved the channel they defined; fewer still the ones who returned to tell of a colossal valley surrounding a landlocked sea so salt that what ordinarily ought to sink there was buoyed up. It was a foul and poisoned zone, though life endured. Chill and salt conspired to make its growths disgusting in the maw. Desperate commanders who imagined their junqs would nourish themselves off such weed as the water sustained watched in horror how first the drink-bladders burst, then the floats, and finally the major tubules, so they died.

By then, of course, the crews that clung to their haodahs were for the most part much too mad to care.

For a while after the last summer the Salty Sea remained liquid, roiling under hail and gale. At length, however, ice filled the valley and beset the Polar Guardians, shattering the rock they were composed of, and down it sped to gather on the shelf. In a single season boulders and ice were too high-piled for any wanner Sow to pass. After that glaciers shed bergs until the isolated sea was covered; then it froze also.

The last foolhardy travelers who let a poorly-pithed briq carry them into such latitudes, thinking that because they had rounded Southmost Cape they were safe from the enmity of the stars, unaware that the briq knew nothing of this ocean dominated by junqs and was lost and panicking, struggled ashore on a desolate beach with the precious secrets it was their task to spread around the world, and sought shelter in a cave which became their tomb.

II

The water was rising, or the land was sinking. Either way the event spelled trouble for the people of Ripar, despite the work of their far-famed inventor Yockerbow.

Some of the inhabitants claimed that their city was the oldest in the world. Others, more cautious, admitted that its records might have been-as it were-revised, because the rotting trunks of sweetwater trees had been found too far out in the lagoon for them to date back to the age of the alleged foundation, when salt tides rolled a long day's walk inland and Ripar River was as yet unfed by its giant tributary, the Gush.

It was thanks to the latter's change of course that the city had flourished. Reason, and relics exposed when mud was being pumped away from the harbor, combined to suggest that originally it had been a mere hamlet, huddled on a narrow flood-plain constricted between dry plateaux. Only when (and this was attested not by legend alone but by recent discoveries) a ball of blazing rock fell out of the sky and blocked the old channel of the Gush was there enough fresh water for dense roots to lock up silt and build a delta, forcing back the sea.

Now a score-of-score-of-scores of people, at the lowest estimate, swarmed along its branchways, got on one another's pith and cursed and sometimes fought and always schemed to secure more than their proper share of the goods attracted to this uniquely sited entrepot, whether they arrived by junq or were carried by a caravan of droms. The majority cared nothing for the past and little for the future. Their homes grew of their own accord, did they not? There was always sustenance, though it be dull, to be snatched from an overhanging bough or filched from a plot of funqi or-if all else failed and they must endure actual work-dragged up on a line from the lagoon. Fish did not abound as formerly, of course, but even mudbanks supported crupshells and other edible mollusqs.

So they were as content as the folk of any big city.

That was the majority. There were, however, others whose traditional obligation was to view Ripar in the context of the world: not only of the globe, but of the universe which comprehended all time and all space. It was said they possessed arcane knowledge dating back before the Northern Freeze. Always there were half a score of them; always they were presided over by the incumbent Doq; always they were collectively disliked because they levied duty on cargoes passing from sea to land or vice versa, and because they enforced the ancient laws with neither fear nor favor. Were one among their own number to succumb to a plague brought by strangers, for which no cure was known, he would quit the city himself before prongsmen came to expel him; were one of his relatives to enter into an unauthorized mating, he would be prompt to bring the new-budded youngling before a eugenic court to determine its fitness to survive; were it his own home that became infested with teredonts, or boraways, or a putrefying mold, he would be the first to pour the poison at its roots.

And it was among these notable and austere personages-short of their customary total by one, for the doyen Chelp had died a few days earlier-that the inventor Yockerbow was summoned to stand today, beneath the interlaced branches of the Doqal Hall, with water plashing underpad. Acutely conscious of being no more than half as old as anyone else present, he strove to reason out why he had been sent for. Surely it could not be, as his beautiful spouse Arranth insisted, that he was to be invited to replace Chelp! His weather-sense informed him that the idea was ridiculous, for the peers were exuding a distinct aura of incipient panic.

But the fact was in no way reassuring.

He sought some kind of signal from Iddromane, spokesman for those who worked with fire and metal, and the only one of the peers he could claim close acquaintance with, but the old fellow remained stolidly imperturbable.

Yockerbow trembled a little.

Then the period of waiting was over, and the Doq rose to his full height.

“Greetings to my brothers, and to Yockerbow the stranger, who is uninformed concerning the reason for his attendance. All will be made clear in moments.

“Since time immemorial”-catching on, Yockerbow glossed that as meaning, in practice, a few score-of-score years-”the Great Fleet of the Eastern Sea has enjoyed harborage rights at Ripar. It has been a considerable while since those rights were exercised. Today, however, notice has been served that the Fleet is to call here very shortly.”

So that was it! Making no attempt to maintain a stoical demeanor like the others, Yockerbow clenched his claws. He was schooled in history, and knew that there had been times when a visit by the Fleet was welcome; then the folk boasted how they on land shared ancestors with the People of the Sea, and clamored to trade and intermarry. On the other claw, there had been occasions when the Fleet arrived storm-bedraggled and half-starved, and crazed mariners stole what they could and spoiled the rest, whereupon the folk vowed they could never be called kin to such monsters.

Yockerbow's lifetime had elapsed without a sight of the Fleet; it was working the broadest equatorial waters. Reports from travelers indicated that it had a new commander-land-budded, they said as one-who, having deposed the former admiral, was interesting himself more than any of his predecessors in what the continents could offer.

His name, they said, was Barratong, and his shadow fell across the day-half of the world at every dawn. In Yumbit he had agents who seized the sharp spice remotaw and made it a monopoly for those he favored; in Clophical his prongsmen guarded the giant trees beloved of the spuder, and each autumn they rolled up as many webs as a junq could carry and used them for rope to snare wild junqlings and increase the Fleet; in fabled Grench-yes, he had ventured so far!-he held the sole right to export the fine wax known as cleb.

And he was coming here!

Briefly, alarm drove Yockerbow into imagining an unrealized threat. His lovely Arranth had never made any secret of how, as a youngling, she had dreamed of being traded to the Fleet, of touring the globe as the favorite partner of its admiral. Still, after so many years together... He had never, though, quite understood why someone like her, so fascinated by the skies, so able to make the dead past come alive, should want to be a partner in his own mundane toil...

“The Fleet's new commander,” the Doq was saying in a rasping voice, “has sent word that he wishes to examine the famous novelties of our city: to wit, the pumps which have enabled us to withstand the encroachments of the sea. But that is not the only reason for the presence of a stranger. Immediately on the demise of our late brother Chelp, our brother Iddromane advanced Yockerbow's claim to be his replacement. Without his aid, the boles of this hall might be shriveling under the impact of salt water. Moreover, he is city-born and none has been found to speak a word against him. It would certainly be fitting were he to join us in the ranks of the Jingfired.”

But this was incredible! How could Arranth's prediction possibly be right, when the aura of everybody present was so wrong? Besides, Yockerbow had no ambitions in that direction, whatever plans his spouse might have.

A murmur of conversation had broken out. Enjoying silence with a clatter of his mandibles, the Doq continued.

“There is, however, an alternative opinion. Because it is without precedent we have agreed that Yockerbow shall be present when it is put to the vote. It has been suggested that Barratong be inducted to make up the minyum. Some say he is of the commonalty. True, but he has attained the counterpart of noble status. It is known that the Great Fleet is increasing so fast because from every continent-let alone the islands-folk are flocking to him like cloudcrawlers at migration-time. His declared intention, we are told, is to make us all citizens of a global community. Those among us who are concerned with the future limitations of Ripar, its dependence not only on what others bring us from inland or abroad but on the natural process of weather and climate, faced with the undeniable rise in sea-level which is now putting us to such shifts, should be the first to applaud! And nowhere in the ancient scriptures is it laid down that our Order must be confined to city-budded persons!”

Chill certainty pervaded Yockerbow. He had been drawn into an argument the rights and wrongs of which the Doq had already decided in his own mind, but which other of the peers had doubts about. Now all were looking at him expectantly. What should he say? Should he risk the disfavor of the Doq? Knowing nothing of the intrigues of the Order, he felt hopeless. Hoping for guidance, he glanced at Iddromane, but-as ever-he was preserving perfect impassivity.

Well, then, he must trust to his own feelings, and even though he was sure Arranth would be angry with him afterwards, he could deal with that problem when it arose.

“Speak freely!” the Doq urged. “In meetings of the Order neither dissimulation nor subterfuge is permitted!”

Thus instructed, Yockerbow had the temerity to rise to his full height.

“Within or without the compass of your Order,” he declared, “you can rely on me to serve our city. So if by inducting Barratong you may hope to enlist his support for our welfare in the future, I say do it!”

The resultant exudations, in the close air of the hall, made Yockerbow feel as though he were lost at sea and a storm were bearing down on him. Yet, though there was still no sign from Iddromane, the Doq was regarding him benignly.

“Well said!” he announced. “Iddromane, you deserve credit for proposing to the Order someone who can take the long view! Be it then resolved that during his visit we invite the admiral of the Great Fleet to join the Jingfired, inasmuch as what he is doing is in accord with our ultimate aims!”

When the Doq had retired, some of the Order came to clasp claws with Yockerbow and compliment him on his selflessness; others departed wearing scowls. Bewildered, he made shift to answer politely, having only the vaguest notion of what he was supposed to have done right.

III

Never had Arranth been in such a rage! It was futile for Yockerbow to try and calm her; all she could say, over and over, was, “You had the chance to join the Order of the Jingfired, and you turned it down!”

He countered in his most reasonable tones that he had had no assurance of being elected-that if he had been by a bare majority he would have made himself enemies for life instead of, as it turned out, enjoying the patronage of the Doq-that the administrative duties such rank entailed would have interfered with his work. She refused to listen. She merely repeated facts which he already knew, as though he were some dull-witted youngling who should have been spotted by the eugenic courts.

“The Order is so old, no one can tell when it began! They say it dates back before the Northern Freeze! Its articles have been copied and copied until scarcely anyone can read them-but I'm sure I could, if I had the chance, and I'd have had it if you weren't a fool! Or maybe I ought to call you a coward! The path to secret wisdom lay before you, and you turned aside!”

“My dear, what's supposed to be so secret?” he rejoined. “You told me how your cousin Rafflek, who was then attendant on the Doq, reported what he overheard them saying during an induction rite: “The stars aren't fixed, and sometimes they blaze up!' So much you could be told by any of your friends who study sky-lore!”

“That's not the point!”

“I say it is! All right, some stars aren't stars but only planets, and our world is one of them. All right, other stars may be suns with planets of their own-I see no reason why not! But saying they're inhabited is about as useful as telling me that something's happening in the Antipads, or something happened in the far past! Without means of either communicating with these folk, or visiting them, what good is there in making such a statement?”

“That doesn't mean they don't exist!”

“Well, no, of course it doesn't-”

“And even if we can't communicate with the past, the past can communicate with us, and often does so without intention! Your pumps have sucked up ancient tools in the harbor, and scholars like Chimple and Verayze have worked out how the folk of that distant day employed them! So I'm right and you're wrong!”

As usual, Yockerbow subsided with a sigh, though he still wanted to attack her logic. It was, after all, true that his spouse was highly regarded in intellectual circles, though he did sometimes wonder whether it was because she really displayed such an outstanding knowledge of astronomy and archeology, or whether it was due rather to her slender grace and flawless mantle...

No, that was unworthy. But, for the life of him, he could not share her obsession with the improvable! You didn't need a telescope to discern how the moon's turning, and to some extent the sun's, affected the tides, for instance. But the planets obviously did not; records of water-level had been kept for so long that any such phenomenon must by now be manifest. Therefore the night sky was a mere backdrop to the world's events, and even if there were reasoning beings on other planets, without a way to contact them their existence was irrelevant. Certain authorities claimed there were creatures in the sun, what was more! They argued that the celebrated dark spots on its brilliant surface indicated a cool zone below a layer of white-hot air. And there were dark and light areas on the moon, too, which the same people held to be seas and continents. Given their chance, as Arranth wished, they would have imposed their convictions as dogma on all Ripar!

Perhaps he should wait on the Public Eugenicist and accuse his predecessor of authorizing a mistaken pairing. Things would have been so much simpler had they budded...

Yet he could not imagine living alone, and what other spouse could he find who was so stimulating, even though she was infuriating in equal measure?

Finally, to his vast relief, she lost patience, and made for the exit.

“I'm going to Observatory Hill!” she announced. “And while I'm up there, you can think about this! I look forward to meeting Barratong! I gather he recognizes merit in a female when he finds it! Maybe I can still fulfill my old ambition, and tour the globe aboard his banner junq!”

And off she flounced.

As the screen of creepers around their bower rustled back into place, Yockerbow comforted himself with the reflection that in the past a night of stargazing had always calmed her mind.

He could not, though, wholly persuade himself that the past was going to be any guide to the future.

But there was work to be done if the admiral was to admire the latest achievement of his beloved city. And he did love Ripar. He could conceive of no more splendid vista than the parallel ranks of giantrees which flanked its access to the ocean, no more colorful sight than the massed bundifloras ringing the lagoon, no sweeter perfume than what drifted up at nightfall from the folilonges as they closed until the dawn.

And he, for all his youth and diffidence, had saved Ripar, thanks to nothing better than sheer curiosity.

At least, that was his own opinion of what he'd done. Others seemed awestruck by what he regarded as obvious, and talked about his brilliance, even his genius. Yet anybody, in his view, might have done the same, given the opportunity. He was not even the first to try and protect Ripar by means of pumps. All along this coast, and far inland, folk made use of syphonids. Their huge and hollow stems could be trained, with patience, so that they might supply a settlement that lacked nothing else with fresh water from a distant lake, albeit there was higher ground between. But in cool weather their action grew sluggish, and sometimes air-locks developed in the stems and the flow failed.

On the coast, cutinates had also long been exploited. These were sessile creatures like immobile junqs that fed above the tide-line by trapping small game in sticky tentacles, yet to digest what they caught required salt water, which they sucked up from inshore shallows and trapped by means of flap-like valves. Fisherfolk would agitate one of them at low tide by offering it a scrap of meat, then gather stranded fish from drying pools as the water was pumped away.

Yockerbow's interest had been attracted to cutinates when he was still a youngling barely able to hold himself upright, by the odd fact that no matter how far inland the creatures might reach (and some attained many score padlongs) they never exceeded a certain height above sea-level, as though some invisible barrier extended over them.

Once, long ago, someone had thought of forcibly connecting a cutinate to a syphonid, so that any air-bubbles which formed in the latter would be driven out by the water-pressure. The project failed; for one thing, the syphonid rotted where it was connected to the cutinate, and for another, the cutinate would only pass water so salt it was useless for either drinking or irrigation.

But the young Yockerbow was excited by the idea of finding practical applications for these abundant creatures. When he discovered that airlocks in syphonids always developed at exactly the same height above water-level as was represented by the limit of the cutinates' spread, he was so astonished that he determined to solve the mystery.

The key came to him when, after a violent storm, he found a cutinate that had been ripped open lengthways, so that its internal tube was no longer watertight. Yet it was far from dead; still having one end in the sea and-fortuitously-the other in a pool left by the heavy rain, it was pulsing regularly in a final reflex spasm.

Yockerbow contrived a blade from a broken flinq with two sharp edges, cut away the longest intact muscles, and carried it home, along with a mugshell full of seawater. To the surprise of his family, he was able to demonstrate that the cutinate's activity depended less on its intrinsic vitality, as the scholars of the city were accustomed to assume, than on the simple relation between salt and fresh water. And then he discovered that, if vegetable material or scraps of meat were steeped in the fresh water, the muscle could actually be made to grow...

Lofty and remote, Iddromane came to hear about his work, and sent a messenger to inquire about it, who was sufficiently impressed to suggest that his master invite Yockerbow to wait on him. That was their only private meeting; they had crossed one another's path frequently since, but always at formal events such as season-rites or disposition-meets.

Iddromane's influence, however, was such that when he timidly put forward his idea that detached muscles might do useful work in pumping away flood-water from the city's outermost sea-wall, Yockerbow was overwhelmed with offers of assistance. There were several false starts; at first, for example, he imagined he could overcome the height problem by arranging the muscles to squeeze a succession of ascending bladders with flap-valves in between. That worked after a fashion, but the bladders kept rupturing and synchronization proved impossible. After a year of trial and error-mostly error-he was about ready to give up when one disconsolate day he was wandering along the shore and noticed a long thin log which the retreating tide had stranded so that its heavy root end lay on one side of an outcropping rock and its thin light spike end on the other. The rock was closer to the root than the spike; as the water withdrew, there came a moment when the log was exactly balanced, and hung with both ends clear of the ground.

Then a mass of wet mud fell away from the roots and the balance was disturbed and the log tilted towards its spike end and shortly rolled off the rock. But Yockerbow had seen enough.

A month later, he had the first pumping-cluster of cutinate muscles at work. Grouped so close together they had to synchronize, they shrank in unison to half their normal length, then relaxed again, exerting a force that five-score strong adults could not outdo. By way of a precisely fulcrumed log, they pulled a plunger sliding inside a dead, dried syphonid, which led to the bottom of a tidal pool. At the top of its travel, the plunger passed a flap-valve lashed to the side of the tube, and water spilled through and ran off back to the ocean.

Much development work followed; in particular, the cords attached to the plunger kept breaking, so that Iddromane had to authorize the dispatch of an agent to bargain for a batch of spuder-web-doubtless thereby arousing the interest of Barratong, for only his factors were entitled to market the webs on this side of the ocean. That problem solved, means had to be found of ensuring that the plunger dropped back to the bottom of its course without jamming halfway; again, that called for an agent to travel abroad in search of cleb, the astonishing wax which, pressed upon from the side, was as rigid as oaq, yet allowed anything to glide over its surface be it as rough as rasper-skin.

With a ring of flexible hide around it, the plunger on its web-strand slid back and forth as easily as might be hoped for, and every pulse of the combined muscles could raise the volume of a person in the form of water.

But the purchase of cleb had also been notified to Barratong, and beyond a doubt that must have been what decided him to call here after so long an absence of the Fleet. For now travelers came to gape at the ranked batteries of pumps which, working night and day, protected Ripar from the ravages of the ocean. As often as the tide flooded salt water into the outer lagoon, where it was trapped behind a succession of graded banks, so often did the pumps expel it and allow fresh water back to keep the giantrees in health. A few were wilting, even so, but very few, and the routine difference in water-level was a half-score padlongs.

To Yockerbow's intense annoyance, though, people who ought to have known better-including some members of Iddromane's entourage-expected him to increase this margin indefinitely. To them he spoke as vainly as to Arranth. He said, “I've tried to raise water further than the height represented by the limit of cutinate growth, and it won't work.” Not even Arranth believed him; she was more and more rude to him nowadays, and he felt certain it was because he “wouldn't” improve his pumps.

And nobody shared his excitement at the probable implications of his discovery. It seemed to him that the only explanation must be that air was pressing down the water in a pump-tube, so when the weight of water lifted matched the weight of the overlying air, it would rise no further. He had contrived some elegant demonstrations of the theory, using clear glass tubes supplied by one of Iddromane's associates, but not even Arranth would take them seriously. She believed, as everybody did, that air had neither weight nor-what would follow-limitations to its upward extent. Solid substances had much weight; liquids, rather less, because they incorporated more fire; but air's must be negligible, because it filled the universe and neither obstructed nor slowed down the planets. And if the stars were fire, and fire could not burn without air-as was proven by covering good dry fuel, after setting it alight, with something impervious-then there must be air around the stars.

“But just suppose,” he argued vainly, “that starfire is different from regular fire-”

“Now you're asking me to believe something much more ridiculous than that the planets are inhabited!” Arranth would crow in triumph, and that was always where the discussion ended, because he had no counter to that.

So, having unproved his pumps as far as they would go, he was turning his attention to other matters. He was trying to make a connection between fire and mere heat; he was testing everything known to create warmth, especially rubbing, and he was approaching a theory to explain the brightness of the stones that fell from heaven. It was generally accepted that the glowing streaks which nightly crossed the sky were of the same nature as the lumps of hot rock that were sometimes found at the probable point of impact of one of them. Burning rock? Well, rock could be melted, and if air contained more of the principle of fire the higher one went...

It was tolerably logical, that idea. Yet it failed to satisfy Yockerbow, and on the occasions when he had joined Arranth at the observatory on the high hill to the east of Ripar, where there were many good telescopes and files of records extending back nine-score years-it should have been far longer, but a disastrous winter had flooded the pit where earlier records were stored, and they rotted-he always came away disappointed. Some of the astronomers listened to his ideas politely, but in the end they always made it clear that to them he was no more than a lowly artisan, whereas they were refined and erudite scholars.

It was their disrespect which had hardened his view of them, rather than any secure belief that their explanations of the stars were wrong. Essentially, he could not accept the probability of such people being completely right.

And, little by little, he was formulating concepts which he knew made better sense. Suppose he had broached them to the Order of the Jingfired, after insisting on being inducted as Iddromane proposed...?

No, the outcome would have been disastrous. He knew little of the web of intrigue in which the peers held Ripar like a catch of squirmers in a fish-hunter's basket, but he had the clear impression that mastering its complexities must be like trying to weave a net out of live yarworms. Had he uttered his heretical notions in such august company, means would have been found to replace him prematurely. Radicals, revolutionaries, had no place in the deliberations of the Order.

Yockerbow felt caged and frustrated. What he had expected to flow from the acceptance of his pumps, he could not have said. Certainly, though, it had not been anything like this sense of impotence and bafflement. In a word, he was indescribably disappointed by the reaction of his fellow citizens.

Suddenly he found he was looking forward as keenly as Arranth to the arrival of Barratong. Maybe someone who had traveled half the globe would be more open to new ideas than those who sat here smug behind the defenses he had contrived but paid scant attention to the inventor's other views.

IV

First there was a pale line of phosphorescence on the pre-dawn horizon, so faint only the keenest-eyed could detect it. Then it resolved into individual points of light, each signifying the presence of a junq festooned as lavishly with glowvines as any palace in Ripar. And at last, just as the sun cleared the horizon, the entire Fleet came into sight of land, and the city's breath seemed to stop collectively.

The Fleet was huge! Records indicated it had never exceeded four score junqs; now there were seven score, and another score of younglings followed behind, secured with hawsers made of spuder-web until they were safely broken. Each of the adults carried an enormous haodah beset with edible funqi and other useful secondary plants, and each haodah was as warm with people, from those so old their mantles were shrunken with age down to children who could not yet stand upright, and nonetheless clambered with infinite confidence from pole to creeper to outlying float.

“It looks more like a mobile city than a Fleet!” marveled Yockerbow, and he was not alone.

And the resemblance was magnified a scorefold when, responding to a perfectly drilled system of signals issued by gongs and banners, the junqs closed on the place allotted for their mooring and came to rest, prow against stern, so that one might walk dry-padded from each to the next and finally, by way of the leading junq, to shore.

“That must be Barratong!” Arranth exclaimed, surveying the wondrous spectacle through a borrowed spyglass.

“Where?” Yockerbow demanded. Passing the glass to him, she pointed out a tall, burly fellow at the prow of the lead junq.

“I think not,” Yockerbow said after a pause.

“What? Oh, you're always contradicting me!” She stamped her pad.

“He doesn't match the descriptions,” was his mild reply. “The person directly behind him does.”

“Are you sure? He looks so-so ordinary!”

And it was true. Apart from combining northern shortness with a southerner's pale mantle, he looked in no way exceptional, but he wore crossed baldrics from which depended the ancient symbols of his rank, a spyglass and an old-style steersman's goad, and his companions deferred to him even in their posture.

The Doq and the eight peers were waiting for him, surrounded by their entire retinue, and moved to greet him the moment he climbed down from the junq. After that he was invisible from where Yockerbow and Arranth stood, and the group moved off towards the Doqal Hall where a grand reception had been prepared.

“We should be going with them!” Arranth said accusingly. “If you'd asked Iddromane like I suggested, I'm sure he-”

Yockerbow fixed her with a rock-hard glare.

“No! Am I to wait on him, like a humble underling? Has it not occurred to you, my dear, that he is coming to see me?”

Her eye widened enormously. After a moment she began to laugh.

“Oh, my clever spouse! Of course you're right! It's much more remarkable like that! It's going to make us famous!”

As if we weren't already... But it didn't matter. He had made his point, and there was work to do.

It was not long before the mood of excitement generated by the Fleet's arrival started to give way to annoyance. This was not because the visitors were discourteous or rapacious; they traded honestly for what they found on offer, and conducted themselves with tolerable good manners albeit some of them, especially those who hailed from the distant south, had very different customs.

More, it was that they seemed somewhat patronizing about even the best that Ripar had to show, and in this they took after the admiral himself. Blunt, plain-spoken, he refused to be as impressed as the peers expected by anything about the city, including its alleged antiquity, for- as he declared in tones that brooked no denial-his Fleet could trace its origins back to within a score-score years of the inception of the Freeze, when briq-commanders from the west were storm-driven into what was for them a new ocean and found not wild briqs but wild junqs, which none before them had thought to try and tame, yet which proved far superior: more intelligent and more docile, not requiring to be pithed. He even had the audacity to hint that Ripar had probably been a settlement planted by the early seafarers, and that contradicted all the city's legends.

He compounded his offense when, having enjoyed the greatest honor they could bestow on him and been inducted to the Order of the Jingfired, he made it unmistakably plain that that too was delaying fulfillment of his chief purpose in calling here: inspection of Yockerbow's pumping-system.

The peers seethed. That anyone should find the work of a commoner, a mere artisan, of greater concern than their most ancient rituals...!

They yielded perforce, thinking what the Fleet might do were its commander to lose his temper, and sent urgent messages to Yockerbow to meet them on the outer harbor bank.

To the intense annoyance of Yockerbow, but the huge amusement of a crowd of bystanders who had come here to catch a glimpse of the famous admiral, Arranth was rushing up and down in a tizzy of excitement, like a girl waiting to greet her first lover. Not until the procession of the peers and their attendants actually stepped on the high bank did she suddenly realize how unbefitting her behavior was. Speech-fortunately-failed her long enough for Barratong to pace ahead of his companions and confront Yockerbow person-to-person.

“So you're the celebrated inventor, are you?” he said, gazing up at the Riparian who had clean forgotten that, according to normal rules of politeness, he should have reduced his pressure so as not to overtop the distinguished visitor. “I like you on sight. You don't pretend to be what you are not-a stumpy little fellow like myself!” He added in a lower, private tone: “That Doq of yours must be aching in all his tubules by this time! Serve him right!”

At which point, while Yockerbow was still overcome with astonishment, Arranth recovered her self-possession and advanced with all the dazzling charm at her disposal. From somewhere she had obtained thick, fine strands of sparkleweed and draped them about her body in rough imitation of the admiral's baldrics; this, she hoped, would not only be taken as a compliment but maybe start a trend among fashionable circles.

“Admiral, what an honor you've bestowed on us by coming here! I so much crave the chance to talk with you! You know, when I was a girl I used to dream the Fleet might call here so I might beg the chance to make a trip with it and see the stars of the far southern skies for myself- astronomy, you see, is my own particular interest!”

“Then you should talk to Ulgrim, my chief navigator,” said Barratong, and deliberately turned his back. “Now, Master Yockerbow, explain your pumps! I came here specially to see them, because-as you can probably imagine-every now and then the Fleet at sea runs into the kind of waves we can't rely on riding, and often our junqs are weighed down by water which we have to bale out with our own claws before they can swim at full speed again. In the wild state, as I'm sure you know, they never experience such swamping, because their flotation bladders always bear them up, so they have no reflexes of their own to cope with such a situation. Still, we've taught them to endure and indeed nourish all sorts of parasitic plants, so maybe we can add something more. Do we go this way?”

He made for the nearest working pump, and Yockerbow hastened to keep pace with him. Nervously he said, “I believe I should congratulate you, shouldn't I?”

“What for, in particular?”

“Were you not just inducted into the Order of the Jingfired?”

“Oh, that!”-with casual contempt. “Sure I was. But I gather its teaching is supposed to be secret, and I can't for the life of me see why. If it's true, then the more people who know about it, the better, and if it isn't, then it's high time it was exposed to ridicule and correction.”

The peers who had remained within earshot stiffened in horror at the prospect of this rough intruder revealing their most sacred secrets. Barratong paid no attention. His aroma had the tang of one accustomed to bellowing orders into the mandibles of a gale, and his self-confidence was infectious. Yockerbow found he was able to relax at last.

“Now here you see a pump actually working,” he said. “The tide being on the turn, there's relatively little water left beyond this bank. If you want to inspect a dismounted pump, we have one available...”

Barratong's ceaseless questioning continued all day and long past sunset, while Arranth hovered sullenly nearby and kept trying to interrupt. At last she managed to make him angry, and he rounded on her.

“If you're so well grounded in star-lore, you can tell me the interval between conjunctions of Swiftyouth and Steadyman!”

“It depends on our world's position in its orbit! The year of Swiftyouth is 940 days, that of Steadyman is 1,900, and our own-as you may perhaps know!-is 550.” Clenching her claws, she positively spat the words.

Softening a little, Barratong gave a nod. “Very good! Though I still say Ulgrim is the person you ought to be talking to, not me, a common mariner.”

“The most uncommon mariner I ever met!” blurted Yockerbow.

Pleased, Barratong gave a low chuckle. “I could honestly match the compliment,” he said. “For such a big city, it has precious few people in it worth meeting. I was introduced, though, to some folk called Chimple and Verayze, who do at least base what they say about the history of Ripar on solid evidence.”

“We found it for them!” Arranth exclaimed, then amended hastily, “Well, it turned up in the mud the pumps sucked...”

“Yes, of course: they told me so.” Barratong shook himself and seemed to return to reality from far away. “As it happens, I'm engaged to dine with those two, and it's dark now. You come with me. I find you, as I just said, interesting.”

Neglected, insulted, the peers had long ago departed in high dudgeon. There was no one else on the sea-bank except a few dogged onlookers and a couple of Barratong's aides.

“It will be an honor,” Yockerbow said solemnly, and could not resist whispering to Arranth as they followed in the admiral's brisk pad-marks, “Isn't this better than being on the outer fringes of some banquet in the Doqal Hall?”

Her answer-and how it carried him back to their time of courting!- was to squeeze his mantle delicately with her claw.

They met with Chimple and Verayze at Iddromane's bower on the south side of the city, where the plashing of waves mingled with music from a flower-decked arbor. It was blessed with the most luscious-scented food-plants Yockerbow had ever encountered, many being carefully nurtured imports. Even the chowtrees had an unfamiliar flavor.

Yet the admiral paid scant attention to the fare his host offered, and at first the latter was inclined to be offended. Yockerbow too began by thinking it was because, after voyaging to so many fabulous countries, Barratong had grown blase. In a little, though, the truth dawned on him. The signs, once recognized, were unmistakable.

Barratong was in the grip of a vision budded of his vivid imagination, yet founded securely upon fact-a vision of a kind it was given to few to endure without slipping into fatal dreamness. Yockerbow trembled and lost his appetite. Now he understood how Barratong had attained his present eminence.

Musing aloud, the admiral captivated everyone in hearing with words that in themselves were such as anybody might have used, yet summed to an awe-inspiring total greater than the rest of them would dare to utter.

“The ocean rises,” he said first. “It follows that the Freeze is ending. If it began, it can just as well end, correct? So what will follow? We've tried to find out. The Fleet has put scouts ashore at bay after cove after inlet and found traces of the higher water-levels of the past. How much of the ocean is lucked up in the polar caps we shall discover when the continued warming of the sun releases it. You here at Ripar, despite your wealth and cleverness-despite your pumps!-will have to drag your pads inland and quarrel for possession of high ground with the folk who already live there. You!”-this to Iddromane-”with all your ancient lore, in your famous Order, why did you not speak of this when you inducted me?”

Iddromane's notorious composure strained almost, but not quite, to the bursting point. He answered, “Truth is truth, regardless of when it was established.”

“I don't agree. Truth is to be found out by slow degrees, and the world changes in order to instruct us about truth, to save us from assuming that what was so in the past is necessarily bound to be the case tomorrow, too. I'm sure our friends who study relics of the past will support me, won't you?” This with a meaningful glare.

Chimple and Verayze exchanged glances, then indicated polite assent.

“And how say you, Master Inventor?”

Yockerbow hesitated, seeking a way to offend neither Iddromane nor Barratong, and eventually said, “Perhaps there is more than one kind of truth. Perhaps there is the kind we have always known, truth about ourselves and our relations with each other, and then maybe there's the kind which is only gradually revealed to us because we actively seek it out by exploration and experiment.”

“Most diplomatically spoken!” said the admiral, and exploded into a roar of laughter. “But what's your view of the origin of the universe? In Grench they hold that once all the stars were gathered right here, in the same world as ourselves, and the advent of unrighteousness caused them to retreat to the furthest heaven in shame at our behavior. In Clophical they say the departure of the stars was a natural and inevitable phenomenon, but that that was the cause of the Northern Freeze, and hence, if the ice is melting again, the stars must be drawing closer once more!”

“If only we could tell one way or the other!” sighed Arranth. “But though it's suspected that the stars move, as well as the planets-if not so visibly-our astronomers have so far failed to demonstrate the fact. Am I not correct, Master Iddromane?”

“Not entirely,” was the judicious answer. “Careful observation does indicate that certain stars must be closer to us than others. As the world progresses around the sun, a minute difference in position-relative position, that is, of course-can be detected in a few cases. They are so few, however, that we are unable to decide whether the shift is solely due to a change of perspective, or whether part is motion proper to the stars themselves. The distances involved are so great, you know, Admiral, that if your Fleet could swim through the sky it would take a score-of-score-of-score years to pass the outermost planet Sluggard, and twenty times as long again to reach the star we have established to be nearest.”

“Hah! If means were given me, I'd do it! I'd spin a rope of spuder-web and catch the moon, and swarm up it to see what's going on out there! But since we can't, I must be content with my current project. You see, although you may view the rise in water-level as an unmitigated disaster, I say we shall be amply repaid by the recovery of some of our ancient lands. Already at the fringe of melting glaciers we have found frozen seeds, wingets, animal-hides and mandibles, even tools belonging to our remote ancestors. This year I purpose to venture further north than anyone since the Freeze began. It's an ideal time. So far this season we haven't seen a single berg in these latitudes. What's more, there have been many fewer storms than formerly-to my surprise, I might add, because if the sun is heating up I'd expect the air to roil like water meeting hot rock... Yockerbow, I detect a hint of wistful envy.”

Yockerbow gave an embarrassed shrug. It was true he had been dreaming for a moment, picturing to himself the new lands Barratong described.

“Come with me, then,” the admiral said. “The Fleet has the ancient right to select a hostage from among the people of Ripar, exchanged against one of our own as a gage of amity. This time I choose you. And we already know your spouse fancies a sea-voyage; she may come also.”

“But-!” Iddromane burst out.

“But what?”

“But he is our most notable inventor!”

“That's exactly why I picked him; he has the sort of open mind which permits him to see what happens, not what one might expect to happen. If you refuse, it will be a breach of our long-standing treaty, and you need not count on us when the tune comes-it will, I promise you!-when your folk find you can neither stay here nor flee inland, and require my Fleet to help in your removal to safe high ground! But in any case it will be only for this season, unless Yockerbow decides to opt for a life at sea. It has been known for people to make such a choice... Well, Yockerbow?”

There was one sole answer he could give. All his life he had been led to believe that sea-commanders were no more than traders, glorified counterparts of the subtle, greedy folk who thronged the Ripar docks, Barratong, though, was none such. He was a visionary, who shared the passion that drove Yockerbow himself, the lure of speculation, the hunger for proof, the delight to be found in creating something from imagined principles which never was before on land or sea.

How much of this came logically to him, and how much was due to Barratong's odor of dominance, he could not tell. He knew only that his weather-sense predicted storms if he did not accede.

“Arranth and I,” he declared boldly, “would count it a privilege to travel with you.”

There was a dead pause during which Arranth looked as though she was regretting this fulfillment of her juvenile ambition, but pride forbade her to say so.

“Then there's nothing more to be said,” grumbled Iddromane, and signaled his musicians to play louder.

V

Yockerbow and Arranth were not the only new recruits to depart with the Fleet. Here, as at every city the junqs had visited since Barratong assumed command, scores of other people-mainly young-had decided that life at home was too dull for them, and they would rather risk the unknown dangers of the sea than endure the predictable monotony of Ripar.

Seventeen of them had survived interrogation by Barratong's deputies, and the peers were not averse to letting them go; the city's population was beginning to strain its resources, so they did not insist on an equal exchange.

Dawn of the fifth day saw the junqs turn outward-bound again-vibrating with hunger by now, yet perfectly drilled. Sedate, majestic, they adopted an echelon formation such that when they came on schools of fish or floating weed there would always be at least a little left even for the younglings that held the rearmost station. Thus impeccably aligned, they beat their way north.

“Is this like what you were expecting?” Yockerbow murmured to Arranth as they clung to the haodah of the banner junq and wondered how long it would be before they could imitate the unfeigned self-confidence of the children who casually disregarded the motion of the waves.

“Not at all!” she moaned. “And I persuaded Iddromane to let me have a first-rate telescope, too, thinking I might make useful observations! How can one study stars from such a fluctuating platform?”

The greatest shock of all, however, was to follow. Who could have guessed that the admiral of the Great Fleet of the Eastern Sea was bored and lonely?

Oh, bored perhaps. After one's sub-commanders had flawlessly executed every maneuver required of them for half a lifetime-after putting in at ports of call on every shore of the world's largest ocean-after dealing with people of different cultures, languages and customs for so long-yes, one would expect him to lose the sharpness of his prong. Yet... lonely? When volunteers flocked to join him at every stopover, and even in mid-ocean, as was shortly manifest when the Fleet was accosted by fish-hunters risking their own lives and those of their barqs, only to be turned back to shore disappointed? No, it was incredible!

Nonetheless, it proved to be the case. Yockerbow found out the second dark of the voyage, when chief navigator Ulgrim-amused, apparently, to meet not only a landsider but a female with at least a smidgin of skylore-had taken Arranth to the stern for a practical discussion. It was a fine clear night, with little wind, and only a clawful of falling stars. The Great Branch gleamed in all its magnificence, and the Smoke of the New Star was clearly discernible, at least as bright as the glowvines of a city they were passing to the westward. The glowvines on the junqs themselves were shielded, for fear of attracting hawqs or yowls; they were rarely fully exposed, as Yockerbow had been told, except when approaching shore or when the fleet needed to keep in contact during a gale.

And there was Yockerbow, more from courtesy than choice, alone with Barratong at the prow, while the rest of the crew amused themselves with a game that involved casting lots.

“Chance...” the admiral mused, making obvious reference to the gamesters. “Well, one can see why people tossed on the ocean by a life-tune of storms may hew to notions such as luck, but-You, Master Inventor! Do you believe your great achievements were the fruit of accident?”

Cautiously, for the “great achievements” were far behind, Barratong having concluded that his pumps could not easily be adapted for use on a junq, Yockerbow answered, “I think luck must be a different phenomenon from chance. I think the world goes about its own business, and those who are ripe to respond do so, much as a fertile plant catches the spores of its kin from a favorable breeze.”

“Diplomatic as ever!” said the admiral sourly. “How I wish you'd speak your mind openly! If you only knew how I hunger for someone who might amaze me-startle me by voicing one of my own ideas without being prompted! Better yet, mention something I never dreamed of even when I was half-starved as a youth, plodding from city to city in search of knowledge and instruction!”

“Is that how you began your career?” Yockerbow ventured.

“What else but the quest for knowledge would tempt a sane person away from a comfortable home? What else would persuade a landsider to take to the ocean, except the chance of getting to meet more strangers in a shorter time? Oh, I've sat with scholars in a score of famous cities, listening eagerly to what they purported to teach the world, and after a few years I realized: no one is making new discoveries any more! My sub-commanders long refused to visit Ripar, because last time the Fleet came so far north the junqs were set on by a gulletfish following the drift of the bergs, and two were lost. I acceded for a while, until I heard rumors about the Order of the Jingfired, and even then I held back until reports of your pumps reached me. I never expected them to be useful aboard a junq, but it was an excuse to swing the support of other commanders behind me. Then the absence of bergs during our trip this year came to my aid, and now they are agreed that if I've been successful so far the chances are good that I'll continue to be so. Myself, I can't but doubt it. And I have no one I can turn to for sane counsel.”

The last words were added in so low a tone that at first Yockerbow was unsure whether to reply. At length he made his mind up.

“Admiral, I recognize you for a visionary. Such folk have always encountered difficulties. In my humble way, I've done the same. But-well, since it wasn't truly news of my inventions which drew you to Ripar, I deduce it was the hope that the Order of the Jingfired possessed data that you lacked.”

“Was I to know there would be a vacancy in the Order when I chose to turn up? The decision to head north this year was already taken.”

“Then”-boldly-”how did you plan to obtain the Order's secrets?”

There was a long interval during which one of the outlying scouts reported a huge float of qrill, and the entire Fleet altered course fractionally to take advantage of it. When Barratong replied, there were loud squelching noises in the banner junq's maw, and now and then the whole of her body rippled longitudinally and let go a puff of foul-smelling gas.

“Had I not been inducted to the Order,” the admiral said at last as though the interruption had not happened, “I did plan to choose Iddromane as my hostage for this voyage, or some other scholar well grounded in the so-called 'secrets' of the Order. I'd have relied on his terror during the first storm we met to make him reveal-”

Pride in his own city made Yockerbow risk breaking in. “It wouldn't have worked!”

“It wouldn't have been worth it,” Barratong retorted sourly.

Yockerbow was shaken. “You mean there's nothing worth knowing in what they teach you?”

“I wouldn't say nothing,” came the judicious answer. “I do accept that, acting as they do to preserve lore garnered in the far past, they have succeeded in assuring the transfer from generation to generation of certain indispensable facts. Of those you meet on the branchways of Ripar, or Grench or Clophical, come to that, or any city, or even as you pass from junq to junq of the Great Fleet, how many folk would you rely on finding whom you could talk to about what really matters-the nature of the universe, the fires of heaven and how they correspond with those down here, the beginning and the end of everything? Hmm? Many would be prepared to debate with you on any such subject, but how few would have solid evidence to back their views!”

“I always thought,” Yockerbow admitted, “the Order of the Jingfired did have evidence.”

“They claim to have, but when you ask for it, it can't be produced!” Barratong exclaimed. “I'm ready to believe, for instance, that long ago one of the stars in the sky blazed up until it outshone the sun. I can see the cloud of glowing gas they still call its Smoke-it's right there, isn't it? What I want to know, though, is why that happened, and why it hasn't happened since! And then there are elderly folk among my own people who say that when they were budded certain stars were not so bright as they are now... but who's to define what 'bright' means? Can the members of your Order tell me that? They swear in principle they could-if only they had certain ancient star-maps which were spoiled by a flood! But when I asked for them they hadn't even kept fragments and tatters which I could have shown to Ulgrim!”

He concluded that tirade on a fierce tone, and a second later continued in a much milder voice, as though reminded about Arranth by his reference to his chief navigator.

“They said at Ripar that your buds don't take.”

Yockerbow curled his mantle before he could stop himself, and a waft of combat-stink fouled the salty air. Aghast at his bad manners, he was on the point of prostrating himself when he realized that the remark had been made in the matter-of-fact fashion of an equal speaking to an equal. Flattered, he confirmed its truth.

“Nor do mine,” said Barratong, staring across the water where the new-risen moon was creating a path of brightness for others to follow- not the Fleet. “Your lady wishes me to join with her, and I shall with pleasure, but don't expect the offspring you can't give her. Were I capable, my line would be among the greatest in history. But the only thing that keeps the Fleet in being-the only thing that helps so many cities to survive around the shores of the eastern ocean-is the fact that a first-time mating between strangers takes more often than not, so your seventeen from Ripar will engender enough progeny to keep us going for quite some while... Oh, Yockerbow, I almost look forward to the tumult the great melting will entail! We must stir the folk around more! Little by little, thanks to our habit of choosing either sea or land, either drom or junq, either this or that, we are breeding apart! And the same holds for the inventions made in one place or another! Do you know about the longwayspeakers that they have at Grench? No? I thought not. But think what use you could have made at Ripar of a means to communicate simply by beating on a distended bladder in a patterned code, comprehensible to somebody the other side of a mountain range: they can do that! And they can signal orders at Clophical by using trained and brightly colored wingets which make patterns that are visible from end to end of the valley, but they don't survive being taken out to sea. And the use they could make of your pumps at Gowg...! Do you see what I mean?”

Yockerbow certainly did, but already he was lost in contemplation of the possibilities. He stood silent for a long while, until Barratong roused him with a nudge, pointing to the north.

“Look yonder! What can the Jingfired tell me about that-hmm?”

For an instant Yockerbow thought he must be watching a drift of cloudcrawlers on their migration route; some species displayed bright flashes from time to time, and occasionally they synchronized to make bright polychrome bands. But this was much too blue, and too near the horizon, and anyway the season was wrong.

“Tonight the sky is clearer than I ever saw it,” said Barratong. “You're looking at the aurora round the pole. I've been told that when one draws close enough it reaches to the apex of the sky. Not that anyone has seen it in all its glory since the Northern Freeze-but on this trip we shall! Even my sub-commanders don't know what I have in mind, friend Yockerbow, but on this voyage I mean to break all records for a northern swim, and go where nobody has dared to venture since the ice claimed what was habitable land. I want to witness the rebudding of the continents! Don't you?”

VI

After a few days of steady northward travel, they made the first of many detours. Fog and mist did not deceive the northfinders carried by the Fleet, but this tune a violent storm lay across their course. At about the same tune the sea became noticeably cooler, as though chilled by melting ice. Paradoxically, however, at the same time it started to teem with a wider range of life-forms than could be found in the waters nearer Ripar, from the tiniest qrill which Barratong scooped up in a shell and showed to Yockerbow through a single-lensed microscope that magnified better than ten-score tunes, up to giant schools of sharq. The Fleet accorded these a respectfully wide berth also, not because they were a threat themselves, but because they in turn were hunted by the fiercest predator in these waters, the huge and solitary gulletfish whose mindless charge could rupture the tubules of even the largest junq. For amusement, elderly mariners jelled the ichor of the new recruits by regaling them with tales of what it was like to meet a gulletfish in mid-ocean and try to make it charge a barbed prong. It was worst in the dark, they said, when all one had to guide the eye was the ripple of phosphorescence as it rounded to for yet another onslaught.

“How rich in life the planet is!” murmured Yockerbow, and Barratong gave him a sardonic dip.

“Who says only this planet? Some think the stars may be alive, or harbor life, because living creatures are always warmer than their environment! Myself, though, I suspect the reason we don't find such a plethora of fish in tropical waters is that life requires a differential of heat, the way your pumps require a differential of level, and as the water becomes warmer the task of survival grows harder, just as when it grows extremely cold. What about that?”

Yockerbow felt he would never grow accustomed to the way the admiral kept tossing out provocative ideas, even though he was modest about the source of them, and always gave credit to anonymous scholars said to have been met in distant places. By this time, however, Yockerbow was beginning to doubt their existence. Barratong combined his restless genius with a diffidence more proper to a shy young apprentice.

He said after a pause for thought, “It makes sense to invoke a limit at either end of any scale of events. Just as there is no life in solid ice, so there is probably none in the stars. After all, a living creature which is trapped in wildfire dies, and certain persons have conducted experiments wherein a small animal and some burning fuel were closed up together, and the animal died and the fuel did not burn out.”

“I've heard of such cruelty,” Barratong said musingly. “I personally would not care to witness it, but I'm glad in a sense that someone could bear to... Ah, there is so much to know, my friend! And so much that has already been discovered in one place, yet never conveyed to another! But we have spoken of such matters already.”

“As we have,” rumbled Ulgrim, approaching from the stern with Arranth-somehow shyly-following him. “Admiral, do we plan to put in at any harbors before we reach the polar circle? The lady has convinced me that it would be of interest were I to peek through her big spyglass on stable ground.”

Behind his back Arranth gave a moue, as to tell Yockerbow, “See? There are some who respect my learning even if you don't!”

Whether Barratong noticed or not, he gave no sign. He merely chaffed Ulgrim, who was still tall but whose mantle showed the tell-tale wrinklings of age.

“What youth and good looks may do to reform a character! You never cared to come ashore with me in other climes to hear what the local philosophers had to say, or view their instruments and their experiments! Lady Arranth, I bow to you; whatever else you may be schooled in, you certainly display a vast knowledge of people's nature! But the answer's no!”

Abruptly he extended to his maximum height, a third or more above his usual stature, and even though this brought him barely equal with Yockerbow and Ulgrim, the effect was as shocking as though he had grown taller than mythical Jing. One more element was added to Yockerbow's understanding of this admiral's dominance over his enormous Fleet.

“We go ashore next time on land newly exposed by the retreating ice! We stocked the junqs with food enough to see us through the trip-their drink-bladders are bulging-no blight or mold afflicts the food-plants- and we have medicines for every conceivable ill! For all I know, the landfall we next make may be shrouded under so much cloud you can't see stars-but never mind! We already know how the ice when it melts reveals wonders from far distant in time, so the wonders that are distant in space may take care of themselves for this season! The stars are slow to bloom and fade, but you and I are not. Time enough for your observations next whiter, if the Fleet remains in the far north and we are compelled to he up a while, which I suspect... But tell me, though, old companion”-this as he imperceptibly resumed his normal pressure- “what's excited you anew about the stars you've known so well for so long?”

Embarrassed, but putting a bold countenance on matters, Ulgrim said bluffly, “She speaks of stars which I can't see, and yet they're there. More than once since leaving Ripar, when the water was most calm, I've thought I could discern them-an eleventh in the cluster of the Half-Score Wingets, another at the focus of the Welkin City... And of such a color, too: a strange deep red! Yet when I look again-!”

“Master Navigator,” Yockerbow said, “have you ever seen a bar of metal heated in a fire until it melts?”

“I never had time for such landsiders' tricks!”

“I know: one dare not carry or use fire aboard a junq. Yet fact is fact. The metal starts to glow in the dark red; afterwards it becomes orange, and yellow, and green-which we see clearest-and then shades through blue to white, just like the rainbow. Eventually it can be made to glow like the sun itself. It follows that a hotter or a cooler star...”

His words trailed away, for Barratong was scowling.

“I thought you were never inducted to the Order of the Jingfired!” he said in an accusatory tone. v “What does that have to do with it?” Arranth demanded before Yockerbow could reply. “Had I but the means, I'd show you all this with a glass prism!”

“It is as I feared!” Barratong raged, and began to pace back and forth along the poop of the haodah, spuming at every turn so violently one thought he might blister his pads. “Your vaunted Order possesses no truly secret knowledge! Do you realize that the heating of a metal bar is the chief symbol of their most private ritual?”

There was a moment of dead silence, save for the slap-and-hush of waves against the junq's broad flank and the meep-meep of a flighter and its young which were following the Fleet in hope of scavenging carrion or floating dung.

All of a sudden Yockerbow started to laugh. As soon as he could he recovered his voice and said, “Admiral-excuse me, because this is truly too silly-but you were right the first time, and this time you're wrong. It doesn't matter that someone else knows the inmost secret of the Jingfired ritual. What counts is that Ulgrim didn't.”

“I think I see what you mean,” said Barratong, and a waft of anger-stink blew away as he mastered himself. “Clarify!”

“How long ago was such a truth discovered, that may prove to be valid even in the case of the stars? Well before the Northern Freeze, we may be sure! What happened following the onset of it? Why, people driven crazy by hunger and despair felled great civilizations which otherwise might well by now have shown us things we regard as impossible-you might, for instance, have your spuder-web to catch the moon! But nobody among the Fleet would dare to undertake the necessary research because a fire literally cannot be lighted on a junq! Hence no metal-no glass-no melted rocks-no anything of the kind which pertains to such realities!”

He was downwind of Barratong as the Fleet bore into a strong northerly breeze. Whether it was because he scented the admiral's enthusiasm, or because the newly exposed lands which the ice had reluctantly let go were emanating signals from those who had once occupied them, he never knew. But in that moment he was as great a visionary as the admiral.

“Yet we can bring our knowledge all together!” he declared, and his weather-sense confirmed that he had safely picked a course into imagination, steering well clear of dangerous dreamness. “Knowledge borrowed from past time will guide us to the future we deserve for all the troubles we've endured! There must be suffering-would I knew why! I don't believe the stars decree it, for they're so remote they might as well be cool and stiff like arctic rocks, yet they can blaze up, and I don't want to think it's simply because they suck into themselves the vital force from planets like ours where life exists between the limits set by ice and fire!”

“Say it's because of ignorance,” offered Ulgrim, and at once looked surprised at his own improbably philosophical suggestion.

“Yes! Yes!”-from Barratong. “Have we not found remains of animals such as none of us had seen or heard of? Have we not then encountered similar beasts in strange new waters? And are we ourselves not different from our ancestors? It follows that if the stars blaze up it must be for a reason we shan't comprehend until we work out why there are creatures-or were-unknown to us on this small planet!”

“We understand each other,” Yockerbow said soberly. “I was so afraid when you invited us to come with you...”

“Ah, but we're all bound on one quest,” Barratong stabbed. “Some of us seek an answer to a single mystery-you, Yockerbow! You wanted to find out why syphonids and cutinates could never pump water above a certain level. On the way to a solution, you saved your city from being washed away. You still don't know all the reasons why the original phenomenon presented, but you have suspicions, don't you? And Arranth has just drawn my dear old partner whom I've trusted in storm and floe-time, trusted under the onslaught of heaven's crashing meteorites- drawn him too by some miracle into the charmed circle where I hoped to lure him long ago” (this with a dip to her) “and for that I thank you, ma'am-”

Yockerbow was half-afraid the admiral had lost track of his own peroration, but he was wrong, for he concluded it magnificently.

“And here we are together on the sole straight course which any of our people ought to choose! All of us a little angry with the universe because it seems to want to mislead us-all of us determined to find an answer to at least one mystery before our time runs out-all of us resigned to the certainty that we shall uncover many other mysteries in the solving of our own! Perhaps the time may come when there are no more questions to be asked; if that is so, that's when the world will end!”

VII

Cooler it became, and cooler... yet not cold. No frost-rime formed this season on the rigging of the haodahs, and the junqs themselves responded briskly to the increasing iciness of the water, as though they needed by activity to keep the ichor coursing in their tubules. Awed, those who rode them as they trespassed among bergs and floes under an amazing pale blue sky watched the bare brown land on either side slip by, and marked where it was suddenly not bare, as though the sun had charmed plants out of rock.

“We are approaching the polar circle,” Barratong said. “We are the first to come by sea in who can say how long? But we are not the first of all. See how the flighters whirl who brought new life to these mud-flats!”

Watching their graceful swoops, as they glided back and forth and sometimes failed of their prey so they had to whip the water and achieve enough velocity to take off again, Yockerbow said, “How can they eat enough to fly?”

“Sometimes,” said Barratong, “they can't, or so I was informed by a fisherman whom we rescued in mid-ocean the summer before last. They breed on high bluffs and launch their offspring into air by laqs at a tune when they burst the brood-sac. Those which catch enough wingets and flyspores grow; they soar and mate on the upgusts; then they hunger for what's in the water, and if they're large and fast enough they snatch the surface-breeding fish. If not-well, they can use up what fat they've stored and spring back into air from the crest of a rising wave. But this fish-hunter had many times trapped those which did so, and always found them lean and scant and taint of flesh. It's my view that flighters' natural zone is the air; by contact with either land-except to breed-or sea, they are diminished of their powers. Witness the fact that out of every brood-sac a score or two survive. And is not the same phenomenon apparent in ourselves? Had you and I, and all the other so-called worthy persons, bred at every pairing, would we not by now by laqs and craws have overswarmed the pitiful resources of the Age of Freeze? How many more of the folk could Ripar have supported before either they started to starve off into dreamness or some epidemic sickness rushed through them like a flame in dry brushwood? Hmm?”

Yockerbow, after a second's pause, admitted, “It is in the records of the city that Ripar came close to that.”

“As did our Fleet,” the admiral rasped. “How think you I-a landsider-was able to assume command? I was better fed than old Grufflank, and that's all! He dreamed away his days in nonsense visions! There was I fit and strong and offering suggestions so practical the captains' meet recognized the common sense of them. Yet, given a season's decent diet, any of them might have done the same, and more, for they had sea-experience, while I did not...”

He brooded for a moment; then he concluded, “At least I can say this. I'm still in the domain of imagination and not dreamness; my weather-sense assures me of it, and that's the sense that fails us last, even though the eye or the very mantle may be fooled. A sweet taste may deceive you; a fair odor; a sleek touch... but weather-sense extends into your very pith and being, and even if you starve it's last to go. Moreover it's what leads us to trust out junqs more than ourselves. At Ripar, do they know the legend of Skilluck?”

Yockerbow looked blank, but to his surprise Arranth, standing by as usual but less bashfully than before, said, “If the name is Skilq, we have the same tale, probably.”

“Who swam a wild briq across the western ocean when all others had lost their way, and salvaged something of a now-lost city?” Barratong rounded on her with excitement.

“They say he saved the telescope for us,” Arranth concurred. “All younglings at Ripar are told the story.”

Having dismissed fables of that sort from his conscious mind because his preceptors so ordered him when he entered into adult phase, Yockerbow was acutely embarrassed. He said, “I too of course heard such stories, but in the absence of evidence-”

“To starfire with your ideas of evidence!” roared Barratong. “For me, it's enough that someone in the Fleet should remember hearing a vague tale! It's because I want to turn the legends of the past into a new reality that we are here! Those which don't stand up to present discoveries may be dismissed as spawn of dreams! But anything I take in claw and hold and use-!”

He broke off, panting hard, because he had involuntarily tallened again. Relaxing, he concluded in a milder tone, “Besides if the same tales survive on land as we know among the People of the Sea, there's a double chance of them being based on fact. Do inland folk recount the stories, too? If so, are they just borrowed from contact with mariners?”

The ebb and flow of talk surrounding Barratong was such as Yockerbow had never dreamed of. Once he dared to ask what mix of ancestry had given him rise, and met with a curt-though plainly honest-answer.

“I inquired about that, right up until I found I was a muke, and got no details; there was a famine which affected memory. And after I discovered that my line won't take, there seemed no point in pursuing the matter. I can only suggest and instruct; I cannot breed.”

Timidly Yockerbow ventured, “A-a-what did you call yourself?”

“A muke! Take junqs from a northern and a southern herd, and they will mate eagerly enough, and often throw a bunch of first-class younglings. Yet when you try to make the strain continue, it's like me, and you, and-given she's tried me and Ulgrim and a score of others in the Fleet-Arranth as well. We call those mukes, and hope against hope the wild strains will continue to furnish us with the next generation...”

With an abrupt shrug of excitement, he added, “Yet there is hope! Suppose our heritage has lain under a mantle of impotence as the northern continent lay under ice: the end of the Northern Freeze may signal salvation for us mukes! I couldn't begin to tell you why I foresee this; it may be leaked from dreamness to my mind. Still, the border between dreams and imagination might very well fluctuate just as the boundary between ice and ocean does... Oh, time will judge. Now watch the way the land is changing on this coast. Look not just for the flighters that bore back southern seeds when they quested their prey into these waters, because as you know some seeds pass clear through the digestion of a flighter and are nourished by the dung they're dropped in, nor for what they brought when it foliates and blossoms, but for what lay hid till now when the sun came back and released it... Ah, but darkness falls. Tomorrow, though-!”

And he was right. He was astonishingly right. Next dawn revealed what he predicted, and Yockerbow decided-though he could not convince Arranth he was correct in saying so-that among Barratong's chief gifts must be the art of assessing whether someone who relayed a story to him told the truth.

For their course came to a dead end in a wide bay whose northern shores were still blocked off by a huge glacier. Some drifts of mist hung about it, but it was a fine morning and a brisk wind disposed of most of them within an hour.

And, either side of the steep bluish mass of ice, life was returning. Not only were the drab gray sand-slopes nearby aweb with creepers and punctuate with burrowers: the air was full of unexpected wingets. The mariners caught as many as they could, for some were known to lay maggors which infested junqs, and brought them to Barratong for examination.

“They're unlike any in the south,” he stated. “Even if they are similar, then the colors vary, or the size, or the limb-structure. Is the Fleet still thriving?”

“As ever!” came the enthusiastic report. “We didn't expect to fare so well this far north, but the junqs' maws are crammed and we ourselves enjoy the food we reap from the sea!”

“Then here's our landfall, and our harvest will be knowledge!” cried the admiral. “Report to me whatever you find unusual-”

Something shot past him with a whizzing sound. A moment later, Ulgrim, who stood nearby, cursed and clapped a claw to his upper mantle. Withdrawing it, he displayed a pointed object with a pair of vanes on the after end. Similar noises continued, and complaints resounded from all the nearby junqs.

“What in the world-?” began Yockerbow, but Arranth cut him short.

“Those must be seeds!” she exclaimed. “Did you never play the game we did as younglings-placing seeds like those on a rock and shining sunlight on them through a burning-glass until they flew away?”

Once again Yockerbow found himself at an embarrassing loss. When he was a youngling, he had known nothing of such miracles as lenses, or indeed any form of glass. Attempting to recoup his pressure, he said, “You mean heat bursts them?”

“Burst? Not in the sense a bladder bursts, dear me! They emit some sort of stinking gas from one end, and that makes them leap through the air.”

All this time, a horde of the things was descending on them, and Barratong-who else?-was reasoning about the strange phenomenon.

“They must be coining from up there,” he said, and pointed to a bluff a little above their own level, where a dark shadow was growing more and more visible as ice melted and water cascaded down the lower rocks. “That's where we'll send explorers first. A sign of life is never to be overlooked.”

“And the top of that bluff,” said Arranth in high excitement, “would be just right to set up the telescope I brought! That is,” she added hastily, “if the dark-time is as clear as this morning, and weather-sense indicates it may be.”

Exuding an aura of puzzlement, Barratong said, “I fear you're right.”

“Fear?”-from two or three voices simultaneously.

“Our whole voyage has been strange,” the admiral said after a brief hesitation. “Too fair weather-no storms to mention-the bergs dissolving as we passed by... There is a real change taking place in the world, and it disturbs me. We must seize our chance, though! Overside with you!”

The Fleet having been instructed to make all secure, a small group of crewmen was detailed to follow Ulgrim and find a way to the cliff-top where the telescope might be sited. Meantime Barratong, Yockerbow, and Arranth, who was too impatient to concern herself with preparatory details, set off along a sloping miniature watercourse towards the source of the flying seeds. Its bed was pebbly, and the flow chilled their pads, but they were able to obtain a good grip on the gradient, and shortly they found themselves looking at a shadow behind a veil of ice.

“Now there's a cave!” declaimed the admiral, loudly enough to overcome the rushing of streamlets which was greeting the advent of renewed summer. (Had there been one last year? It seemed unlikely; Yockerbow was prepared to believe that Barratong's weather-sense had picked the very first possible year for folk to return to these latitudes.) “What icefaw or what snowbelong may have laired here! What refuge it may have offered to beasts we exterminated when the Freeze drove them southward! You realize, of course”-lapsing into his most condescending and didactic mode-”that up here there may still be creatures which cannot live off vegetation but devour other animals, as sharqs eat other fish?”

For once the others paid him no attention. They were seeking the source of the flying seeds, and shortly found it: an ice-free patch was exposed to sunlight on the side of the adjacent rock, and a small, tough, low-growing plant was exerting its utmost efforts to reproduce itself, though by this time its main arsenal had been expended and only a few weak flutterings resulted.

Standing back, Arranth began, “I think-”

“Look out!” Yockerbow roared, and dived forward to push her clear of impending disaster.

Whether it was the effect of sunshine, or whether-as they later wondered-the mere vibration of their presence sufficed, the ice-veil before the cave was starting to collapse. A web of cracks appeared; a grinding sound followed...

“Down!” roared Barratong, and set the example as great frozen shards fell crunching and slid down the watercourse. They clutched at what they could, including one another, and somehow succeeded in not being carried bodily away.

And got uncertainly to their pads again, for nothing worse emerged from the cave than a most appalling and revolting stench, as of corpses shut up for uncountable years.

It blew away, and they were able once again to venture close, while the low northern sun beamed on them from a clear blue sky. At the cave-mouth things glistened wetly, and a few were instantly identifiable.

“There's a mandible,” Barratong muttered, kicking it. “People too were here, you see?”

“Where there were people, I look for what people make!” shouted Arranth, and began to scrabble among the dirt at the opening. And checked, and said something incomprehensible, and rose, clutching a long rigid cylinder such as no creature in the world had generated naturally.

“It's a glass!” she cried. “It's a glass tube! And I hear something rattling inside!”

She made as though to crunch the crackly-dry wax that closed the tube's ends, but Barratong checked her.

“Not here! Whatever's in it must be fragile, for it's certainly very ancient. We'll take it back to the junq and open it with great care in a safe place. Are there any other relics like it?”

Reaching for the mandible, he used it as a scraper, and the others joined him in sifting through the foul mass of putrid matter at the cave entrance. Shortly they were satisfied there was nothing else as durable as the glass tube, and returned on board.

There, quaking with excitement, Arranth broke the wax and removed a stopper made of spongy plant-pith. Tilting the tube, she shook from it a tightly rolled bundle of documents, inscribed on an unfamiliar off-white bark. The moment she unrolled the first of them, she exclaimed at the top of her voice.

“I can't believe it! It's a star-map!”

“Are you certain?” Yockerbow ventured.

“Of course I'm certain!” Studying it feverishly, she went on, “And either it's inaccurate, or... No, it can't be! It shows the stars as they were before the Freeze, and straight away I can assure you: some of the constellations aren't the same!”

VIII

The past can communicate with us...

Echoes of Arranth's repeated argument kept ringing through Yockerbow's mind as he and Barratong, and the senior Fleet sub-commanders, gathered to hear the result of her and Ulgrim's researches. In spite of aurorae and shooting stars they had been pursued through every dark-time until now, when their weather-sense warned of an approaching storm and indeed clouds could be seen gathering at the southern horizon. Every junq had been ransacked for writing-materials, and meticulous sketches were piled before Arranth, each adjacent to one of the pre-Freeze maps. Yockerbow shivered when he thought of their tremendous age. Yet they had been perfectly preserved in their airtight container.

Delighted to be the center of attention, Arranth could not resist preening a little, but when Barratong invited her to present her report, she spoke in a clear and businesslike manner.

“With only a single telescope and what crude instruments we could improvise, Ulgrim and I have not been able to make the sort of exact measurements that could be performed at a proper observatory. However, that is paradoxically fortunate. Whoever compiled these ancient maps can have had access to a telescope barely better than our own, if at all, so we have an excellent basis for comparison. In other words, we can be reasonably sure that the stars we see and those depicted on the old maps correspond. Thoughtfully enough, the map-maker indicated which stars were visible to the unaided eye, and which only with the aid of a glass. We have therefore been able to establish the following facts.

“First: the stars do change position-very slowly, but unmistakably- and some have certainly grown brighter.

“Second: there are not just a few but many stars now discernible which were not known to the map-maker, and all of them have something most disconcerting in common. They are all deep red, and they all he in the same general area of the sky. Which leads me to the third point.

“What we have been accustomed to call the Smoke of the New Star can be nothing of the sort. We have traced the site of the New Star, which in the days when these old maps were prepared was still clearly visible, though now it takes a strong glass to detect it. Indeed, one does not so much see the star itself, as a faint and wispy cloud of glowing gas with a dot at its center. But this is not the large, widespread cloud we normally think of. It's too far away-several degrees distant. On the other claw, within it there are some genuinely new stars, which must be far newer than that fabled one which burst out without warning and became brighter than the sun, as the old legends claim-though, strangely, no reference is made to heat from it.

“Within the Smoke, as I was saying, we have counted no fewer than ten stars of which there is no sign on the old maps. Moreover, what reference is made to the Smoke is cursory and vague, and no outline is indicated for it, though we can see one fairly clearly. All these ten new stars, what's more, are reddish, even darker than the Smoke, as though they only recently lighted their fires. They are barely bright enough to make the surrounding cloud shine by reflection, and much too far away to account for the ending of the Freeze.

“And even that is not the most astonishing news.”

Having helped as best they could with the observations, Yockerbow and Barratong were primed for the final revelation, and glanced covertly around to see what impact it would have on the unforewarned.

Using an image which Barratong himself had supplied, Arranth said, “Imagine the Great Fleet keeping station on a calm sea, and yourselves aboard a solitary junq making haste towards it. Would you not see the nearest of the Fleet diverge to either side as you drew close, while the furthest remained at roughly the same angle?”

Puzzled at being reminded of something that everybody knew, her listeners signified comprehension.

“What disturbs and even frightens me,” concluded Arranth, “is that scores of stars whose positions we can check against the old maps appear to have diverged outward from a common center, and that center is located in or near the Smoke. Either we, with the sun and all its planets, are hurtling in that direction, or the Smoke and its associated stars are rushing towards us. It makes no difference which way you look at it; the outcome is the same. And if, as certain astronomers believe, stars begin because they accumulate surrounding matter, be it whole wandering planets or mere dust like what comes to us as meteorites and comets, then there must be incredible quantities of it in any zone where ten new stars have started to burn since these maps were drawn!”

As though to emphasize her words, a meteor brilliant enough to shine through the daytime sky slashed across the zenith, and immediately thereafter Barratong cried, “Get those maps under cover! The storm will be upon us any moment!”

An echo of thunder confirmed his warning, and they scattered, the sub-commanders to their respective junqs, Arranth, Ulgrim, Yockerbow and Barratong to huddle beneath the shelter offered by their own's haodah.

Tucking the precious maps carefully into the tube again, Arranth said, “Do you think they understood?”

“Most of my fellow-navigators,” Ulgrim grunted, “have never thought about stars except to figure out what use they are in guiding us, and most of our lives that hasn't been much, you know. The admiral's right: a real change is working in the world. This is more the sort of weather I'd have expected here in the far north, not the clear bright land we've had since our arrival.”

The first assault of rain rattled the canopy of interwoven reeds that formed the haodah's upper deck, and the junq stirred restlessly as the air-pressure changed.

“Will the fine weather return?” asked Arranth.

Her question was mainly addressed to Ulgrim, but before he could answer Barratong cut in.

“It's over-soon to guess, but either way we must get these maps to where they'll be most useful. To begin with, I shall arrange to have them copied with the utmost care. I know who among the Fleet are most skillful at writing and drawing. Of course, I don't know whether we have enough writing-material left. But we'll do what we can, although we have to kill and flay one of the junqlings to make writing-sheets. Beyond that, though, there's the question of what we should do with the originals.”

“Why, we take them back to Ripar, obviously!” Arranth burst out.

“It may seem obvious to you; it's not to me. They should go to the finest of modern observatories, and that's not at Ripar. Besides, Ripar is due to be flooded. Not all your spouse's pumps can save it-can they, Yockerbow?”

He made sober reply. “From the bluff where we've installed the telescope, we've seen ice stretching to the skyline. I wouldn't dare to calculate how far the level of the oceans will rise when it melts, but if it's going to be the same as before the Freeze, nothing can save Ripar or any other coastal city.”

“Agreed. We should therefore present them to the observatory at Huzertol, inland from Grench and in a zone of clear skies.” The admiral spoke in a tone of finality, not expecting to be contradicted.

“Won't do,” said Ulgrim instantly.

“What?”

“Won't do,” the navigator repeated. “Huzertol may have the best astronomers in the world, the best instruments-it doesn't matter. That far south, they can scarcely see the Smoke, and some of the other important stars nearby never clear its horizon.”

Barratong gave a dry laugh. “You know something, old friend? Next year I think we ought to circumnavigate the globe, if only to impress on your admiral's awareness that we do live on a spherical planet! You're right, of course. We must find a northerly observatory.”

“Or found one,” said Yockerbow.

“Hmm! Go on!”

“Well, if there isn't any place in the northern hemisphere to outdo Huzertol, there ought to be. Ripar is wealthy, and Ripar is doomed. What better memorial than to create a city dedicated to learning and science on some suitable upland site, to which we could transfer-?”

But Barratong wasn't listening. Of a sudden, he was paying attention to the junq. Her back was rippling in a rhythmic pattern.

“The water's growing warmer,” he said positively.

To Yockerbow, that seemed unsurprising, since the heavy rain must be raising its temperature. That, though, seemed not to be what the admiral meant.

A gong-signal boomed across the water. A pattern of banners, rain-limp but comprehensible, appeared at the prow of the junq lying furthest to the eastern side of the bay.

Barratong rose to his normal height as he stepped out from the haodah's protection. He said to Arranth, “Give me the map-tube!”

“What? I-”

“Give it to me! Bring cord to make a lashing and a bladder to wrap round it! There's no time to make a new wax seal!”

Ulgrim recognized the scent of authority before the rest of them, and scrambled to comply. While the others stared in astonishment, Barratong folded the tube with its maps inside a skin bag, and tied it tight with all his strength to the thickest of the haodah's multiple crossbars.

“Thus does the legend say Skilluck preserved his spyglass,” he muttered, while the gong-signals multiplied and grew more frantic, and the junqs began to fret and buck. “And for the sake of imitating him, I'm risking the greatest fleet that ever was...”

The job was done. He turned back to them, claws clenched. “Now, Ulgrim, give the signal! Open sea!”

And the Fleet incontinently turned and fled.

The order came in tune, but only just. Wide though the bay-mouth was, the junqs jostled and tossed in their mad retreat, and the first huge slabs of the ice-wall were already sliding down as they escaped and their commanders regained control.

“Scatter!” Barratong yelled, and pounded the banner junq's gong. It could not be heard above the scraping, grinding, splashing noise from astern, and the rushing, pounding, battering racket of the new-budded waves that were smashing floes against the rocks. All of a sudden the world rocked and twisted and great hills of water erupted in their path, and sometimes the junqs ascended them at a giddying angle and came close to capsizing and sometimes they crashed into them prow-foremost so they broke and doused the crews and filled the back-wells, soaking the stored food. There was no need to order scattering; the alternative did not exist.

Out from the bay rushed bergs as keen as new-cut fangs, and the junqs panicked in their attempt to dodge. The haodah lashings creaked and the junqs screamed for pain, and some of the youngest sought to escape their burdens by rolling over, but their flotation bladders obliged them to right themselves, and if any riders were lost they were children and old folk too weak to cling on. Primeval reflexes bound the adults to whatever they could grasp, folding their mantles around to reinforce their claws and pressurizing the edges until they were stiff as stone.

In a moment of lucidity Yockerbow thought: Just so must Skilq, or Skilluck, or whoever, have endured that legendary storm...

Yet it was not the storm which had caused this. It went on pelting down, but it was trifling. No storm could make the ocean heave and seethe this way! Louder than thunder the noise of shattered ice conveyed the truth.

That warming of the water which Barratong had detected must have presaged the undermining of the high ice-wall. Once it collapsed, whatever was pent up behind it was turned loose, and the Fleet was washed away across the world as randomly as those vaned flying seeds...

IX

“Has it only been a year?” mourned Arranth, her mantle shrunken by salt and cresh, when next they came to what had been the site of Ripar. There was no more trace of the sea-defenses, no sign of the pumps Yockerbow had been so proud of-only some wilting treetops bending to the water, and a trapped mass of what had been prized personal possessions that washed back and forth, back and forth, in time to the waves. Any corpses must have been devoured long ago, for now a horde of greedy sharqs ruled where the Order of the Jingfired had held sway.

Not all the destruction, of course, had been caused by a simple rise in water-level. Maps and charts explained why Ripar had been worse affected than so many other cities they had visited. Northward, an archipelago had focused the impact of the first gigantic wave, driving it into a single channel where it could no longer spread out relatively harmlessly. Some of the islands had been completely washed away; enough, though, had resisted to ensure that Ripar's fragile protective banks dissolved under the eventual onslaught. Once the city's roots were exposed to the intense saltiness of the warm northern water-warm!-they were doomed.

But the melting was certain to continue, as was betokened by the presence of countless bergs following the same currents as the Fleet, and when-if-all the polar ice returned to the liquid state, the world would be transformed unrecognizably.

They had talked long and long about the future as they strove to recreate the Fleet. Barratong had had the foresight to decree what none of his predecessors had thought necessary: a rendezvous in mid-ocean, near four islands with fresh water and ample vegetation. That was where they had waited out the winter, but one of the islands was shrunk to half its normal size and many of the edible plants were dying... as were too many of the reunited junqs. There was a loathsome taint in the air, and every gust of northern gale brought a drift of grittiness that revolted the maw and made the torso itch beneath the mantle. Sometimes the aurora towards the pole was blanked out not by regular clouds but by some kind of dust, not cleanly star-budded dust such as gave rise to meteors-few, come to that, had been seen this year, hidden no doubt by the same ghastly veil-instead, like the much-feared smoke which drifted from the world's rare drylands when a lightning-strike released wildfire, and could blind and choke those trapped downwind.

“But we saved something worth as much as any city,” said Barratong, and pointed to the glass tube holding the old star-maps, which had miraculously resisted the worst the waves could do.

Embittered, Yockerbow as well as Arranth railed at him, and to all their complaining he responded imperturbably:

“You will die, and I, and all we can create-why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge. Perhaps in the far future like my web to catch the moon a means will exist to unite past and present, here and there, abolishing distance and anxiety at a blow. We spoke a while back, though-did we not?-of an observatory, and a city we shall dedicate to science?”

“A while back” had been very nearly a full year, and Yockerbow, overcome with misery and privation, had long ago dismissed his proposal to the realms of fantasy. He was amazed to hear the admiral repeat it seriously.

“It's out of the question after a catastrophe on this scale,” he muttered. “And it isn't over yet. It may take scores of years before the water-level stabilizes. If all the polar ice melts, there may be no dry land whatsoever.”

“I don't believe it,” Barratong responded. “But even if that's so, we shall build continents of floating weed! We'll not go tamely to an accidental doom! And if we can't learn about the stars, we'll learn about ourselves and the life around us!”

He drew himself up stern and tall, and now he did overtop his companions, for their dispirited mood had sorely shrunk them.

“This you must understand at least: we are the Jingfired now.”

Eventually the implications of his words penetrated the dismal fog in Yockerbow's mind, and he too straightened. He said, “You intend it seriously?”

“Oh, not at once, of course. First we have other duties to attend to. I shall break up the Fleet, and dispatch it to every corner of the world, bearing seed and medicine and knowledge above all. At every port of call my commanders will be instructed to inquire after secure sites where people may remove to, and rescue whoever needs to be conveyed thither. Also they shall diligently search out scientists and scholars, so that when we choose the site for our new city-not this year, not next, perhaps not in our lifetime-our successors will know where to recruit a population for it. Then let them assemble with their books and instruments and do as you, friend Yockerbow, suggested: combine their knowledge so that none be lost.”

“Will you be obeyed in this?” husked Arranth.

“Oh, I think pride will serve to persuade the ones I have in mind.”

“Pride in independence, because they will be in command of their own Fleets, with the right to take wild junqlings and increase them?” Ulgrim's tone was cynical; for countless generations, it had been a punishable offense to do so.

“In part.” Barratong was unperturbed. “More to the prong, however, pride in ancestry-which I, an ex-landsider, cannot boast of. Think, Ulgrim! Think of how the People of the Sea must already be reacting to the news that their forebears chose correctly! We face nothing worse than storms and tidal waves. If an island we're accustomed to put in at vanishes, we find another; if the waters rise and swamp what was dry land, so much the better, for where there were isthmi now we find new channels that will take us into undiscovered seas... Oh, we shall be rulers of the western ocean too, and very soon! And will not it make for pride that we give aid to those who boasted of security on land?”

“You think more clearly and more distantly than anyone,” said Ulgrim in a sober voice.

“Not I! Not I! But Arranth and her like. You chided me for not reacting to the fact the world is round! She saw the very stars moving apart like local floes!”

He gave a little crazy laugh. “That's why I must break up the greatest fleet that ever was. There aren't enough of us to fight the stars, and after this long melting we'll be fewer still. We need a score of Fleets, a score-of-scores! We have to be so crowded and so crammed together that we can burst outward from the world-become like these!”

From one of his baldrics he produced a tiny object, dry and shriveled.

“Remember these?”

“One of the seeds that pelted us up north,” said Yockerbow.

“Correct! Well, if a mindless plant can find a way to spread beyond its isolated patch, why shouldn't we? Did it ever strike you that there must have been a first person who pithed a barq or briq, just as there was certainly a first who tamed a junq? Then, folk were confined to continents or islands, and had to trudge wearily from place to place unless they had a drom-and someone, equally, must have been first to ride a drom!”

Ulgrim and Yockerbow exchanged worried glances. Sometimes nowadays Barratong spoke so strangely... Only Arranth seemed totally to understand him, as though he and she, during this dreadful winter, had found a skyward course into the future in their joint imaginations. But how sane was their shared vision, when the world itself was dissolving back into its primeval waters?

“I wish,” said Yockerbow, scarcely realizing he had spoken audibly, “I'd never left Ripar. I'd rather have been here to tend my pumps, to learn their limitations and escape to high ground where I might have built them anew and much improved.”

“Somebody will,” said Arranth with assurance. “Now your task is to wander the world teaching those who need to know how it was done, just as mine is to explain the star-maps that-thanks to Barratong-have been preserved. You never respected the Order of the Jingfired, and you had some justification, I suppose, given that you devised new methods not envisaged by its ancient wisdom. But I always did, even when I was angry at the way intrigue and self-seeking tarnished its ideals. And if Barratong, who at first mocked it, has come around to my point of view-well!”

Acid rose in Yockerbow's maw. He was minded to utter cruel truths, for she had not truly respected the Order, only envied its members, wanted her spouse to be inducted for the glory of it. He meant to tax her with her ridiculous adoption of crossed strands of sparkleweed in imitation of an admiral's baldrics, seeking petty temporary fame by setting a trend.

Yet he could not. This last appalling year had altered her. The first signs had already been apparent when she spoke with such authority of the discoveries she had made with Ulgrim. Now she had grown used to being someone other than her old self. In a way not even she could have foreseen, she had fulfilled her ambition and become the admiral's lady.

Who was this new strange person who confidently claimed to understand the actions of the stars?

Not his spouse. Not anymore...

So leave her the luxury of self-deception, that she might the better convince the few who, like her and Barratong, could see beyond the current crisis. For his part, he had information about techniques that would be useful everywhere when folk settled on new lands and needed fresh water drawn from a distance, or irrigation systems, or means to lift a heavy load. Suppose, for instance, there were other creatures than cutinates whose muscles could be isolated and made to grow...

All of a sudden he felt as though a great burden had been taken from him. His mind cleared. Without his realizing, his life had been spent in the shadow of those allegedly greater than himself. They were nothing of the sort; they were merely more powerful. And the power they wielded was puny compared to Barratong's, yet the admiral was ultimately humble before the marvels of the boundless universe, which-Arranth said- now threatened them with something no Great Fleet, no member of the Jingfired, no person whatsoever could defy: a cloud of stars and interstellar gas that must be burning at temperatures unmatched by any furnace.

Compared to the cosmos, everyone was equal. Everyone was a bud of this small planet. Either everyone must work together, or in a few score generations there would be no one.

A flock of cloudcrawlers was passing. He looked up, wondering whether in their serial migration might be sought the secret of survival.

But he knew too little. Still, he had about half his life before him; there could well be tune to find out what had been discovered or invented on other continents, as well as by the People of the Sea. The most amazing chance could, as he realized, lead to practical results, and whatever chance itself might be, it had already supplied the most important information.

“The past can communicate with the future,” he said aloud. “And we're the past.”

“Yes, of course,” said Barratong. “We have to devise gongs and banners in order to signal our successors as the Fleet does. At every port we shall leave copies of the star-maps, ancient and modern; at every port we shall leave ashore folk who, having fled drowned cities, want to start anew on land with foreign knowledge... We dare not let blind fortune alter the world without hindrance. We too must play our part in changing it. Ulgrim, call a general meet. Today I purpose to divide the Fleet, and the planet.”

X

The ice's burden lifted swiftly from the northern lands, and new huge rivers carved their course through what had been dry plains. Gigantic floods drowned forests and the creatures living in them; meantime, the ocean-level marked new records every spring. What had been land-bridges turned to open channels; what had been island-chains were strings of shoals.

But most important of all, the weight of frozen water had held down a necessary, long-impending shift of one continental plate against another. Part of the Great Thaw was due to absorption by the sun of a wisp of interstellar gas which for a brief while had helped to mask its radiation. The local space was temporarily clear now, and extra warmth was piercing the atmosphere because fewer dust-motes were falling from the sky to serve as nuclei around which drops of rain or hailstones might develop, and the long ice-age had inhibited production of natural nuclei due to vegetation or the smoke of wildfire.

Another reason for the Thaw, however, was to be sought in the conversion of kinetic energy to heat. Around the north pole there were geysers and volcanoes testifying to the presence of magma near the crust. Patient, they had waited out the period during which so monstrous a mass of ice lay over them that all their heat could serve to do was make a glacier slide or melt a summer valley for migrating flighters. The continental plates which powered them, however, were on a different and grander scale. No ice could long have resisted their padlong-per-year progress, and the added solar warmth did no more than hasten what was inevitable.

The ice-cap shattered in a laq of seizures, each one casting loose a craw of bergs. Lava leaking from far underground met open water and solidified and then was cast high into the air when water turned to steam. Plume followed eruption followed temblor, and at every stage more water streamed back from the arctic plateau to the ocean.

Somehow the separated Fleets survived, even though their business became, first and foremost, mere survival, and their admiral's vision of immediate salvation was eroded by the giant waves that unpredictably rushed from the north and, later, from the south as well, where there was no such enormous valley as the one which had penned in the Salty Sea to deliver its new water all at once.

Often overloaded, so they were forced to land unwilling riders on half-sunken islands in the hope at least their mountain peaks might rise above the water when the oceans calmed; often driven off course by storms such as nobody had seen in living memory; often picking their cautious way over what had been a land-mass a scant year or two ago, searching for anything which might be useful, be it edible carrion or a batch of tools and instruments which would float; often rescuing survivors from a sunken city most of whom were starved into dreamness already and having to make the harsh decision that they must be again abandoned, for their sanity was poisoned past all hope of cure; often-once the barriers between the eastern and the western oceans had been breached- confronting herds of wild briqs, savage in a way that junqs had never been and panicked by an amazing explosion of gulletfish, so that they had to reinvent on the basis of legend and guesswork the means to pith a briq, with the minor consolation that if the attempt failed there would at least be food for the folk on board, and the major drawback that the taint of their own land's ichor in the water drove the other briqs frantic with terror; often near despair and redeemed only by messages from another luckier Little Fleet, with an achievement to boast about such as the safe delivery of a group of scholars to an upland refuge...

The People of the Sea endured the horrors of the Thaw and by miracles preserved the vision Barratong bequeathed to them.

Meantime, the landsiders moved along the tracks and paths available.

Confronted by the rising water, they summoned droms and other mounts and loaded them, and struggled up steep mountainsides, collecting useful seeds and spores. Again and again the caravans were overwhelmed by hunger or sickness caught from murrained water, or trapped on a valley path when floods came rushing down. Desperate, some resorted to the use of fresh-water barqs, only to see them wilt and die when salt afflicted their tubules.

A few, however, found a way to safety, and after cautious negotiation settled on high ground near existing hamlets, being eventually made welcome because they had brought new food-plants and, above all, because they offered the chance of fertile first-time matings to communities whose numbers were diminishing.

Following the caravans, though often having to invent new routes, discontented wandering scholars trudged from town to new town seeking their lost equals, each bearing something of what had been known in a city sunk beneath the waves or lost when a hillside slumped into the sea. Occasionally they borrowed the services of the tramp junqs which, after the dispersal of the Lesser Fleets, traveled in groups of three or four and traded as best they could along inlets of the sea that formerly had been mountain passes or river-valleys. The hegemony of the People of the Sea endured, but the mixing of the landsiders resulted, almost at once, in an explosion of population, for instead of one pairing in several score producing a bud, suddenly five took, or even seven, and wise persons argued about miscegenation, and proper diet, and the influence of privation, and it seemed that most of them must be at least partly correct.

The sea-level stabilized. Those fortunate astronomers who had access to long-term brightness records for the sun admitted cautiously that it looked as though the extra heat due to infalling matter was over. Those who had preserved their presence of mind during the period of violent quakes, devising means to mark and measure the trembling of the land, noted with satisfaction that it shook only now and then, and hilltops seldom broke loose anymore. Such scientists, when they met them, the People of the Sea declared to be Jingfired, and gave them copies of the ancient star-maps. It was a mere token, for the donors scarcely understood what the maps recorded, yet they were seeds of knowledge, after their fashion. The skies cleared, and there was no longer a gritty stench when the wind blew from the north. Daringly, a few started to maintain that an outburst of volcanic dust had protected life on the planet from the worst effects of increased solar radiation... but it was at best a guess, lacking evidence.

When the world settled back to an even keel, explorers set forth once more who employed techniques that once had been the private property of jealous cities: means to signal across vast distances, means to preserve knowledge by multiplying it in countless copies; medicines to cure common illnesses, others to master strange rare disorders; tools for tasks that most people had never dreamed of undertaking; seeds so treated they would yield edible fruit simply by being soaked in salty water when required; vegetable parchments that changed color when light shone on them, which placed at the proper distance from a lens would fix an image; juices and saps which served to bind together plant and rock, or glass and metal; vessels not of wood or hide but melted sand, not exactly glass but stiffer, wherein a fire might safely be lighted on the back of a junq without the creature suffering...

Tricks and ideas, hints and suggestions, cross-fertilized and bred faster than the population. A means was needed that would match one invention, to be exchanged, against another. After much fierce debate, it was agreed that persons schooled in the desired technique should be the unit, and the surviving Little Fleets should carry them for longer or shorter periods among the folk requesting the new knowledge. By now, however, many of the new cities had their own research groups, not to mention their own miniature Fleets and the system rapidly broke down.

It made no odds. The time was past when one city might strive for superiority over its neighbors. The impulse was for sharing, because over all of them loomed the threat which they could now read directly from the sky. Even the southmost of the settlements, shielded from all the new stars in the Smoke, accepted it. Beyond a doubt the day would dawn when the folk, in order to survive, must quit their world.

How, naturally, none yet knew...

As for the banner junq of the Great Fleet of the Eastern Sea, her last recorded trace was when they brought to Yockerbow, old then and shrunken-mantled, a bundle found among jetsam on what had been the slopes of a mountain inland from Clophical, and now was a steep beach beset by trees. His name was inscribed on it three times. The finders located him without trouble; he was famous, because he had become the lord and leader of a scientific community not quite like what he, Barratong and Arranth had envisaged, but near enough. Scholars flocked to him from every land, and new discoveries and new inventions flooded out as water had poured forth when the ice-wall broke and loosed the Salty Sea.

“Here is,” he said when he had opened the bundle-with assistance, for his pressure was now weak-”the original glass tube which held the ancient star-maps. I wonder what happened to the maps themselves. Not that it matters; we've found other better copies. What map, though, could show me where to find my lost lady Arranth? What chart could guide me to my old friend Barratong?... Oh, take this thing to the museum, will you? I have much work to do, and little time.”