The Dark Design

Frigate said, "As long as we have positive buoyancy, we'll stay aloft. I don't think we should land until we come up against the polar winds. That ought to be tomorrow if we've estimated our travel distance correctly. If we touch down, we might lose the balloon. For one thing, we don't know how the locals will react to it. In the early days of Terrestrial ballooning, a number were destroyed by ignorant and superstitious peasants when the aeronauts landed in rural areas. The peasants believed the balloon to be the devil's work or the vehicle of evil magicians. We might run into such people."

Frigate admitted that it made him very uneasy to be without ballast. However, if they must, they could always unbolt the chem­ical toilet and throw it out. Of course, the situation might be such that there wouldn't be time to do this.

The Jules Verne lifted above the Valley, and the wind sent it spanking along northeasterly. After an hour it lost much of its strength, but the craft was still moving in the right direction. It was also steadily ascending. Frigate took over the pilot's post at 4877 meters or a little over 16,000 feet of altitude. To stop further ascension, he valved off hydrogen in driblets. When it began to sink, he turned the burner on. From then on, the pilot would be busy trying to maintain the vessel within a 2000-meter zone while losing as little gas as possible and ru

Frigate's neck and shoulder pained him very much. He would be glad when he was relieved and could get under the cloths and stretch out. One drink of booze wouldn't hurt him and it might ease the agony.

So far the voyage had been mostly hard and fast work, some stomach-squeezing danger, and much boredom. He'd be happy when the final landing was made. Then the events of the trip would start to take on the patina of amusing adventure. As time passed, it would gain a golden glow, and it would all seem wonderful. The crew would tell exaggerated stories, making their perils seem even more hairbreadth than they had actually been.

Imagination was the great cozener of the past.

Standing by the vernian, the only illumination the cold starlight and the instrument bulbs, all but himself asleep, Frigate felt lonely. Tempering the loneliness, however, was pride. The Jules Verne had broken the record for nonstop balloon flights. From lift-off to this point, it had floated approximately 4824 kilometers or 3000 miles. And it would cover much more distance-if all went well- before it was forced to land.

And it had been done by five amateurs. Except for himself, none had ever been in a balloon on Earth. His forty hours in hot-air balloons and thirty in gas balloons did not make him a veteran aeronaut. He'd logged more time on this flight than all his hours on Earth.

The crew had gone on a voyage which would have made history if it had been on the native planet. Their faces would have been on TV screens worldwide, they'd have been feted and banqueted, they could have written books which would become movies, the royal­ties would have rolled in.

Here, only a few would ever know what they had done. Even a smaller number would refuse to believe them. Not even a few would know if the voyage ended in the deaths of the crew.

He looked out a port. The world was bright starlight and dark shadows, the valleys like snakes crawling, serpents in march order. The stars were silent, the valleys were silent. As quiet as the mouths of the dead.

That was a gloomy simile.

As silent as the wings of a butterfly. It recalled the summers of Earth in his childhood and youth, the many-colored flowers of the backyard garden, especially the sunflowers, ah, the tall yellow sunflowers, the songs of birds, the savory odors of his mother's cooking drifting to his nose, roast beef, cherry pies, his father playing the piano ...

He remembered one of his father's favorite songs, one of his own favorites. He'd often sung it softly while on night watch on the schooner. When he did so, he saw in his mind a small glow far ahead of him, a glow like a star, a light that seemed to travel before him, guiding him toward some u

"Shine, little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer, Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer.

Lead us, lest too far we wander. Love's sweet voice is calling yonder.

"Shine, little glowworm, glimmer, glimmer, Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer.

Light the path below, above. And lead us on to love!"

Suddenly, he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been.

Drying his tears, he made a final check and roused the little Moor for his watch. He crawled under the cloths, but his neck and shoulders drove sleep away. After trying vainly to sink into blessed oblivion, he got out to talk to Nur. They continued a conversation that had gone on, day and night, for many years.

68

"In several respects," Nur said, "the Church of the Second Chance and the Sufis agree. The Chancers, however, have some­what different technical terms which might lead you to think that each refers to different things.

"The final goal of the Chancers and the Sufis is the same. Ignoring the difference in terms, both claim that the individual self must be absorbed by the universal self. That is, by Allah, God, the Creator, the Rel, call Him what you will."

"And this means that the individual being is a

"No. Absorbed. A

"And that means that the individual loses his self-consciousness, his individuality? He is no longer aware of himself?"

"Yes, but he is part of the Great Self. What is the loss of self-consciousness as an individual compared to the gain of self-con­sciousness as God?"

' "That strikes me with horror. You might as well be dead. Once you're no longer self-conscious, you are dead. No, I can't under­stand why the Chancers of Buddhists or Hindus or Sufis think this state desirable.

"Without self-consciousness, the individual is indeed dead."

"If you'd experienced that ecstasy which Sufis experience in one stage of development, the passing-away, you'd understand. Can a person blind from birth be filled with ecstasy while those with sight are looking at a glorious sunset?"

"That's just it," Frigate said. "I have had mystical experiences. Three.

"One was when I was twenty-six years old. I was working in a steel mill. In the soaking pits. There cranes strip large ingots from the molds into which molten steel was poured in the open hearths. After the stripping, the cooling ingots are lowered into gas-burning pits which reheat them. From there they' re taken to the rolling mill.

"When I worked in the pits, I fancied that the ingots were souls. Lost souls in the flames of purgatory. They'd be soaked in the flames for a while, then carried off to the place where they'd be pressed down into shape for heaven. Just as the big rolls in the mill squeezed down on ingots, shaping them, pressing the impurities to the ends of the ingots, which were then chopped off, so the souls would be shaped and purified.

"However, this has little to do with the subject of conversation. Or does it?

"Anyway, one day I was standing at the huge open door of the soaking-pits building, resting a moment. I was looking out along the yards at the open hearth. I don't remember what I was thinking then. Probably that I was tired of working in this extremely hot place at hard labor for such low pay. I was also probably wondering if I was ever going to become a successful writer.