The Green Odyssey

«It takes guts to be a sailor and a blood-brother of the Clan Effenycan,» said Ezkr. «Do you have them, Green?»

«Yes, but if I get any sicker I'll lose them, and you'll be sorry, being below me,» muttered Green to himself.

Finally, after what seemed endless clambering into the very clouds themselves, he arrived at the topmost yard. If he had thought the mast thin and flexible, the arm seemed like a toothpick poised over an abyss. And he was supposed to inch his way out to the whipping tip, then turn and come back fighting!

«If you were not a coward you would stand up and walk out,» called Ezkr.

«Sticks and stones will break my bones,» replied Green, but did not enlighten the puzzled sailor as to what he meant. Sitting down on the yard, he put his legs around it and began working his way out. Halfway to the arm he stopped and dared to look down. Once was enough. There was nothing but hard, grassy ground directly beneath him, seemingly a mile below, and the flat plain rushing by, and the huge wheels turning, turning.

«Go on!» shouted Ezkr.

Green turned his head and told him in indelicate language what he could do with the yard and the whole ship for that matter if he could manage it.

Ezkr's dark face reddened and he stood up and began walking out on the yard. Green's eyes widened. This man could actually do it!

But when he was a few feet away the sailor stopped and said, «No, you are trying to anger me so I will grapple with you here and perhaps be pushed off, since you have a firmer hold. No, I will not be such a fool. It is you who must try to get past me.»

He turned and walked almost carelessly back to the mast, against which he leaned while he waited.

«You have to go out to the very end,» he repeated. «Else you won't pass the test even if you should get by me, which, of course, you won't.»

Green gritted his teeth and humped out to what he considered close enough to the end, about two feet away. Any more might break the arm, as it was already bending far down. Or so it seemed to him.

He then backed away, managed to turn, and to work back to within several feet of Ezkr. Here he paused to regain his breath, his strength and his courage.

The sailor waited, one hand on a rope to steady himself, the other with its dagger held point-out at Green.

The Earthman began unwinding his turban.

«What are you doing?» said Ezkr, frowning with sudden anxiety.

Up to this point he had been master, because he knew what to expect. But if something unconventional happened…

Green shrugged his shoulders and continued his very careful and slow unwrapping of his headpiece.

«I don't want to spill this,» he said.

«Spill what?»

«This!» shouted Green, and he whipped the turban upward towards Ezkr's face.

The turban itself was too far from the sailor to touch him. But the sand contained within it flew into his eyes before the wind could dissipate it. Amra, following her husband's directions, had collected a large amount from the fireplace's sand pile to wrap in it, and though it had made his head feel heavy it had been worth it.

Ezkr screamed and clutched at his eyes, releasing his dagger. At the same time, Green slid forward and rammed his fist into the man's groin. Then, as Ezkr crumpled toward him, he caught him and eased him down. He followed his first blow with a chopping of the edge of his palm against the fellow's neck. Ezkr quit screaming and passed out. Green rolled him over so that he lay on his stomach across the yard, supported on one side by the mast, with his legs, arms and head dangling. That was all he wanted to do for him. He had no intention of carrying him down. His only wish was to get to the deck, where he'd be safe. If Ezkr fell off now, too bad.

Amra and Inzax were waiting at the foot of the shrouds when Green slowly climbed off. When he set foot on the deck, he thought his legs would give way, they were trembling so. Amra, noticing this, quickly put her arms around him as if to embrace the conquering hero but actually to kelp support him.

«Thanks,» he muttered. «I need your strength, Amra.»

«Anybody would who had done what you've done,» she said. «But my strength and all of me is at your disposal, Alan.»

The children were looking at him with wide, admiring eyes and yelling, «That's our daddy! Big blond Green! He's quick as a grass cat, bites like a dire dog and'll spit poison in your eye, like a flying snake!»

Then, in the next moment, he was submerged under the men and women of the Clan, all anxious to congratulate him for his feat and to call him brother. The only ones who did not crowd around, trying to kiss him on the lips, were the officers of the Bird and the wife and children of the unfortunate sailor, Ezkr. These were climbing up the rigging to fasten a rope around his waist and lower him.

There was one other who remained aloof. That was the harpist, Grazoot. He was still sulking at the foot of the mast.

Green decided that he'd better keep an eye on him, especially at night when a knife could be slipped between a sleeper's ribs and the body thrown overboard. He wished now that he'd not gone out of his way to insult the fellow's instrument, but at the time that had seemed the only thing to do. Now he had better try to find some way to pacify him.

13

TWO WEEKS of very hard work and little sleep passed as Green learned the duties of a topsailman. He hated to go aloft, but he found that being up so high had its advantages. It gave him a chance to catch a few winks now and then. There were many crow's nests where musketmen were stationed during a fight. Green would slip down into one of these and go to sleep at once. His foster son Grizquetr would stand watch for him, waking him if the foretop captain was coming through the rigging toward them. One afternoon Griz's whistle startled Green out of a sound sleep.

However, the captain stopped to give another sailor a lecture. Unable to go back to sleep, Green watched a herd of hoobers take to their hoofs at the approach of the Bird. These diminutive equines. beautiful with their orange bodies and black or white manes and fetlock, sometimes formed immense herds that must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. So thick were they that they looked like a bobbing sea of flashing heads and gleaming hoofs stretching clear to the horizon.

To stretch to the horizon was something on this planet. The plain was the flattest Green had ever seen. He could scarcely believe that it ran unbroken for thousands of miles. But it did, and from his high point of view he could see in a vast circle. It was a beautiful sight. The grass itself was tall and thickbodied, about two feet high and a sixteenth of an inch through. It was a bright green, brighter than earthly grass, almost shiny. During the rainy season, he was told, it would blossom with many tiny white and red flowers and give a pleasing perfume.

Now, as Green watched, something happened that startled him.

Abruptly, as if a monster mowing machine had come along the day before, the high grass ended and a lawn began. The new grass seemed to be only an inch high. And the lawn stretched at least a mile wide and as far ahead of the Bird as he could see.

«What do you think of that?» he asked Amra's son.

Grizquetr shrugged. «I don't know. The sailors say that it is done by the wuru, an animal the size of a ship, that only comes out at night. It eats grass, but it has the nasty temper of a dire dog, and will attack and smash a roller as if it were made of cardboard.»

«Do you believe that?» Green said, watching him closely. Grizquetr was an intelligent lad in whom he hoped to plant a few seeds of skepticism. Perhaps some day those seeds might flower into the begi