The Lavalite World

"Why did we do this?" Anana said.

"So we could use the wings and tails to make gliders. We attached them to fuselages of wood, and ..."

"Excuse me," Anana said, smiling. "You've never mentioned having any glider experience."

"That's because I haven't. But I've read about gliders, and I did take a few hours' private instruction in a Piper Cub, just enough to solo. But I had to quit because I ran out of money."

"I haven't been up in a glider for about thirty years," Anana said. "But I've built many, and I've three thousand hours flight time in them."

"Great! Then you can teach Mac and me how to glide. Anyway, in this dream we attached the wings to the fuselage and, to keep the wings from flexing, we tied wood bars to the wing bones, and we used rawhide strips instead of wires ..."

Anana interrupted again. "How did you control this makeshift glider?"

"By shifting our weight. That's how John Montgomery and Percy Pilcher and Otto and Gustave Lilienthal did it. They hung under or between the wings, suspended in straps or on a seat, and they did all right. Uh ... until John and Otto and Percy were killed, that is."

McKay said, "I'm glad this was just a dream."

"Yeah? Dreams are springboards into reality."

McKay groaned, and he said, "I just knew you was in earnest."

Anana, looking as if she was about to break into laughter, said, "Well, we could make gliders out of wood and antelope hide, I suppose. They wouldn't work once we got into the primary's gravity field, though, even if they would work here. So there's no use being serious about this.

"Anyway, even if we could glide down a mountain slope here and catch an updraft, we couldn't go very high. The moon's surface has no variety of terrain to make termals, no plowed fields, no paved roads, and so on."

"What's the use even talking about this?" McKay said.

"It helps pass the time," she said. "So, Kick-aha, how did you plan to get the gliders high enough to get out of the moon's gravity?"

Kickaha said, "Look, if we shoot up, from our viewpoint, we're actually shooting downward from the viewpoint of people on the surface of the primary. All we have to do is get into the field of the primary's gravity, and we'll fall."

McKay, looking alarmed, said, "What do you mean-shoot?"

He had good reason to be disturbed. The redhead had gotten him into a number of dangerous situations because of his willingness to take chances.

"Here's how it was in the dream. We located a battery of ca

"Wait a minute," Anana said. "I think I see where you're going. You mean that you converted those ca

Kickaha nodded. Anana laughed loudly and long.

McKay said, "It's only a dream, ain't it?"

Kickaha, his face red, said, "Listen, I worked it all out. It could be done. What I did ..."

"It would work in a dream," she said. "But in reality, there'd be no way to control the burning of the gunpowder. To get high enough, you'd have to stuff the barrel with powder to the muzzle. But when the fuel exploded, and it would, all of it at once, the sudden acceleration would tear the glider from the rocket, completely wreck the structure and wings of the glider, and also kill you."

"Look, Anana," Kickaha said, his face even redder, "isn't there some way we could figure out to get controlled explosions?"

"Not with the materials we have available. No, forget it. It was a nice dream, but... oh, hah, hah, hah!"

"I'm glad your woman's got some sense," McKay said. "How'd you ever manage to live so long?"

"I guess because I haven't followed through with all my wild ideas. I'm only half-crazy, not completely nuts. But we've got to get off of here. If we end up on the under side when it changes shape, we're done for. It's the big kissoff for us."

There was a very long silence. Finally, Anana said, "You're right. We have to do something. We must look for materials to make gliders that could operate in the primary's field. But getting free of the moon's gravity is something else. I don't see how ..."

"A hot-air balloon!" Kickaha cried. "It could take us and the gliders up and away and out!"

Kickaha thought that, if the proper materials could be found to make a balloon and gliders, the liftoff should take place after the moon changed its

shape. It would be spread out then, the attenutation of the body making the local gravity even weaker. The balloon would thus have greater lifting power.

Anana said that he had a good point there. But the dangers from the cataclysmic mutation were too high. They might not survive these. Or, if they did, their balloon might not. And they wouldn't have time after the shape-change to get more materials.

Kickaha finally agreed with her.

Another prolonged discussion was about the gliders. Anana, after some thought, said that they should make parawings instead. She explained that a parawing was a type of parachute, a semi-glider the flight of which could be controlled somewhat.

"The main trouble is still the materials," she said. "A balloon of partially cured antelope hide might lift us enough, considering the far weaker gravity. But how would the panels be held together? We don't have any adhesive, and stitching them together might not, probably will not, work. The hot air would escape through the overlaps. Still ..."

McKay, who was standing nearby, shouted. They turned to look in the direction at which he was pointing.

Coming from around a pagoda-shaped mountain, moving slowly towards them, was a gigantic object. Urthona's palace. It floated along across the plain at a majestic pace at an estimated altitude of two hundred feet.

They waited for it, and after two hours it reached them. They had retreated to one side far enough for them to get a complete view of it from top to bottom. It seemed to be cut out of a single block of smooth stone on material which looked like stone. This changed color about every fifteen minutes, glowing brightly, ru

There were towers, minarets, and bartizans on the walls, thousands of them, and these had windows and doors, square, round, diamond-shaped, hexagonal, octagonal. There were also windows on the flat bottom. Kickaha counted two hundred balconies, then gave up.

Anana said, "I know we can't reach it. But I'm going to try the Horn anyway."

The seven notes floated up. As they expected, no shimmering prelude to the opening of a gate appeared on its walls.

Kickaha said, "We should've choked the codeword out of Urthona. Or cooked him over a fire."

"That wouldn't help us in this situation," she said.

"Hey!" McKay shouted. "Hey! Look!"

Staring from a window on the bottom floor was a face. A man's.