Into the Void

The Probe had changed course again and was now heading out to sea. This only made sense, Teldin reasoned: There was no space for the hammership to land within the harbor, and the natives might get a little nervous about a strange flying vessel heading straight for them.

Now there was an issue. He turned to Ria

Her reply was a chuckle. "Only if we do something untoward," she elaborated. "Believe it or not, Rauthaven gets a considerable share of Toril's spacefaring traffic. Mostly that's

because the whole of Nimbral is much more open to magic, and to things that would be too strange for the rest of Toril. It's also got a lot to do with its sheltered harbor. Spelljamming ships are built for space, even those that can land on the water-like this one-and they don't do well in heavy seas. So when you put one down, you want to get it into a snug harbor, and right quick, too."

"How are we going to land?" Teldin asked. It was interesting. In all the conversations he'd had on spelljamming with Estriss, Aelfred, and the others, this was one topic they'd never touched on.

"It depends on the harbormaster," Ria

"Give us orders? How?"

"By flags. And-" Ria

Teldin leaned over the rail, but not too far. While they had been in space with, presumably, uncounted millions of miles to fall, he'd felt no sense of vertigo, but now that they were only a thousand feet up, he felt an uncomfortable stirring in the pit of his stomach.

Ria

He sighted along her arm. At the i

Teldin tried to read the message in the flags, using the code he half-remembered from his military service, but got only gibberish. They must be using a different code. The only information he could glean from the message was that the wind was blowing from the west-and this solely from the direction the flags were fluttering. "What do they say?" he asked.

"Wind from the west, ten knots," Ria

Teldin turned, too. On the main deck, several crewmen were ru

"They say we're the Probe" Ria

Teldin looked again at the harbor below, fascinated by the efficiency of this silent conversation. As he watched, the harbormaster's flags were brought down and another string run up the staff. He looked to Ria

"We're approved to land outside the harbor," she told him, "and to anchor at… Well, they're coordinates. I'd have to have a harbor chart to know what they meant."

Teldin turned to watch the Probe's reply. There was none; the crewmen on the main deck just took the flag string down. There was some movement on the sterncastle, though. Two crew members were mounting a short jackstay on the aft rail. When it was secure, they trailed another, larger flag from it. Teldin recognized it to be the same design as the lowermost flag in the Probe's recent message. He tapped Ria

"It's the Parcelius ensign," she told him. "Laws of the spaceways are like those of the sea. You always run up the ensign of your home world at the stern, or your home port if it has its own ensign. If you're being formal, you really should run up the flag of your destination at the bow or on the mainmast, but most people aren't too picky about that. If you do much traveling at all, your entire cargo capacity's going to be taken up with flags," she concluded with a chuckle.

The hammership turned slightly more to the northeast, out over the ocean now, and continued to descend. For the first time, Teldin could see whitecaps on the waves below. The ship was only a couple of hundred feet up, he guessed. Then the big vessel maneuvered again, pointing its bow into the westering sun. It decelerated gently and swept lower still.

Aelfred Silverhorn's head popped into view. He climbed the ladder from the bridge below and spared the two a broad smile before he took his place at the forward rail. "Raise port and starboard fins!" he bellowed.

On the main deck, crewmen threw their weight on lines that led out to the four triangular sails extending out and slightly down from the hammership's hull like the fins of a shark. As they pulled, the sails folded upward until they stood vertically against the gunwales.

"Dead slow," Aelfred called. "Prepare for landing."

The Probe slowed still more and dropped lower. They were now no more than fifty feet above the wave caps, Teldin saw. Forty feet, thirty… Aelfred had ordered "dead slow"-and, compared to the hammership's top speed, that's how fast they were going-but watching the waves whip by underneath, Teldin realized the Probe was still moving about as fast as a ru

Ten feet, five… The first crest slapped against the bottom of the hull. "Brace for landing," Aelfred called back. He was gri

The ship touched down with a roar of water pounding against the hull. The deck surged hard beneath Teldin's feet, almost breaking his grip on the rail. Curtains of spray, catching the light like countless diamonds, arched high on both sides of the vessel, then fell back with a hiss. A fine mist of chill water washed back over the forecastle. The Probe was down.

"Helm down," ordered the first mate.

The hammership slowed quickly. Looking aft, Teldin could see the broad white wake that the ship had left. He walked forward to join Aelfred and looked over the bow rail.

The hammership rode low in the water. The waterline appeared to be about level with the main deck itself, which gave the vessel very little freeboard, particularly in the bow itself. Teldin remembered Ria

Aelfred, still gri

Teldin nodded halfheartedly. "Fun," he said without conviction.

The motion of the ship had changed, Teldin noticed. To be precise, now the ship had motion. Except during the most drastic maneuvers, or when the ship struck something, the Probe in space had felt as solid and motionless as Kry