Ice Dragon

As he went through the five simple steps that brought the huge flier from a slumbering mass of inert metal to a machine ready to hurl itself into the skies, he again felt frustrated to the point of almost physical pain at the impossibility of bringing one of these machines back to Home Dimension. With its electronics, its power plant, and above all the array of tubes and circuits that somehow neutralized and manipulated gravity, it would hurl England and the whole human race two centuries into the future at once. Or perhaps such a leap might be more than human wisdom could handle? It had taken nearly the whole of Blade's adult life to hammer out some sort of precarious control over the atomic and hydrogen bombs.

Perhaps the larger pieces of the Menel's wisdom were best left here?

A moment later he saw the huge hangar's darkness broken by light pouring down from above, as the Ice Master opened the great sliding doors to the surface. He twisted the power dial and simultaneously pulled back on the main control lever. There was a mighty lurch that sent vibrations and metallic clangings surging through the whole structure of the flier as it came up off the floor, wobbling in the air currents now flowing through the hangar. He eased it forward, waiting until the open door above showed a broad rectangle of blue sky and searing golden sun, with wisps of snow darting past to suggest a strong wind. He twisted the power dial further and pulled back yet farther on the main control. The flier reared up on its broad-fi

Blade rather doubted that the Menel would be likely to try to stop his flight. But he preferred to be on the safe side, so kept the flier as low as possible, so low that radar would find it hard to pick him up and even seeing the flier, silver-gray against the blaze of the snow-covered ice cap, would be chancy. This meant flying slowly, because neither the automatic pilot nor his own skills were up to hedgehopping the flier at its normal cruising speed of twice the speed of sound. The fact that he had been able to learn to handle the big flier at all was more a tribute to its simplicity and foolproof design than to his own piloting abilities.

So he crept along at barely half the speed of a Home Dimension jet airliner for better than two hours. He skimmed less than a hundred feet above fangs of intricately sculptured ice, watching streamers of snow blow out like the plumes of a cavalry helmet from blue-green shimmering ice domes, feeling the updrafts as the wind struck vertical cliffs of chiseled whiteness and hurled itself upward, to strike the flier and toss it about. The sky was a flawless blue that might have been enameled and then polished to a glowing sheen tinged with gold and silver, and neither storm nor whiteout threatened him.

At the end of the two hours, neither his own eyes nor the far-reaching radars of the flier showed any signs of pursuit. He checked the charts again for the precise course south to Tengran, then set the auto-pilot and lifted the flier up to cruising speed and altitude. At more than twice the speed of sound he raced south, the flier locked on course, the ice now ten miles below and reduced to a featureless plain of blazing white, only the faintest blue lines etched across it to mark where crevices plunged down into cold blue darkness.

Less than two hours at cruising speed took the flier clear of the glacier land and out over the narrow belt of tundra, green now at the height of summer. The river whose banks he had reached the first night in this dimension began there, a silver thread creeping south across the tundra, losing itself for a while in the tumbled gray masses of the mountains down which he had climbed, and then appearing again in flashes of light under the trees of the forest that spread to the horizon on either side. Blade dropped the flier down to treetop height again to avoid giving premature alarm to the Tengrans.

He flashed over the ruins of Irdna low enough to see figures squatting around a campfire in the now weed-green town square. They jumped up, pointed, and scattered, ru

Three days' travel along the river by boat was less than half an hour at the speed of the flier, even at low altitude. Blade saw the mountains that marched across the southern end of the lake jutting up on the horizon, their snowcaps sadly shrunken under the summer sun. Then the gap in the trees far ahead showed where the river flowed into the lake, and a minute later Blade raced out over the lake and saw Tengran on its island dead ahead. As he sailed over the town he saw the smoke of the alarm fires starting to puff up. It struck him that it was going to be a delicate process landing the huge flier on the island without flattening half a dozen buildings and possibly the people in them. That would damn well get him shot the minute he stepped out the door!

He came around in a wide circle, losing speed as he did so, searching the island for a space long enough and wide enough to accommodate the huge flier. The town itself was largely inside or near the walls, but for reasons good or bad odd buildings sprouted like mushrooms almost everywhere he looked, and where there weren't buildings there were trees and ditches.

He had to circle the island three times before he found what he hoped would be a large enough space. He lined the flier up, sighting on a low unpainted wooden building visible through the lower nose port, dropped slowly until the indicator spurs dug in and their lights flashed green on the master control board, then cut all power. The flier dropped with a solid jar and then a series of lighter ones as the whole huge structure wobbled and wiggled itself to a secure rest, with the hull belling and clanging as the stresses and strains shot through the metal. Blade braced his feet under the panel and stayed in his seat until the dance was through, then unbuckled himself and dropped through the floor hatch to the emergency hatch in the very nose of the flier.

Flattening himself against the floor in case somebody outside was ready to fire into the nose the minute the hatch opened, he pressed the switch and the hatch clanged open. Blade cautiously raised his head and looked out.

There was nobody in sight except three or four pigs rooting around the plank building, so Blade swung himself over the edge of the hatch and dropped to the ground. He landed with a squashy thump and went waist-deep in something soft and damp, and as he did so a gangling youth ran around the edge of the building. Blade raised his hands, then looked down-and sight and smell together made him realize that he was standing up to his middle in a manure pile.

«Damn!» was the first thing he said, in a roar that made the boy jump and drop his crossbow, then:

«Hello. I am Blade, a friend of the Treduki. Your town elders have heard of me. Could you send word to them, please?» Then with a mighty lurch he pulled one leg free enough of the mess to take a stride forward, and staggered out into the open, heading for the lake. The boy picked up his crossbow and clutched it tightly. Blade didn't care. He was damned if he was going to try to explain himself to the elders of Tengran while he was half-covered with manure.