The Ragged Astronauts

Gehate nudged Dalacott. “The first throw was for you, but I think this one is going to be for my benefit — to teach me to keep my mouth shut.”

Hallie allowed the globe to get no closer than thirty paces before he made his second throw. The weapon flitted along the alley like a brilliantly coloured bird, almost without sinking, and was just begi

“The boy had some luck that time, but he deserved it,” Gehate said ungrudgingly. “Oderan should have been here.”

“Yes.” Dalacott, racked by bitter-sweet emotions, contented himself with the monosyllabic response, and was relieved when the others moved away — Gehate and Thessaro to embrace Hallie, Ondobirtre to fetch the ritual flask of brandy from the carriage. The group of six, including the hired driver, came together again when Ondobirtre distributed tiny hemispherical glasses whose rims had been fashioned unevenly to represent vanquished ptertha. Dalacott kept an eye on his grandson while he had his first sip of ardent spirits, and was amused when the boy, who had just overcome a mortal enemy, pulled a grotesque face.

“I trust,” Ondobirtre said as he refilled the adults’ glasses, “that all present have noticed the unusual feature of this morning’s outing?”

Gehate snorted. “Yes — I’m glad you didn’t attack the brandy before the rest of us got near it.”

“That’s not it,” Ondobirtre said gravely, refusing to be goaded. “Everybody thinks I’m an idiot, but in all the years we’ve been watching this kind of thing has anybody seen a day when three globes showed up before the bluehorns had stopped farting after the climb? I’m telling you, my shortsighted friends, that the ptertha are on the increase. In fact, unless I’m getting winedreams, we have a couple more visitors.”

The company turned to look at the space between the nets and saw that two more ptertha had drifted down from the obscurity of the cloud ceiling and were nuzzling their way along the corded barriers.

“They’re mine,” Gehate called as he ran forward. He halted, steadied himself and threw two sticks in quick succession, destroying both the globes with ease. Their dust briefly smudged the air.

“There you are!” Gehate cried. “You don’t need to be built like a soldier to be able to defend yourself. I can still teach you a thing or two, young Hallie.”

Hallie handed his glass back to Ondobirtre and ran to join Gehate, eager to compete with him. After the second brandy Dalacott and Thessaro also went forward and they made a sporting contest of the destruction of every globe which appeared, only giving up when the mist rose clear of the top end of the alley and the ptertha retreated with it to higher altitudes. Dalacott was impressed by the fact that almost forty had come down the alley in the space of an hour, considerably more than he normally would have expected. While the others were retrieving their sticks in preparation for leaving, he commented on the matter to Ondobirtre.

“It’s what I’ve been saying all along,” said Ondobirtre, who had been steadily drinking brandy all the while and was growing pale and morose. “But everybody thinks I’m an idiot.”

By the time the carriage had completed the journey back to Klinterden the sun was nearing the eastern rim of Overland, and the littlenight celebration in honour of Hallie was about to begin.

The vehicles and animals belonging to the guests were gathered in the villa’s forecourt, and a number of children were at play in the walled garden. Hallie, first to jump down from the carriage, sprinted into the house to find his mother. Dalacott followed him at a more sedate pace, the pain in his leg having returned during the long spell in the carriage. He had little enthusiasm for large parties and was not looking forward to the remainder of the day, but it would have been discourteous of him not to stay the night. It was arranged that a military airship would pick him up on the following day for the flight back to the Fifth Army’s headquarters in Trompha.

Co

“Absolutely! He made a splendid showing.” Dalacott was pleased to see that Co

“I’m glad. Now, remember what you promised me at breakfast. I want to see you eating

— not just picking at your food.”

“The fresh air and exercise have made me ravenous,” Dalacott lied. He left Co

As he was watching, the hills and most distant fields blinked with prismatic colour and abruptly dimmed. The penumbral band of Overland’s shadow was racing across the landscape at orbital speed, closely followed by the blackness of the umbra itself. It took only a fraction of a minute for the rushing wall of darkness to reach and envelop the house — then littlenight had begun. It was a phenomenon Dalacott had never tired of watching. As his eyes adjusted to the new conditions the sky seemed to blossom with stars, hazy spirals and comets, and he found himself wondering if there could be — as some claimed — other inhabited worlds circling far-off suns. In the old days the army had absorbed too much of his mental energy for him to think deeply on such matters, but of late he had found a spare comfort in the notion that there might be an infinity of worlds, and that on one of them there might be another Kolcorron identical to the one he knew in every respect save one. Was it possible that there was another Land on which his lost loved ones were still alive?

The evocative smell of freshly-lit oil lanterns and candles took his thoughts back to the few treasured nights he had spent with Aytha Maraquine. During the heady hours of passion Dalacott had known with total certainty that they would overcome all difficulties, surmount all the obstacles that lay in the way of their eventual marriage. Aytha, who had solewife status, would have had to endure the twin disgraces of divorcing a sickly husband and of marrying across the greatest of all social divisions, the one which separated the military from all other classes. He had been faced with similar impediments, with an added problem in that by divorcing Toriane — daughter of a military governor — he would have been placing his own career in jeopardy.

None of that had mattered to Dalacott in his fevered monomania. Then had come the Padalian campaign, which should have been brief but which in the event had entailed his being separated from Aytha for almost a year. Next had come the news that she had died in giving birth to a male child. Dalacott’s first tortured impulse had been to claim the boy as his own, and in that way keep faith with Aytha, but the cool voices of logic and self-interest had intervened. What was the point in posthumously smirching Aytha’s good name and at the same time prejudicing his career and bringing unhappiness to his family? It would not even benefit the boy, Toller, who would be best left to grow up in the comfortable circumstances of his maternal kith and kin.