'Grab the ropes! Grab them!' Purple exhorted the ground crew. 'We've got to come down on the landing cradle or we'll snap the keel.' Boys and men were running hither and thither, trying to catch the trailing ends of the ropes, but the constant wind across the Crag kept snatching them away.

One boy, very light, grabbed onto a rope only to find himself lifted into the air. He let go, and fell back to the ground.

Other controllers were having troubles too. They would seize a rope only to find themselves dragged across the hill. It was Trone who saved the day, by pouncing on one of these men - four other controllers pounced on top of him, and the Cathawk came to a jarring halt in the air.

The other ropes were slowed enough then to allow other men to grab them. It was great sport, with ground crew and villagers alike chasing after every rope still waving free, but at last nearly every rope had a controller or two hanging breathlessly onto the end of it.

Trone released his rope then - there were three other men on it - and shouted to his crew, 'All right, pull it up the slope - over the landing rack!'

Shouting and cheering, the men dragged the Cathawk along, like a child with one of Purple's tiny airbags. The villagers waved excitedly at the heroes above. Wilville and Orbur had ceased their pedaling and were waving back, big foolish grins across their faces.

The flight controllers were just positioning the airboat above the landing rack when one of them called, 'Wait! - If Purple leaves in this boat, our tokens won't be worth anything.'

The others looked at him, 'So what?'

'We've got to do something about it-'

Meanwhile, Purple was shouting, 'The landing cradle! The landing cradle! Pull us to the landing cradle!'

They ignored him while they argued amongst themselves. Trone was insisting that they obey his orders, but the others were too insistent and they ignored him. Finally one of the men shouted skyward, 'We're going on strike, Purple!'

'Huh? What's that?'

The flight controllers are going on strike-'

'The what-?!!'

'We want you to guarantee your tokens!'

'Of course, of course! Anything-'

Suddenly we saw Shoogar's head over the railing. He had a ball of itching balls in his hand, and he was taking careful aim at us below. Three of the flight controllers started to let go of their ropes, but their leader marshaled them back. 'If you drop it, Shoogar, we'll let go and you'll never get down!'

I backed away. I knew Shoogar.

Sure enough, he dropped it. It struck and burst and tiny flecks of black spotted the air, alighting on the nearest people - the ground crew.

From the air came Shoogar's voice, 'If you want to be cured, pull us down!'

Some of the men were trying to rub the black flecks away. Others had let go of their ropes and were rolling on the ground. The Cathawk swung out of position.

Shoogar called, 'In about an hour you're all going to be screaming for a magician!'

That did it. They swarmed for the ropes and started pulling.

Shoogar apparently wanted to drop more itch balls, but Purple was climbing down from the rigging and motioning frantically. Wilville and Orbur, no longer needed on the airpushers, slung them up into the outriggers exactly as planned, and began climbing back into the boat proper. They too were remonstrating with Shoogar.

'No more itch balls! We're pulling! We're pulling!' called the flight controllers.

Shoogar, Wilville and Orbur vanished below the side of the boat. There were curses and muffled noises. Purple was peering over the side and directing the landing manuever, 'All right, all right - easy now. Watch the keel, the keel! Pull us to the landing cradle - the cradle! Don't snap the keel!'

Grumbling and cursing the men pulled the boat down and into the cradle. They looped their ropes loosely around stakes in the ground. Gradually the boat was hauled down out of the sky. The keel slid into its slot in the landing frame, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

A gust of wind caught the clustered windbags then, just at the right angle and the wrong moment - there was a cra-a-ack! of bambooze. The keel had snapped.

Purple leapt out of the boat cursing. It bounced back into the air, but the men pulled it down again. Others dragged sandbags over, and quickly tossed them into the boat. It hit the cradle with a thump.

Wilville and Orbur got off Shoogar then. They had been holding him down on the floor of the boat. The three scrambled out.

Even the sandbags were not enough then. A sudden gust of wind caught the boat and swept it down the slope, bouncing and gliding. It was too heavy to fly with the sandbags in it, but too light to resist the force of the wind. It swept down the slope and into the water.

Ang's fisherboys had to recover it.

When he saw it bobbing in the water, its outriggers balancing it gently against the waves, Purple's only comment was, 'H'm, I guess it didn't need a keel after all.'

-----

THE next few days were busy ones indeed.

The waters had risen higher than ever, even to the middle slopes of the Upper Village. The tents which had served us so well in our journey across the desert were brought out again, so that affected families could move up to the Crag itself.

Trone and his crew of ground controllers carried the airboat back up to the Crag. They had little difficulty because the airbags offset most of the boatframe's weight.

After some additional modifications and repair work by

Wilville and Orbur, the last four balloons were added. This time there was more than enough ballast in the boat, and extra mooring ropes to hold it down.

We did not slow down the generator teams though. Purple attached the lead wires to his battery, and the output of all four machines was stored in that tiny device. Once I asked Purple about it, and he explained that as far as we were concerned the battery could hold an almost infinite amount of power.

There were advantages to its use. For one thing, Purple could release power at any rate he chose. It might take two hundred men five days to pump up all sixteen balloons, but if Purple had stored all that pedaled electrissy in his battery, he could fill the airbags almost as fast as we could add water to the pots and change the fittings on the funnels.

So it did not matter that the balloons up on the Crag were starting to droop. Purple would recharge them just before his departure. He planned to leave after two more hands of days had passed. That way, he estimated, he would have enough power to recharge the balloons two and a half times - maybe more.

Also, he said, he did not want to recharge the balloons before then because so much stored hydrogen could be dangerous. And this would give him a chance to measure their rate of leakage even more accurately.

'Danger?' I asked, when he said this. 'What kind of danger?'

'Fire,' he said, 'or sparks. That's why we can't even take a bicycle type electrissy maker with us. Besides not being fast enough - even with four people working it - it makes sparks. A spark could set everything off.'

A spark, he explained, was a very small dot of lightning. 'Remember the way my housetree exploded?'

Lightning? Was that what we were working with? Was it lightning that fought back when we turned the pedals of the generators?

I shuddered - lightning! - Purple was definitely not one for half-measures!

He had proven it now. While the teams of men continued their roaring competitions on the generators, while Wilville and Orbur tended to the further provisioning of the Cathawk, Purple went about healing every sick person he could find.

'It looks like I can replace my first-aid kit pretty soon,' he told me. 'I was saving it because I might need it myself, but now - might as well make use of it.' He cured Hinc the Hairless and Farg the Weaver; both began to grow new hair. Other men lost the sores they had carried for so many hands of hands of days - Purple blew wet air onto their skins from a tiny cylinder in his medicine kit, and within hours their flesh began to heal.

He didn't stop with the men. He cured the wives of their hairlessness too. He treated Little Gortik, a boy of four conjunctions, whose arm had been small and withered from the day he was born. 'Forced regeneration,' Purple had chanted over the boy, and had made him swallow two oddly translucent capsules. Now the boy's bones had gone soft, and the arm seemed to be straightening out.

Purple moved daily about the Upper Village and among the tents above the timberline, with his spell kit in his hand and a fierce, eager light in his eyes, as if he suspected sick people were hiding from him.

When Zone the Vender fell out of a tree and broke his back, Purple actually came at a dead run! He reached Zone before the man could finish dying; he sprayed Zone's back with something that went right through the skin, and forbade him to move at all until he could wiggle his toes again. He was there now, beneath the tree that had nearly killed him, while his wife fed him and changed his blankets. He was not dying, but he was getting terribly bored, and Purple had taken all his tokens.

They started trading Purple's tokens for Shoogar's at a ten-for-one ratio.

-----

ABOUT this time my first wife finally gave birth to the daughter Shoogar had predicted. She was red and ugly and totally bald - not even a fine layer of glistening down-fur. When Shoogar spanked the child to life, her skin gleamed with womb fluid only.

He took the damp towel I held for him, and began cleaning the child's eyes and nose and mouth. He handled her tenderly, and there was a strange expression on his face

'Is there something the matter, Shoogar?' I asked.

He never took his eyes off the baby, 'As I feared, she is a demon child; but in all my years, Lant, I have never seen a demon child such as this.'

'Is she a good witch or a bad witch?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know. It's too early to tell.' He maneuvered her around in his arms and continued rubbing softly. From her birthing cot, my wife watched wide-eyed. Most women fear to carry a demon child. My woman had born it stoically - I would have to reward her somehow.

Shoogar said, 'This much I do know - this child must be protected and cared for. Perhaps even treated as well as a male-'

I stared at him in fear. 'Shoogar-' I started, but he cut me off.

'Lant, I do not know. This is something I have never seen or heard of. We can only watch and wait. If this child is a good demon, then for sure we will want to please her - if she is a bad demon, just as surely we will not want to anger her. In any case, it never hurts to take care in an unknown situation.'

I nodded gravely. There had been cases of demon daughters before - the children had been treated as sons, named and consecrated, and in some cases even admitted to the Guild of Advisors. But there had also been cases where demon daughters had caused the destruction of whole villages.

Both situations were rare, happening perhaps only once every hundred conjunctions. I had never expected it to happen in my lifetime though, let alone to my wife.

When he heard the news, Purple came running. The villagers parted in awe, as his chubby bulk came pelting across the slope. Excitedly, the villagers trailed in his wake, gabbling eagerly. On top of all that had happened to us previously, this new development was merely one more topic for the gossipmongers.

Purple burst into my nest and stood looking down at my bald red demon daughter. He was grinning all over his partially naked face. 'She's beautiful, isn't she?' he said.

Shoogar and I exchanged a glance. Perhaps to Purple she was - but to us she was a thing of fear. What did children look like where Purple came from that such a thing would be considered beautiful?

He approached Shoogar tentatively, 'May I hold her?'

Shoogar backed away, shielding the child in his arms. His eyes glared angrily. Purple looked shocked and hurt.

I touched his arm, 'Purple, will she grow hair?'

He shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

'Will you cure her then?'

'I can't.'

'My apology - I did not mean to insult you, but you have been doing such curing lately-'

'Anything that will hold still long enough-' Shoogar snapped.

Purple put out his hands. 'You misunderstood. She is not sick, Lant. She is merely bald, like me.' He advanced toward Shoogar again, 'Let me hold her, please.' He held out his arms.

Shoogar refused to give up the child. He shook his head firmly.

'But she is mine-' Purple said. 'I mean, I sired her-'

'So? Do you think that gives you any special rights? It was Lant's wife who bore her. The child is his.'

Purple looked at Shoogar and at me. He had an expression of confusion and hurt. 'I do not mean - that is, I only want to hold her - just for a little bit - Lant, please-?'

He looked so pitiful, I wanted to say yes, but Shoogar only shook his head. At last, Purple bowed his head in sad acquiescence. 'As you wish. Will you at least let me insure her health with a -?' He used a word from his demon-tongue.

'What kind of a spell is it?' asked Shoogar.

'It is a spell of - luck,' answered Purple. 'Luck and protection. It will make her stronger and more healthy. She will have a better chance to gain maturity -'

At first, I thought Shoogar would refuse. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. I said, 'Shoogar, remember, we must please her-'

'All right,' said Shoogar. 'You may approach.' And he let Purple spray essences through her skin with a thing from his medicine kit.

Purple did not ask to hold her again, and when he left, his step was slow and confused. We did not see him for the rest of that day.

-----

IN all, the villagers did not redeem a large percentage of Purple's tokens - not even when the sick and crippled began arriving from the other four villages by the boatload. People

who were already healthy preferred to keep the tokens, partly because they might be needed for some very strong act of magic later, and partly because they were magic in and of themselves. They would bring good luck.

After they were cured many of the pilgrims decided to stay on. Intrigued by our flying boat and our electrissy generators, they formed an ever-present crowd of curious onlookers. They began trading for spell tokens so they could bet on the various pumping teams.

Others came in hopes of joining our growing Clothmakers' Guild, or of joining a bicycle put-it-together line or a generator team. Still others came to trade, and they were followed by those who prey on those who trade. Others came out of curiosity. They had heard of our flying machine and wanted to see it for themselves.

Our combined Guild of Advisors had grown to a size almost unmanageable, and there were ominous mutterings from various elements who felt they had been slighted in its growth. Clearly we were going to need some reorganization.

And finally came the day that Purple announced his battery was charged. He would depart for the sky before the next dawning of the blue sun.

And this time he meant it; - this was no test flight. This would be Purple's actual departure. Once the airboat lifted from its cradle, he would be gone from our village and our lives forever.

He spent almost all of his time on the Crag now, checking lists and counting supplies. Often he could be seen poking , carefully at the boat's rigging or testing an airbag.

'Look how the boat strains at the ropes, Lant - isn't it beautiful? We have food aboard for at least four hands of | men, we've got four or five manweights of ballast; we've got a few extra windbags in case we rip any. I say we're ready, Lant. How about you?'

'Huh? I'd say you're ready, too.'

'No - I mean, are you ready?'

'Huh?'

'Aren't you coming with us ?' :

'Me

?!!' I squeaked. 'I wouldn't set foot in that - I mean, I have no intention - that is, I'm needed here. Business requires it! I'm a Speaker! I-'

'But-but-your sons said-'

'My sons?'.

'Yes - they led me to believe that you were going to come too. We planned for you.'

'This is the first I have heard of it.'

'You do not want to come then?'

'Of course not; I can see no reason at all why I should.'

'Well, neither did I,' said Purple. 'But Wilville and Orbur seemed to think it necessary.'

I shuddered. 'No, thank you, Purple. I will forgo the honor.' I did not add that I would rather be in a village with no magicians, than in a flying machine with two mad ones.

-----

BUT later that day, in the heat of double daylight, a time when most of the villagers were sleeping, Shoogar took me aside. 'Lant, you've seen how he has revalued my magic!' he said bitterly. 'You must come with us, Lant. I will need you to help with the spell against him-'

'Spell? Oh, no, Shoogar-'

'I will be free of my oath when we leave this locality. But I will need you for a witness that I have killed him. You are the Speaker. Your word is law.'

'Shoogar, can you not leave well enough alone? Purple is leaving. You will be the only magician here - and this is the greatest village of all! There may be as many as 5,000 men living here, maybe more! Never has there been a village of such size! Why must you risk it all be starting another foolish duel?'

But at that Shoogar snarled and left me. He grumbled off down the dark slope, scattering villagers and women alike.

Later, after the blue sun had winked out, Wilville and Orbur came to see me. As soon as I saw them, I said, 'What nonsense have you been telling Purple? He says that you want me to come along on this fantastic journey.'

They nodded. 'Father, you must! You are the only one who can control Shoogar. Surely you must know that he is planning another duel as soon as we are out of this region.'

'Yes. He's mentioned it.'

'Well then, you must come along to stop it. We will never return if you don't; even if we should be lucky enough to survive this time. He'll insist that we put on the sails again. He's still not convinced! Father, you must come or we'll never get home.'

'I'm sure you can manage without me, sons - you did all right on your test flight-'

'Yes, but that was only a test. Shoogar knew no more about the flying machine than anyone else. Now that he has been up in it once, he is convinced that he is an expert. Surely you have heard the tales he has been telling of his exploit.'

I nodded. 'But you have all been telling tales - and no two of your tales agree. The villagers don't believe any of you. That fact alone should keep Shoogar from dueling. If he has no credible witness along-'

'Father, he is not interested so much in a credible witness as he is in killing Purple.' Orbur lowered his voice. 'You don't know, do you, what he tried to do on our test flight?'

'Huh?' I shook my head. 'I have not heard-'

'That is because Wilville and I have kept it quiet. We do not want to start even the hint of a rumor that there is trouble between our magicians.'

Wilville nodded in agreement and said, 'Shortly after we took off, they got into an argument about whether or not we needed sails. Shoogar got so mad that he tried to throw a ball of fire at Purple-'

'A ball of fire?!! But - the airboat? The hydrogen?'

'We were lucky,' said Orbur. Purple screamed when he saw it. I thought he would jump out of the boat-; but Wilville was thinking fast, and he threw a bucket of water on Shoogar.'

Wilville said, 'And then Orbur jumped on Shoogar and held him down. We drenched him all over with another bucket of water and then made him strip. We made him throw away all of his fire-making devices. Purple was as white as a cloud-'

'I can imagine.' I was thinking of a blackened stump of a housetree.

'But that's not all,' said Orbur. 'Later, he tried to push Purple out. Purple was climbing on the rigging - you know, father, for a man like that, he is remarkably brave; he climbed across those ropes as if he had not the slightest fear of falling.'

'He did slip once, though,' said Wilville. 'Fortunately, it was only a few feet, and he fell into the boat.'

'Well, we all had to get used to it,' Orbur said to him. 'Nobody has ever been in an airboat before. There is no one to teach us what to do-'

'Except Shoogar,' said Wilville. He looked at me imploringly, 'Father, Shoogar is convinced that only he knows the vagaries of Musk-Watz the wind god, but somehow his magic doesn't seem to work right in the upper sky. His sails didn't work, his fireballs almost killed us-'

'My sons, you survived that experience, didn't you?'

They nodded reluctantly.

'Good, then I have faith that you can survive another. From what you have just told me I am all the more sure that I am not getting into that airboat.'

-----

I RETURNED to my nest tired and irritated.

It wasn't just the way everyone badgered me. It was the crowds. By now every family in the five villages were here on the Heights. The nearly bare rock was a maze of tents, practically edge to edge, the meager gaps filled by a swarm of sprats and women and strangers. The sea had swallowed the rest of the island.

The only clear spots were on Idiot's Peak, around the launching cradle, and the wide servicing area that now led all the way down to the water. Keeping those areas clear enough to work in only made the rest of the Heights more crowded.

My tree, like a few others, still reached partway above the waters. We still used the nest and thus avoided some of the crowding; but we had to wade waist deep between nest and Heights.

The sea was tepid and very wet. I was still bristling from the need to push my way between the tents and among the hordes of strangers when I climbed into my nest, my fur dripping. I sank gratefully onto my cot.

'Wives,' I called, 'I am ready for a hot brushing. I have had such a day as to try even the greatest of men!'

'Oh, our poor Lant,' they mourned. 'Surely even the greatest of tribulations is only child's play to a man so brave as you-'

'Naturally, but the effort is tiring. Purple wants me to come on the airboat with him; so do Wilville and Orbur-'

'Oh, no, not my brave Lant! Not in the airboat! You might fall!' cried one Missa.

'You mustn't, my husband! You will never return! What would we do if we lost you?' said the other whose non-name was Kate.

'Of course, you told them that you wouldn't!' said the first.

'You have your carving to tend to,' said the second. 'And there are other things besides. The nestwalls are leaking and must be repaired-'

'Wait a minute,' I cuffed them into silence. 'What is this noise you make? You dare to tell me what I should do-?'

'Oh, no-' They flung themselves at my feet.

Missa, the second, looked up and said, 'It is just that we love you so much, we do not want you to go-'

Missa, the first, said, 'It is such a dangerous thing to do -maybe even too dangerous for such a brave man as our Lant'

I looked down at them, 'How dare you even suggest such a thing. I am the Speaker of my village - I have tamed two of the wildest magicians ever known, and, I kept them from killing each other. I have guided the construction of an actual flying machine-'

'Yes, my husband, but that does not mean that you should fly in it!'

'Yes - leave that honor for somebody else-'

'And why should I?' I demanded. 'I have as much right as anybody to voyage on the Cathawk, perhaps even more.'

'Oh, but we are so afraid for you-'

'You think I am afraid of the dangers?'

'Oh, no, my brave Lant - but we are-'

'You think too much, wives - it has addled your brains. I am fully aware of the dangers of such a voyage. You think I am not? Let me tell you this though: if I did not think it was a safe journey, I would not be planning to go.'

'Oh, my husband, my brave, brave husband, you do not need to prove it to us. We know you are the greatest of all husbands. Just stay with us, and we will not even protest your purchase of a third wife-'

'You will not what - What makes you think you have even the right to do so? If I want a third wife, I will buy one. If I want to go flying in a flying machine, I will do that too! And I am going to do both! And neither one of you will say another word about it or I will beat you! Now bring me my supper! And be grateful that I am not yet too angry to do the family-making thing tonight!'

-----

RED sunset, still and quiet, a hot mugginess in the air - the memory of the blistering heat of day.

Trone and four other men were holding a line; Wilville and Orbur were up in the rigging rearranging the position of two of the balloons in the cluster. On their signal, Trone and his crew released the rope and the balloons snapped into position.

Purple had spent this day recharging the tired windbags.

Even now, he was just filling the last from a water pot balanced on the narrow deck slats.

Shoogar and I stood quietly to one side. I was carrying a narrow pack and wondering how I had gotten myself into this position. I kept replaying the conversations of the day over and over in my head, but somehow the why of it still eluded me.

I had been ready enough to change my mind when I left my nest. But, in their zeal to persuade me not to risk my life, my wives had been busily asking the advice of a great many other women. And those women had been telling their men

... I soon found out that every man, woman and child on the Heights knew that Lant the Speaker would be aboard the Cathawk when it rose into the sky at red sunset.

Wilville and Orbur climbed down from the rigging then. Purple made a mark on his checklist. Orbur turned and burrowed under a cloth-covered pile of supplies. 'The blankets are under here, Purple.'

'Good,' he replied, 'I would not want to leave them. Have we plenty of drinking water this time ?'

'More than enough,' said Wilville; he looked at Shoogar as he said it.

Purple came over to us then. 'I am glad you are coming, Lant. It will be a long journey, and I welcome your company.' To Shoogar, he said, 'You have brought no fire-making devices, this time, have you?'

Shoogar shook his head dourly.

'You remember what I told you about them, don't you?'

He nodded.

'Fine.'

He went back to the boys and told them. Wilville and Orbur looked over at us and exchanged a glance. They excused themselves from Purple and climbed out of the boat. 'Oh, Shoogar,' they said, 'could we speak with you a moment; we have a question about one of the finer points of the spell-'

Shoogar toddled off after them. They disappeared behind a clump of blackbushes.

There was a sharp cry and the sound of a struggle. Another cry and then silence. After a moment, there was a ; sputtering and the sound of water being poured out of a pot, Wilville and Orbur returned then, smiling. A few moments later a soaked Shoogar followed them. He was glaring angrily.

He came up to me, 'If they weren't your sons-'

'And if they also weren't necessary to the success of the journey home,' I said calmly, 'you would do what-?'

'Never mind,' he grumbled. 'I'm just glad that you decided to come along, after all. I am going to take a revenge on Purple such as no one has ever dreamed of!'

Despite the hour there was a considerable crowd gathered on the slope. Many of them were from the other villages, people who had heard of our wondrous machine, and had , come to witness our ascent. Still, there were quite a few people from our own village as well, proudly pointing out what part of the machine they had worked on. Again, there were mongers selling sweetdrops and spicy meats. I had eaten some the last time, and had been sick for hours afterward. This time I had resolved not to eat anything; if I was going to be sick, I didn't want to be so in an airship.

'All right, Lant,' said Purple. 'You can get in now.' He gestured. 'Shoogar?'

We went. Purple directed us where to sit, far forward in the boat, one on each side of a cloth-lined bench. Purple took up his position at the rear. He peered about him anxiously, as if he had forgotten something.

I was petrified. My heart was pounding - I could not believe it - I was actually here - in a flying machine! And I was going to rise up into the sky in it!

A voice was calling, 'Lant! Lant!' I looked over the side. There was Pilg the Crier.

'Pilg!' I cried. 'Where have you been?'

'I have been coming back,' he called. 'Lant, are you really going flying with Purple the Magician?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I am.'

'You are a brave man,' he said. 'I shall miss you.'

Farther up the slope I could see both my wives with Gortik. They were sobbing copiously. Little Gortik waved happily.

'All right,' Purple was saying, 'ground crew take your positions.'

I looked around me, thousands of faces were looking back-

Wilville and Orbur waved at them. They had climbed onto their bicycles, and were just tying their safety ropes. Underneath, the boat rocked gently. 'You know,' I said suddenly, 'I think I ought to stay behind, after all. I-'

Shoogar pulled me down again. 'Shut up, Lant - you want everyone to think you're a coward ?'

'I'd just as soon they know it for sure - let go of me, I Shoogar!'

Purple was standing at the rear of the boat, one hand on the rigging to balance himself. He was gesturing at the ground crew. I pulled myself away from Shoogar and looked. Trone and his men were stationing themselves around the cradle. 'Each had a heavy knife and was waiting by a mooring rope.

'All right, now,' Purple shouted. 'All the ropes have to be cut at once, so wait for my signal. We will do it just as I said. I will count backwards - ready, now? Ten, nine, eight-'

'Shoogar, let go of me!' I said. 'I'm not going-'

'Yes, you are!'

'-to do anything foolish!'

'You are too!'

'Seven, six, five-'

'Shoogar!'

'Four, three-'

There were fifty jarring thunks! as the knives came down on the ropes. We shot upwards! The crowd cheered. I yelped. Shoogar screamed and clutched at me. The boat rocked wildly and I grabbed at something to keep from falling - there was a tearing sound - it was Shoogar's spell belt-

We were in a tumbled heap at the bottom of the boat. I pulled myself into a sitting position, and back up onto the bench. Purple was cursing furiously, 'You addle-brained idiots! You can't even count right!! I didn't even get to Finish-'

'Finish what?' I said. Three is the spell number, Purple. All spells start with three.'

He looked at me stupidly, then he turned away muttering; 'Of course, Purple; three is the spell number, Purple; how can you be so stupid, Purple - Oh, what I wouldn't give for a-' His words were whipped away by the wind.

I looked around. Shoogar was peering curiously over the side.

'What is the matter?' I asked.

'My spell belt, you fool! You ripped it.'

I joined him at the rail. The boat tipped precariously, but Purple shifted his weight in the rear, and we balanced again. 'It must be the lack of a keel,' called Orbur from his outrigger.

And now, for the first time since the ascent, I had a chance to look down. Far below us was the Crag, red sunlight slanting severely across it. Blue shadows stretched outward to infinity. Tiny people, getting tinier every moment, moved below. I could see the landing cradle, the housetrees, the foamy edge of the sea, and the rippled surface of it stretching out to the end of the world.

On the other side were the peaks of the mountains. We were even above them.

Shoogar was still looking down 'What are you so upset about?' I asked. 'Most of your spells are here at the bottom of the boat.'

'I know,' he said. 'I saw them - but the one you ripped - it spilled out. It's going to hang in the air over the village for days.'

'Oh,' I said. 'What is it?'

'A powder. You remember the dust of yearning?'

'The spell we used on Purple the day we destroyed his black egg?'

'That's the one.'

I shuddered. I remembered it well. After just a few sniffs of it, Purple had gone into the village and done the family-making thing with my wife. Repeatedly.

'I wonder,' said Shoogar. 'I wonder...'

'Well, we must go back,' I said. 'You must show them the proper herbs to chew - there isn't another magician in the region. There will be chaos-'

'Go back?' said Shoogar. 'You are jesting. You will not bring this craft down to the ground again until the airgas gets tired of working and sneaks out of the balloons. Besides, we are moving strongly north-'

He was right, of course. I left him at the railing and moved to another part of the boat. It swayed sickeningly under my every step. Wilville called across to Orbur, 'I think we should put the keel back on!'

'Me too!' he answered.

'No," said Purple, 'all you need do is rearrange the rigging. Spread it our farther at the bottom. It will give the hoist a wider stance.'

'The who a what?' they called.

He sighed. 'Never mind.'

The wind was strong this high in the sky. Idiot's Crag had shrunk to a spear of black on the horizon. Below us the sea was many colors. Spots were brown and opaque with mud. In some places reefs showed through. There were groves of submerged trees as well, spines of mountain rock, and even a tall cairn to Musk-Watz. You could see them all sticking out of the water. There were churning whirlpools and vast rippling tides, and the surface of the water was gray and foamy.

Purple was sighting against the sun and marking something on a skin which had been stretched across a framework. Strange lines speared out from the center of the skin to its edges. 'It's a direction-telling spell,' explained Purple.

We re headed almost directly east.'

'I could have told you that' I said.

'Huh?'

I pointed below. 'See that spine of land there? That's the way we followed on our migration. It leads directly to the old village.'

'It does?' Purple leaned far over the edge and tried to follow it with his eyes. I feared for his balance, but even more I feared for Shoogar who watched us with eyes gleaming.

He straightened then. 'Wilville, Orbur! We want to change course. Unsling your airpushers!'

They nodded and began to do so. First one of the bladed wheels swung down to hang a manheight below the precarious outrigger, then the other on the other side. I shuddered as I watched. I would not trade places with either of my sons. You would not get me out there, with nothing between me and the sea but empty air.

'We have to come about,' called Purple. Turn toward the west - left about ninety degrees.' I didn't understand that last, but the boys apparently did. Wilville began back-pedaling while Orbur pedaled forward. Slowly the Cathawk turned in the sky. The red sunlight seeped through the rigging, and the shadows shifted across our face.

Purple watched carefully on his measuring skin. A small rod stuck up from the center, and he watched the position of its shadow. He called, 'All right, stop!' He waited until both airpushers were still, then checked the shadow again. 'Not enough,' he called, 'another ten degrees.'

When we were finally pointed in the right direction he gave another order. 'Quarter speed,' he called. The two boys began chanting and pedaling. They had removed the extra twist in the pulleys, so that the airpushers blew their wind sternward again and the boys faced in the direction they were going.

The chant was at a set rhythm, and they pedaled in time to it. Purple watched them for a while, then he peered over the side again. After a bit he said, 'Ah.' He straightened. 'We are on the right course. We are traveling parallel to that spine of land you pointed out, Lant. If the wind lets up at all, we will try to get directly over it'

He went to the back of the boat then and stretched out on a cot of aircloth over a wide frame. 'You know, Lant,' he called, 'if I didn't have my responsibilities elsewhere, I might almost be willing to settle down here. This is a very relaxing way of life.'

'Oh, no, Purple,' I reassured him. 'You would not be happy living with us. You had best return-'

'Fear not, Lant. That's what I intend to do. But I tell you, I have truly enjoyed myself here.' He pounded himself on his stomach. 'Look, I think I may have even lost a few pounds.'

'Have you looked behind you?' muttered Shoogar.

'Sh,' I hissed. 'We are all going to be together for a very long time. At least try to get along.'

'With him?!!'

'You didn't have to come, Shoogar!'

'I did too! How else can I ever-'

'Never mind! If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. At least so long as we're in the air!'

Shoogar snarled at me and went forward to the front of the boat. I sank down tiredly on a pile of supplies and blankets.

For a while I watched my sons as they pedaled. It was a funny sight, a bicycle so high in the air - with no wheels at all, yet they were pedaling so steadily, I had to laugh. They glared at me, but kept chanting and pumping.

Above us the clustered windbags were like a distant roof. Large enough to be covering, but high enough so that they were not oppressive. It was a feeling like being sheltered, but also one of being strangely free.

Occasionally the boys rested - and then all was silent. That was the most peculiar thing about the airship. Once in the sky, it neither creaked nor shuddered. There were no sounds at all, except perhaps that of our own heartbeats.

We had stopped rising now. And a good thing too. The air was cold - almost biting. Purple pulled out some blankets and passed them around. Wilville and Orbur were wearing extra layers of clothing. It had been tied to their outriggers so they could pull it on as they wished. They also had water bottles and packs of hardbread. There was no need for them to come into the boat itself at all, if they did not wish to.

The last of the red sun finally seeped below the horizon.

'Are they going to pedal through the dark?' I asked Purple.

'Uh huh. As long as the wind keeps up, someone has to keep pedaling. You see, Lant, the wind is blowing us north-east. If we pedal west, then we cancel out the east and go only north. But the wind doesn't stop at night, so neither can we. The only other choice is to land - and that means letting air out of the bags.'

'And you don't want to do that, do you?'

'Right. We know the boat will float in water, but I'd rather not have to depend on it. Besides, even if we did come down on the sea, the wind might still push us. So we might as well stay in the air and keep pedaling all night. The boys know how to pace themselves. As long as we stay near that spine of land under the water, I won't worry.'

In the dark the steady chanting and pumping was an eerie thing - coming, as it did, from outside the boat. Fortunately, the time till blue dawn was little more than an hour away - we would have naught but a brief flash of darkness at this time of year. Followed by seventeen hours of pure blue sunlight, an hour of double sunlight, and another seventeen hours of red sunlight. Then darkness again. Later in the year the darknesses would stretch, as would the times of double sunlight. The single-sun hours would shrink as the suns moved closer and closer in the sky - toward the inevitable red conjunction.

We pedaled on through the darkened sky.

-----

FAR to the east the horizon's edge was limned by a faint blue glow. Blue Ouells was sneaking up behind it, soon to shout and leap and flash brightly over the edge.

Below, the sea was a dark platter, greasy and wrinkled. A cold wind whipped around us. I pulled my blanket tighter against it. The boat rocked gently. The swollen balloons seemed motionless above; the sea motionless and flat so far below.

My sons pedaled steadily. I fancied I could see the churned air stretching out in a line behind us, but that way was as dark as the way ahead. Their pumping was a steady sound, sensed rather than heard - constant vibration filled the boat.

And then it was morning, sharp and blue - bright Ouells was a pinpoint at the edge of the world, sleeting light sideways across our eyes.

Wilville and Orbur rested then, while Purple sighted for the spine of land under the water. It was a barren range of hills, barely higher than the land around it. Beneath the risen ocean it would appear with a lighter color.

At first he thought we had lost it, then sighted it off to our right. Apparently, during the dark, the wind had slackened somewhat. The boys, having no way of knowing this, had kept pedaling, and so had carried us farther west than Purple had wanted us to go.

Fortunately the wind was still blowing northeast, so Purple told Wilville and Orbur that they could rest until such time as we were again over our guide. The boys climbed into the boat, but did not remove their waist ropes until they were safely inside.

They sucked eagerly at a skin of Quaff, passing it back and forth between them, then each stretched out on a cloth-lined framework, the Cathawk's equivalent of a cot. Within moments they were asleep.

I picked my way forward, past bundles of supplies. Shoogar was just stretching and yawning. He greeted me with a surly grunt.

'Haven't you slept,' I asked.

'Of course not, Lant. We only had an hour of darkness. I was watching for the moons. The moons,' he yawned grumpily, 'I need the moons.'

'Shoogar,' I said, 'you do not need the moons-'

'Yes, I do - do you want me to lose my duel?'

I could see that he was unapproachable. 'Go aft,' I said. 'Go aft and get some sleep.'

He was fumbling in his sleeve, but all he found was a damp husk-ball. 'Curse it,' he said, 'they ruined it, your sons ruined it. I had hoped it would dry out, but-' he shrugged and tossed the sodden mass over the side. 'I'm going to sleep, Lant,' he mumbled and tottered off.

I moved to the front of the boat and peered out. Here was a view, unobstructed by either balloons or rigging. I was suspended above a silvery-blue sea, miles above it. I seemed to be floating in silence. The stillness was overpowering. Deafening.

The air was crisp and, at the same time, hot. Blue Ouells was already heating up the day.

'Beautiful, isn't it?'

I looked around. Purple had come up beside me. He placed his hands on the rail and looked out at the ocean blueness on all sides. 'I love the way it changes,' he said. 'The changing light of the suns keeps changing the look of the water.'

I nodded. I did not particularly feel like talking yet. My bones still ached from the cold of the night, and the sun had not yet begun to bake that out.

'Lant,' he said, 'tell me about your journey again. I am trying to figure out how far you traveled, and how long it will take us to cover that distance in the flying machine.'

I sighed. We had been over this many times already. It was on the basis of our migration that Purple had calculated the number of balloons and amount of supplies he would need. 'We journeyed for a hundred and fifty days, Purple. We followed that range of hills because the seas were rising so fast. We needed every advantage we could get.'

He nodded, 'Good, good,' then fell silent and became lost in thought, as if he were making figures in his head. After a while he brought out his measuring skin again and began sighting the sun. 'We will be drifting over our course line again,' he said. 'I had better go and wake up the boys.'

Afterward, when we were again vibrating to the tune of the whining bicycles, I tottered aft and joined Purple for a bite of breakfast, my first meal since coming aboard the aircraft. Shoogar was snoring loudly on a cot.

Purple bit into a sour melon. He said, 'For some time I have wondered, Lant. Why do you call me Purple?'

'Huh? That is your name.'

He cocked his head at me, 'What do you mean? I knew you had a word for me in your language, but it wasn't until my speakerspell was destroyed that I found out it was your word for purple.'

'But you told us that was your name, long ago.'

'I couldn't have. It isn't.'

'It isn't? But-' I thought hard. 'But your speakerspell said it was-'

'Oh,' he said, 'the speakerspell.' As if that explained it. 'Yes, Lant, sometimes we do have troubles with speakerspells.'

'I thought so,' I said, 'I sometimes wondered if it was working correctly. It said some very silly things.'

'Just what did it say?'

'It spoke wildly of dust clouds and other suns-'

'I mean, about my name.'

'Oh. It said that your name was As A Color, Shade of Purple-Gray. We thought it distinctly odd.'

Purple looked distinctly confused. He wiped a bit of melon dribble off his chin. 'As a color, shade of purple-gray? I don't see how-' And then his eyes lit up behind his black bone frames. A delighted expression came across his face, 'Ah, it's a pun! A pun!' He began chortling hysterically. 'Of course, of course - how right that I should have a translator that makes two-language puns! As a color, shade of purple-gray! As a mauve! Oh, how delightful.'

I looked at him oddly.

He explained. 'It must have tried to translate the syllables individually, Lant, from my language to yours.'

'Then Purple isn't your real name?'

'Oh, no, of course not - that's just a poor translation. My real name is-' and he spoke in the demon-tongue.

At that I felt a cold chill - no wonder Shoogar's first curse hadn't worked - he had used the wrong name!

Behind us Shoogar's snoring had stopped - he was lying on his back. His eyes were narrow slits - had he heard too?

-----

THE wind had died completely.

Purple signaled Wilville and Orbur to take a rest while he measured the suns again. 'It's very difficult,' he said. There s no north star in this world, and even a magnetic compass isn't that much help. I have to rely mostly on the suns to tell me which direction is which.'

The boys had climbed into the boat again and were thirstily swigging Quaff and chewing hardbread. 'Relax,' Purple told them, 'because we are becalmed, you can take all the time you need. We do not have to worry about being blown off course.'

The boys stretched out for a short nap then. Shoogar was up at the front of the boat, offering a chant to Musk-Watz, trying to restore the wind, and Purple decided to climb up into the rigging to check his balloons.

I climbed forward. So far, this journey had been very boring. There had been nothing to do but sit.

Shoogar finished with his cantele and sat down on a bench. He began packing away his spell-chanting equipment. 'Bung-smelling apprentices!' he cursed. 'Forgot to pack my filk-singer flute.'

'You should be grateful you even have apprentices,' I said. 'They have been most hard to come by recently. Most of the young boys in the village want to become weavers or electrissy makers. There are few who want to follow the old ways.'

'Hah!' snorted Shoogar. He looked at me. 'And what will those others do now that the airboat is finished? Eh? There will be no more demand for aircloth, no more need to pump on the generators. All of a sudden there is no more work for them.'

'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Last hand I heard Gortik and Lesta discussing the possibility of building another flying machine, a bigger one, to carry trade goods back and forth between the village and the mainland.'

Shoogar grunted. 'It's possible - but I still have yngvi-infested apprentices. They left out my locusts, my trumpets, my appas-'

'Then you have not trained them properly, I said. I've had no trouble with mine.'

'Hah, it is not so easy as you think, Lant, to train a magician. I remember my own training-' He trailed off suddenly.

'What's the matter?' I asked.

'You are right, Lant. I have not been beating them enough.'

'I don't understand.' . .

'Of course not; training a magician's apprentice is not like training a bonecarver or a weaver. First off, you must beat them three times a day so they do not become presumptuous. Then you must beat them three more times so they will pay attention. Then you must beat them three more times so as to instill in them a healthy fear of you - else they will carry a grudge all their lives, may even one day turn against you.'

'That's a lot of beating,' I said.

He nodded, 'It's necessary. The greatness of a magician is directly proportional to the amount of beating he had taken.'

'Your training must have been frightful-'

'It was. I was lucky to live through it. Old Alger would not rest until he had beaten all resentment out of Dorthi and me. We set over five hundred different spell traps for him. Not one of them worked - he saw through them all.'

'You mean an apprentice magician keeps trying to kill ms teacher?'

Shoogar nodded. 'Of course, that's how you get to be recognized as being better than he. It's not necessary, but it is always tried by the apprentices because it is a short cut to greatness. It is easier than waiting for a formal consecration.'

'But Shoogar,' I said, 'your apprentices - they will try to kill you.'

'Of course. I expect it. But I am greater and smarter than either of them can ever hope to be - I'm greater and smarter than both of them put together. I have no worries about them. They have not yet learned even how to curse a stream. Besides, every time they fail, I beat them for it, severely. Thus they are inspired to do better next time - it will force them to plan more carefully. They will fail, of course. They always do - but a contest of wits like this is always great fun for a magician.'

I shook my head. I did not understand many things in this life - and this was one of them.

I wobbled aft to get some sleep. The boat rocked gently under the swollen balloons, and within moments the cares of magicians had slipped away.

-----

WE spent a miserable hour of darkness drifting, all five of us huddled together at the bottom of the boat. Keeping watch would have done little good. There was little to see but black water.

After a while Purple gathered his blanket around him and stumbled off. We could hear him pacing back and forth at the stern of the boat, we could feel the pad-padding of his feet through the deck slats.

'He's restless and impatient,' murmured Orbur.

'Let's hope a wind doesn't come up for a while,' said Wilville. 'It's cold enough without having to go out and pedal.'

I pecked out from under my blanket. Purple was peering upward at the balloons. They were illuminated by the eerie glow of his flashlight. They shone brightly in the dark, ominous and impassive. He was muttering something about hydrogen leakage.

Wilville and Orbur exchanged a glance. 'He doesn't want to land,' said one.

'We'll have to,' replied the other. 'If we have to recharge the balloons, we'll have to.'

I shivered. Below, we could hear the water lap-lapping, and the occasional splash and groan of a cavernmouth fish. Best we do not land at all, I thought - although, if the hydrogen was leaking, we would have no choice at all in the matter.

I longed for a fire, blessed warmth, but Purple would allow us none - no flame, no fire, no spark-making device of any kind. Nothing that might endanger the violently explosive hydrogen.

Had it not been for the ample supply of Quaff, we would have been twice as unhappy and twice as cold. But Shoogar and I passed the flask back and forth between us, and after a while the sun came out and we didn't care any more.

Purple sighted our course then, and Wilville and Orbur climbed out onto the outriggers. They turned us in the proper direction and began pedaling across the sky. Purple retired to his sleeping cot in the back of the boat. He snored like an awakening mountain.

Shoogar was grumpy again. The few times he had poked his head out from under his blanket during the darkness, there had still been no moons. The first time of dark, there had been mist. The second time had been clear, but there were still no moons! It was annoying and frustrating: the sign of Gafia, when all the gods have stopped listening.

Shoogar was unapproachable. He climbed up into the rigging, onto a little platform Purple called a bird's nest, and sat there moodily.

Later, when Purple awoke, he asked why Shoogar was so angry. I told him that it was the moons. Shoogar needed them and he could not see them - I didn't tell him why he needed them though.

Purple called up to him, 'Shoogar, come down - I will , explain to you about the moons.'

'You?' he snorted. 'You explain about the moons?'

'But I can tell you about them,' Purple insisted.

'It wouldn't hurt to listen,' I called.

'Humph,' said Shoogar to me, 'what do you know?' But he began climbing down.

Purple pulled out an animal skin and began marking lines on it. 'Before I brought my flying egg down, I studied the paths of your moons, Shoogar. Apparantly they are all fragments of one larger moon and they stay close together in its orbit. At least they are all together now. I suppose there are other times when they are all far apart'

Shoogar nodded. This much at least was correct. They change their configurations often,' he said. 'But they go in cycles of close configurations alternating with loose ones.'

'Ah,' said Purple. 'Of course, they interfere with each other too, and some get lost, and others get picked up from the stream of rocks that follows in your sign-of-eight orbit; but for a while, at least, the moons should behave like this. Especially this one, which is very important to me-'

I stopped listening and wandered to another part of the airship. I am no magician and shop talk generally bores roe.

Later though I noticed that Shoogar had kept the spell chart that Purple had made, and was poring over it interestedly. He had a fierce look in his eyes, and was muttering grumpily and happily to himself.

-----

BLUE dawn of the third day revealed us to be only a few manheights above the water. Great swells swept before us, the water rising and falling in constant uneasy motion. As Wilville and Orbur climbed out onto their bicycles they muttered about our lack of height. The wind is more effective at pushing us higher up.' Orbur said.

Purple nodded thoughtfully. He was peering up at his balloons.

I was peering uneasily down. The surface of the water was greasy and black, and crinkled with flecks of light. I could see the foam on the waves, and smell the wetness in the air.

We had been moving erratically north for two days now, sometimes pushed by the wind, and sometimes by the airpushers. Whenever the flying machine had dropped too low, Purple poured sand out of the ballast bags until we rose again. But we only had one sandbag left, and Purple was beginning to worry.

He had been measuring the balloons regularly since the first night. Periodically, he would climb up into the rigging and poke one experimentally, then climb down, tsk-tsk'ing and shaking his head. The windbags were drooping sadly now; we could see that without climbing the ropes.

He spent all morning leaning over the rail trying to estimate the distance to the water below.

I spent long hours leaning over the rail myself, but little of it was in contemplation of the water. The continual height had begun to unnerve me - and the motion, the constant sway of the boat, the uneasy rocking whenever someone shifted his position-

It was Purple's observance of me that gave him the idea of how to measure our height. He would drop an object and time how long it took to fall. He could do that even in the dark if he listened carefully for the splash.

After his latest calculation - made by dropping a sour melon over the side - Purple announced that we were losing gas very rapidly and would have to pump up the balloons as soon as possible.

He climbed up into the rigging then, while Wilville and Orbur manned the bicycle frames. Hopefully, he said, after we came down in the water, the propellers would keep us balanced and headed in the right direction. He began untying the neck of one of his windbags.

He hung from the ropes above us, a puffy figure against a background of limp and bloated cloth, and he called instructions to the rest of us. 'Lant, Shoogar, pull hard on that rope - I must push this balloon aside. Loosen your pace, Wilville! Orbur, backpedal now! Hard right! Keep on course.' Carefully, he manipulated the long hose-like neck of the windbag, and let some gas seep out. We sank toward the water.

He let more gas out, then tied the neck of the bag again.' He readjusted himself in the rigging and grabbed another bag. We continued sinking. 'How high are we?' he called.

I looked over the edge. We were less than one manheight above the water. Already the propellers were slashing across the tops of the swells, dipping in and out of them, churning them to froth. A foamy wake appeared behind us.

'Check to see that the boat rudder is straight, Lant!' Purple called. I wobbled to the back of the boat to where the rudder was mounted. It too was an aircloth-hardened frame. I straightened it out, and looped a rope around it to hold it so.

'How high are we?'

I looked again. We were still one manheight over the water. We had stopped sinking.

Purple loosed a little more gas from the bag and we sank, sank - oof! - smacked into the water, slid sickeningly downward, then up again, across the tops of the swells, up and down, up and down. Wilville and Orbur kept pedaling. Amazing! The airpushers kept churning the water behind us, and we moved steadily forward - the airpushers worked in water too! What a marvelous device they were!

Purple then unslung the hoses from the windbags, so that they hung down into the boat frame. Sixteen long nozzles -I looked up and thought of a milkbeast's belly.

Purple brought out a wooden frame which Pran the Carpenter had made for him. There was a slot in it to hold the battery. Two copper wires led out across separate arms. One of them ended in a clay funnel. To this Purple attached the first balloon nozzle. He hooked the whole affair over the boat rail and let the wires and funnel arm dip into the water. He made an adjustment on his battery. From the oxygen wire came the familiar furious bubbling. We could not see the bubbling on the other wire, it was inside the funnel. But we did see the gentle puffing of the balloon neck, and we knew that the gas was leaping upward through it.

Suddenly there was a yelp from Orbur, 'Hey! We're rising again!'

Sure enough, we were. The annoying up-and-down motion of the boat across the swells had stopped. We had swung back into the air. I could see our shadow slipping across the water beneath us. Only the propellers still skimmed through the surface, and then they too were free.

'Curse it,' said Purple. 'I never thought of that.'

There was a wind pushing us along. We watched glumly as our wake disappeared behind, lost in the swells.

'What do we do now?' I asked.

He switched off his battery. 'We wait.'

'But there's hardly enough gas in the balloons to lift us, Purple. We'll be hitting the water again in five minutes.'

'I know that, Lant. That's what I'm hoping for.'

He began looking around him. He laid aside the recharging framework and started rearranging the supplies in the bottom of the boat; checking and tying the aircloth covers to see that they were secure. 'Find me a pail,' he called.

There was one in the bow of the boat. We had been using it to hold wash water, but it was empty now. Shoogar ! brought it back to where we waited.

As soon as we were skimming through the tops of the swells again, Purple leaned far over the rail, the bucket trailing in his hands. He pulled it up, half full, and emptied it into the boat. Again he leaned over the edge.

When he had poured ten bucketsful into the boat we were again splashing through the waves. Another ten bucketsful and we were dipping into the troughs. Ten more and we were firmly in the water. Up and down. Up and down.

'We need ballast,' he explained. 'And there's nothing else to use.' He peered over the side and measured how low the boat was riding in the waves. He poured fifteen more bucketsful into the boat before he was satisfied. It was up to our knees at its deepest point.

He picked up his battery and funnel device again and started to lean over the side - 'Eh? What am I doing? I can just as easily use this water-' He sat down on a cloth- covered seat and placed the device in the water before him. It began bubbling and he beamed delightedly.

We were all delighted. On all sides splashed the restless ocean. If Purple's gas-making magic were to suddenly stop working, we would be trapped here, a tiny craft bobbing across an uncaring sea.

Whether Purple worried about this or not, I did not know. Apparently he had full confidence in the power of his battery and he worked steadily. Within seven hours, he had recharged all sixteen balloons. They hung taut, and full-bellied overhead. Several times we had added more water to the boat to offset their increased lifting power. There were more than a hundred bucketsful in the boat now.

At last though, Purple tied off the last windbag, and began disconnecting his battery wires. He tsked thoughtfully as he did so, 'H'm, we have used more power than I thought we would. We will have to be careful.'

He put the device aside and began gathering up the empty ballast bags. 'Fill these with water,' he instructed. 'We will use that as ballast instead of sand.'

While Shoogar and I did as he instructed, he began bailing the water out of the boat. After fifteen bucketsful had been poured out, the boat began rocking harder in response to the waves. A few more bucketsful and we were splashing through them, the swells smacking the bottom of the boat. Á few more and we were level again while the water skimmed harmlessly below.

'Are we off the water?' Purple called to Wilville.

Wilville nodded. 'By half a manlength easily.' He and Orbur were still on their bicycles, still hanging down on to the sea - they were pumping steadily, and keeping the airpushers spinning to maintain our heading in the proper direction.

Purple bailed one last bucket and straightened up. 'Do you want me to bail for a while?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'Uh, uh. There's no need for any more bailing, Lant.' He put the pail aside.

While I scratched my head in confusion, he splashed forward to the Cathawk's toolbox. He came back carrying a drill, and proceeded to make a small hole in the narrow deck slats.

It took only a few moments, and then he stood up proudly and wetly. Almost immediately Orbur called, 'We're on our way up again!'

Indeed we were. The ocean dropped away at an ever increasing pace. The water spilled out of the hole at a steady rate, and gradually there was less and less water in the boat. Like Purple's first windbag so many hands ago; we fell upward.

I leaned over the railing in excitement. 'Why, it works just like the sand ballast,' I said. 'When you throw it away, the boat rises.'

'Of course, you nit!' said Shoogar. 'That's part of the ballast spell.'

'It's the weight, Lant - it doesn't make any difference what your ballast is. It's the throwing away of weight that makes the boat rise.'

'Nice thinking,' commented Shoogar. The ballast goes automatically. No jerks, no bumps.'

'Thank you,' Purple beamed. It was the first compliment he had ever gotten from Shoogar.

He checked our course heading then - the wind was blowing almost directly north - so the boys could either rest of pedal in the same direction, as they chose. They chose to rest and stretched out on their outriggers. There had to be one son on each outrigger at all times, or no son on either otherwise the airboat slanted all askew.

Purple dried himself off as well as he could, then climbed into the rigging to tie up the airbag nozzles. They were still hanging down. By the time he had finished, all the water had drained out of the boat. He toddled back to where we waited and pounded a heavy bone plug into the hole.

Once more the sea glistened far below us. Indeed, it seemed we were higher than ever. When we dropped a sour melon over the side, it dwindled to a distant speck and vanished without a splash.

-----

WE were aloft for the rest of that day and most of the next, before we again had to dump ballast. Purple always waited until we had sunk below a certain level before he would throw any away. Otherwise, he said, we were just wasting it. 'The idea is to stay aloft as long as possible,' he explained.

We were standing in the front of the boat looking down at the glass-colored water. All was blue and red with the fairytale quality of double daylight. Above, massive cloudbanks covered half the sky, the multi-colored sunlights painting them in gaudy hues and stark relief. Purple eyed them with a worried frown. 'I hope the weather holds up,' he said.

The blue sun hesitated on the horizon, then winked out, leaving everything rose-colored. The silence of the upper air was perfect, but for the sssssss of the bicycles and the low chanting at the rear of the boat where Shoogar was trying to change the direction of the wind. It was northeast again, and the boys were pedaling west

'How much longer do you think the voyage will take?' I asked.

Purple shrugged, 'I estimate that we are covering fifteen miles an hour, maybe twenty - that is, in the direction we want to go. If we had a steady wind we could cover the whole fifteen hundred miles in three full days. Unfortunately, Lant, the winds over the ocean are most erratic. We have been journeying for three and a half days and still no land is in sight.'

'We were becalmed for a full day,' I pointed out. That did not help any either.'

True,' he admitted, 'but I had hoped-' He sighed and sank down onto a bench.

I sat down across from him. 'I don't see why you should be so impatient. Your test flight took at least this long.'

'Yes, but we didn't go that far. Then the wind was blowing west, and we were swept over the mountains. We spent the whole three days just coming back.'

'You were fighting the wind?'

'Oh no. It had died away by that time, but we needed to figure out how best to handle the boat in the air - and then we had to prove to Shoogar that his sails wouldn't work. It took a full day just to rig them, and then Shoogar would still not be convinced. He made us try over and over and over again. He kept insisting that the airpushers needed something to push against.

'All the time we had those damned sails up,' said Purple, 'We were powerless to fight the wind, so we were blown even farther away. Shoogar didn't want to let us bring them in, but we would have never gotten home otherwise. Once we got organized though, we made good time, and later on the wind gave us a push too.'

'You weren't over the island the whole time, were you?'

'Oh no. Just before we started pedaling for home we were getting very close to the mainland. There was a very excited crowd there on the beach, but we didn't try to approach.'

'It was well that you didn't - they might have stoned you or worse-' I started to tell him what Gortik had said about; the mainlanders, but a distant cough of Elcin interrupted.;

Purple started at the sound. His eyes went wide and he leapt to his feet. 'Thunder!' he yelped.

'What? What about it?'

'Thunder means lightning, Lant!' He was leaning forward, shading his eyes with one heavy hand. Frantically he searched the sky and the blood-colored clouds. He didn't see' what he was looking for and moved nervously backward to peer out across the side. He began climbing up into the rigging for a better view.

Abruptly there was another KKK-R-R-u-umpp, this time noticeably closer.

Purple yelped again. He didn't wait for a third ,cough, but swarmed up to the top of the rigging and began untying the windbag nozzles.

'What is it?' both Shoogar and I cried.

'Thunderstorm!' he screamed. 'Get up here and help me! Wilville, Orbur! You too!' My sons abandoned their posts immediately and began climbing inward.

'I don't understand,' I said confusedly, 'what is the danger?'

'Lightning!' shouted Orbur. He was already into the rigging.

'You mean lightning strikes airboats too?'

'Especially airboats - remember what happened to Purple's housetree? We have to land and drain all the hydrogen out of the airbags. The slightest spark and we'll all blow up!'

He didn't have to repeat himself. I followed Wilville up the ropes. Shoogar was right behind me. Purple had already untied three of the bags and was working on a fourth. The airboat lurched sickeningly. I could not tell if the sinking sensation I felt was me or it.

There was a flash of light and another crashing slam. It was directly above us. We were headed right into the storm. Purple was muttering wildly to himself, 'Damn the bloody - I should have thought about emergency deflations! Orbur, this is too slow and we will never get all the gas out of the balloons through the nozzles. Somebody is going to have to climb up to the top with a knife and cut holes to let the gas out! We'll patch them up later-'

'Not now,' I yelped. 'If you cut holes now, we'll fall!'

'No, not now - after we hit the water,' shouted Purple. 'We can't risk doing it in the air or the balloons might rip!' He untied another nozzle. Seven of them were waving free now, spewing their precious hydrogen unseen to the reddened thunder.

Another crash of light and sound limned us in stark relief - and sparked us all to move still faster. The black water below rushed up at sickening speed-

'Tie off the balloons,' shouted Purple. 'Slow our descent!'

Orbur swung precariously from a rear mast section, Wilville only a few yards away. A frantic Shoogar clung to the bird's nest platform. Purple and I were in the forward section of the rigging. All of us were grabbing furiously for the free swinging hoses-

The wind whistled and shrieked. I pulled at the aircloth hose and wrapped it around itself. I swung out on the rigging grabbing for another-

'Hold on!' screamed Purple. Wait-'

A precious moment of stillness while we fell through the angry sky. Still too fast, too fast - were we slowing at all?

Another crash of thunder - this one closest of them all. A second flash of whiteness-

Purple was a stark silhouette. He was grim-faced, but suddenly stern. He stared at the uprushing water with no sign of emotion. Had he miscalculated? Would we hit the water too hard?

The image of a splintering airboat filled my mind - why had I ever come on this god-cursed journey-?

'Ballast-' he shouted and disappeared from his post. For a moment I thought he had fallen, but with the next crash of thunder I saw him below, tugging at the ballast bags. Wilville was already there, just emptying one over the side-

'I'll help!' I hollered, but he yelled back, 'Stay where you are, Lant - it'll be safer - tie off the airbags! Don't release any more gas until I tell you to!'

He cast about frantically then, looking for things to throw overboard. His eye lit on a pile of cloth - 'What the-?'

Shoogar yelped from the rigging, Those are my sails!'

'Good!' And with that, he snatched them up and heaved them over the side. Shoogar began screaming curses, but they were lost in the loudest crash of all.

The spare windbags followed the sails, as did half our food and water. Wilville had emptied all the ballast bags by now and was helping Purple.

We were still falling. A sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach told me were about to die.

Purple called for me to unreel a windbag nozzle, but not to untie it. What was he planning? He grabbed it as it fell, and hooked it to his funnel. He had a ballast bag between his legs; he plunged the nozzle and battery device into the bag of water. I saw him turn the battery up to its maximum release of electrissy. Great gulps of gas roared up the hose -the windbag expanded terrifically.

Purple waved to Wilville. 'Get up in the rigging!' he bellowed. 'It'll be safer!'

I could see long streamers of foam below us. We were falling at little more than a fast gallop - the sea was a wall of blackness - I could see the individual waves-

Cra-a-ack

- the boat smacked down with a great splash that sent water in all directions. For a sickening moment all the ropes were slack - then they snapped taut again as the balloons leapt back. There was a yelp from behind me - Shoogar - I turned in time to see Orbur lose his grip and fall into the water, but he surfaced again almost immediately and began paddling for an outrigger.

Wilville was climbing down from the rigging then to see if Purple was all right, but the magician was screaming: 'The balloons! The balloons! We've got to finish deflating the balloons!'

'Then you'd better disconnect that!' pointed Wilville.

Purple looked, saw his battery and funnel device lying in a puddle of water at the bottom of the boat. The puddle boiled. Purple yelped and leapt for it.

The boat rocked as Orbur climbed into it, his fur plastered wetly to his body. He started up the rigging to join us, then stopped. He cocked his head oddly - 'Wait a minute!' he called. 'Don't deflate the balloons yet.'

'Huh?' Purple cried. 'What are you-' Then he stopped too. There was a distant cough of thunder. Behind us. Far behind us.

'The storm is over,' said Orbur. 'We're past it.'

'We fell through it,' muttered Shoogar. He began climbing down. The bird's nest, where he had been holding onto it, was bent out of shape.

-----

THE rolling sea lifted us up and dropped us down. Lifted us up and dropped us down.

The boat lay askew in the water. One of the outriggers had snapped halfway off and had to be retied before we dared to ascend again. Wilville and Orbur were working on it now.

The balloons - nearly empty now - dropped flaccidly above us. They had barely enough gas to hold themselves aloft. We had been sitting in the sea for half a day now. The red sun was seeping into the west, and the day was ever darkening. Purple sat glumly in the rear of the boat with his battery and his filling framework. Shoogar was half-heartedly bailing water. Apparently we had sprung a small leak somewhere.

I staggered aft, stumbling once. 'How bad is our situation, Purple?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'It's not good, I can tell you that. I used an awful lot of power in my attempt to pump up the balloons.'

'But you had to - you had no choice.'

'I shouldn't have panicked though. I was so afraid we were going to be struck by lightning that I let the gas out of the bags too fast, then I used up too much power trying to replace it. And I don't think I did that much good. All I did was make steam. I'm sure some oxygen got mixed up with the hydrogen.' He peered upward at the limp airbags. 'I'm afraid this may be the end of our journey, Lant.'

I looked around me. Fortunately, Shoogar and the sons had not heard. Or, if they had, they showed no sign. 'Are you out of power completely?'

'No, but I'm not sure there's enough to refill the balloons, Lant-'

'There's only one way to find out.'

Purple nodded. 'Yes, of course - we will have to try it. The only thing is, I have to save some power with which to call down my flying egg. I'm not sure I have enough to do both.' He scratched thoughtfully at his chin hair.

I thought hard. 'Why don't we use another ballast spell? Throw away some more weight?'

He started to shake his head to that, then - 'Wait! You're right, Lant. We can lighten this boat considerably. We can't be that far from land-' He stood up, began looking around for things to throw overboard.

He tugged at a bundle. 'What's this?'

The spare windbags. Orbur found them floating in the water.'

'Oh,' He started throwing them over again. 'I'm sorry, Lant,' he said to my shocked expression, 'But it's the same situation as when we were falling. It's either us or them. Now, what else - what's in here?'

'Quaff skins, water skins, sour melons, sweet melons, smoked meats - Purple, what are you doing?'

'Throwing it overboard, Lant. We packed enough food for three or four weeks. We don't need that much. I'm keeping only enough for two more days.' He began dropping armloads of it over the side.

'Not that!' I protested, but he ignored me - the Quaff went too.

We stumbled forward, looking for other things to throw out. The sea rolled around us, rocking the boat and carrying away our hard-won treasures. Our Quaff.

The blankets followed the food, all but three - which Purple agreed might be necessary. He picked up a twisting tool, 'Orbur, are you through with this?' Orbur nodded.

'Good,' said Purple. It splashed over the side. He moved forward again. 'What's this junk-'

'Not that!' yelped Shoogar. 'That's my spellcasting equipment!'

'For God's sake, Shoogar - what's more important, your life or your spells?'

'Without my spells I wouldn't have a life,' snapped Shoogar.

For a moment I wondered if maybe Purple wasn't considering throwing Shoogar over too. But instead he thrust his spell kit back at him. 'Here, this must be as important to you as my battery is to me. If something this light is enough to make a difference - well, if we're that far gone it won't matter one way or another. Keep it.' Shoogar took his kit and examined it carefully.

Purple stumbled forward and began to empty out the small cabin framework there.

Wilville climbed back into the boat then. 'The outrigger is fixed,' he announced.

'Good,' said Purple, dumping an armload of things. He wobbled back to us and began throwing the tools overboard. That done, he straightened and said, 'I guess we're ready to ascend now. Orbur, will you pull down the first of the windbag nozzles while I ready the gasmaker?'

Orbur nodded and started to climb the rigging - that is, he tried to - what happened was that he pulled the balloon down to where the rest of us could reach it. 'Umph,' said Purple, 'that is limp, isn't it?'

He attached the hose to the funnel and battery and lowered it into the water. 'I am going to fill these very carefully,' he said to no one in particular and switched on his battery.

While he worked the rest of us began to fill the ballast bags. 'You won't need those,' said Purple when he saw what we were doing. 'We're going to have to make it without ballast,'

'Yes, but we're going to need some in the boat while you fill the balloons,' I said.

'Yes, of course - you're right, I forgot.' He turned back to his gas making.

After two balloons had been filled, Wilville and Orbur climbed out onto the outriggers and began pedaling. The boat rode up and down the ocean swells. Five balloons later, it stopped riding the waves. Instead, the water just slapped at the bottom.

Shoogar and I exchanged a glance. 'We need more water in the boat,' he said and reached for the bucket. I helped him for a bit, then something occurred to me.

'Why are we doing it the hard way?' I asked. 'Just pull the plug and let the water flow in.' As I spoke I was already tugging.

There was a yelp from the stern. 'No!' shouted Purple, but it was too late. Water spurted up and struck me in the face.

'Stop it, stop it!' Purple cried. 'Stop it!'

'Why?'

'Just do it! Don't ask why! Just do it!' He dropped his gasmaker and came splashing back, slipped in the water and fell. 'Stop it Lant!'

'But - but-' The water was rapidly filling the boat and I began to understand. 'I can't! I let go of the plug when the water hit me!' And then we were all down on our hands and knees feeling around for it under the rising water. It was cold and it surged into the boat eagerly - a spouting fountain marked the spot where the hole was.

We scrambled around frantically in that cold wetness and then suddenly I had it - something small and round and hard. The plug! I tried to jam it back into the hole, but the water was up to my thighs already - I went down on my knees, but then I had to stretch my neck to hold my head above the water, and after a few seconds even that didn't work. Shivering, I took a deep breath and went under. I pressed hard on the plug, but I couldn't get the leverage, and the water continued to pour in too fast.

There was another pair of hands on top of mine - Shoogar's - he was trying to help. But it wasn't working - Even the two of us couldn't press hard enough. I surfaced for air. Wilville and Orbur were shouting at me from their outriggers. They were up to their necks in water already - and still pedalling furiously. Purple was bailing frantically with the bucket.

 

And then the water stopped rising

.

It was up to our chests, and waves were sloshing over the sides of the boat. We had stopped sinking. The windbags held the boat just a few hand's-breadths from total immersion. We stood there up to our chests in cold sea water and glared at each other. I said, 'Well, don't just stand there treading water, Purple! Do something!'

He glared at me. Shoogar glared at me. Wilville and Orbur glared at me.

The bags of wind hung over us, the restless sea tossed around us. The red sun began to seep behind the horizon. We had perhaps an hour and a half of daylight left-

Well, since nobody else was going to do anything-

I trod water to the center of the boat and ducked under. I came up with a ballast bag, pulled it to the rim - I could not have lifted it without going under - opened the mouth and poured the ballast over the side. I ducked, found another bag and emptied it.

Purple began to laugh.

Shoogar had gotten the idea and was helping me empty the bags of water overboard. It wasn't enough. The windbags tugged upward on the boat frame, but they couldn't lift it. They could only keep it from sinking into the uneasy swells. Shoogar searched around for some more ballast bags, ducking under the feeling around with his hands. The dumping of ballast did not help noticeably. The rim of the boat frame continued to show only as an outline in the water.

Purple had been clinging to the rigging and chortling helplessly while we worked. It seemed a singularly rude act. Now he found his voice and said, 'Stop. Please stop. You're only emptying water out of water.'

'But it's ballast,' said Shoogar.

'But it's water too - it just replaces itself as fast as you bail it.' He swam over to us. 'Put the plug in first then bail.'

I looked at the plug in my hand and shrugged. Why not? - I ducked into the water and felt around for the hole. There was no pressure to fight this time, and the plug slipped in easily. I surfaced with a gasp.

'Is it in?' asked Purple. I nodded. He dove under to check it himself. He came up beside me. 'All right, it's firm enough.' He gave Shoogar and me a look. 'You two start bailing while I finish refilling the balloons. Wilville, Orbur, keep pedaling.'

'We have to,' they called back, 'Otherwise we'll sink.'

Grumbling, Purple splashed aft. Shoogar and I grabbed buckets and set to work. We bailed fast and furiously. By the time Purple had two more balloons refilled, we had the water level down to our thighs. 'You know,' I mused, 'this might be a good way to keep boats from sinking - hang them from windbags.'

Purple only glared at me.

I went back to my bailing.

The red sun seeped down behind the horizon, leaving only a festering glow across the western edge of the world. We worked in shivering darkness. The water splashed coldly about our knees.

After a while I became aware that we were rocking more noticeably. 'Purple,' I called, 'we're riding higher m the water.'

He looked up from his battery device, peered over the edge. 'So we are.' He tied off the neck of the balloon - the tenth to be filled and slogged forward to where we stood. 'One more balloon and we should be out of the water altogether.'

'How is your battery holding up?'

'Better than I had hoped-' He tugged at the rigging, pulled down another nozzle. '-it's getting awfully cold, isn't it, Lant? Why don't you break out the blankets?'

'You threw them overboard,' I said. 'All except for three - and those are soaking wet.'

'Everything is soaking wet,' grumbled Shoogar.

'Oh,' said Purple. He sloshed aft for his battery. There was nothing more to say.

Shoogar and I paused in our bailing to hang the sodden blankets across the rigging, hoping to dry them out. I imagined that tiny icicles were forming on the ends of my body fur.

'Our food supplies are a mess too,' said Shoogar, sniffing at a package. 'The hardbread isn't.' He tossed it soggily over the side.

'You should have said a ballast blessing over it,' I said, but it was a cheerless joke.

He didn't appreciate it anyway - this was no time for joking. Purple was just filling the twelfth balloon, and we were miserable and cold.

'Shoogar,' I said.

He looked at me from where he was huddling in his damp robe. 'What?'

'Feel! We're not rocking anymore! We're out of the water!'

'Huh?' He turned to the railing and looked. I joined him,

In the last fading glow of red sunset, we could just make out the black water skimming effortlessly below.

There was no doubting it - and every moment we rose higher and higher. The twelfth balloon was bulging taut overhead. 'Purple,' I called, 'we're in the air!'

'I know,' he called back. 'Wilville! Orbur!' he shouted to the outriggers. 'How high are we?'

'At least a manheight. The airpushers are just out of the : waves-'

Purple unclipped his flashlight from his belt and aimed it at the balloons above. Only four still hung limp, the rest were swollen with the familiar and friendly bulge of hydrogen gas. He stepped to the side of the boat and aimed the light over the side. The water gleamed five manheights below.

'I will pull the plug,' I said. 'It must be safe to drain the rest of this water now.' I splashed toward it; the water was I still knee-high in the boat.

'No!' shouted Purple and Shoogar together. Wilville and Orbur too. 'Don't touch that plug.'

'Huh?' I stopped, my hand on the bone cylinder.

'Don't do it, Lant! Don't touch the plug unless I tell you to!'

'But we're so high above the water. Surely there's no danger now.'

'I still have four balloons to refill. Where will I get the water I need if you will pull the plug?'

'Oh,' I said. I let go of it quickly.

'Wait a minute,' Shoogar said suddenly, 'You can't use that water for your hydrogen gas. That's ballast water. It makes us go down, not up.'

'Shoogar, it's water. Just water,' Purple said patiently.

'But it's symbological nonsense to think that the same water can make us go in two directions!' And then Shoogar could only make gulping sounds. For Purple had casually dipped up a double handful of water from the bottom of the boat, and was drinking it. Drinking the ballast!

Shoogar choked m impotent rage; he tottered off.

'Why don't you go sit down too?' Purple suggested to me. 'Let me worry about the boat.'

'All right,' I shrugged and sat down on a bench. it was cold and wet like everything else on the Cathawk. From the stern came the sounds of damp rigging being pulled and stretched. Purple was just starting to fill another windbag.

We sailed on through the dark, shivering and miserable. Wilville and Orbur pumped and chanted. Purple filled the balloons. Shoogar and I froze.

A wind came up then and started pushing us north. Any Other time we might have appreciated it. In this sodden darkness though, it only set our teeth to chattering. Wilville and Orbur gave up on their pedaling then - it was too cold to continue. They huddled at the wet bottom of the boat with the rest of us. After a while even Purple joined us. Being wrapped with cold soaking blankets was still better than being exposed to the biting upper air.

Or should have been. My fingers were so numb, I could not even pull the icy cloth tighter about myself.

Sleep was impossible. I muttered constantly. 'There's no such thing as warm, Lant. It's all your imagination. you'll never be warm again. You'd better get used to freezing, Lant-'

When Ouells - bright blue and tiny - snapped up over the eastern horizon an hour later, we were still damp with chill, and there was a thin layer of frost on everything in the boat.

-----

THE morning was crisp, but rapidly warming.

The sea was a plate of restless blue far below. We seemed higher than we'd ever been in the airship. The edge of the world was almost curved.

Purple said that was an optical illusion. We were much too low to see any real curvature. Gibberish again.

We stretched the blankets across the rigging to dry them in the sun. Our togas as well. Even Purple shed his impact suit and stretched out against the bright morning.

The wind continued to blow steadily north, and Wilville and Orbur were resting on their outrigger cots.

I splashed around in the front of the boat, looking for any foodstuffs that either Purple or the water had missed. I found a half of a sour melon and glumly split it with Shoo-gar. None of the rest wanted any.

We still had water in the airboat, up to our knees, but Purple refused to let us dump it. 'Look how high we are already,' he said. 'There's no point to throwing this water away. Later, when the windbags leak a little more, then we'll need it. Besides, I may want to make some more hydrogen first.'

'Do you have enough electrissy?'

He smiled sheeplishly. 'I - uh, I sort of miscalculated when I filled windbags. I didn't realize they still had as much hydrogen in them as they did. I have enough power left to fill three airbags. Or to fill four if I don't want to call my flying egg down.' He looked about him. 'That should be enough. We should have at least four days of flying time left before the balloons are too weak again and I'm out of power. If we can't make it by then, we'll never make it.'

We sailed on hungrily; and steadily, steadily north.

We fought crosswinds for a while, but always the general direction of our motion was north.

We had lost our course line of hills under the water sometime during the thunderstorm. That we had been unable to find it again didn't worry Purple as much as it might have. He still had measuring devices, and he charted our course by them.

When I asked him about it, he shrugged it off, 'Well, it seemed like a good idea, Lant - but I think those hills of yours are too deeply submerged now to be seen. Maybe we'll be lucky though, and see them again when we get over shallower water.'

The next day, he recharged the windbags, leaving himself only enough power to fill two bags completely until full, or one windbag and a call to his flying egg.

Toward evening we finally pulled the plug and drained away the knee-high water which had been our companion for the last two days. 'I had thought his trip was going to be over water,' Shoogar grumbled, 'not through it.'

Purple grinned as he watched the water spill away. We were too high to see if we were rising, but the feel of the craft told us that we were. He said, 'But it was obvious, Shoogar, we should have thought of it sooner - always keep a quantity of water in the boat. It helps us to balance the craft so that it doesn't rock so much when we move. It's there for re-charging the airbags - we never have to go down to the water any more. And we can use it as ballast too.'

'I tell you that that's nonsense!' Shoogar exploded. 'Ballast, drinking water, gas-making water, wash water - What kind of a spell is it when you arbitrarily change the name of the object to suit your needs?'

And he stamped off to the bow to sulk, his sandals making wet squishy sounds as he went.

He was still there when darkness came, peering forward at the sky and chanting a moon-bringer spell.

-----

IT was Orbur who spotted our course line again. Far off to the left, a lighter-colored patch of sea could be seen.

We were lower now, despite the dumping of six bags of water. Purple said it was due to the airbags leaking faster than before. They were stretching, he said, and the seams weren't as strong as he had hoped. He ordered the boys to come about and head the boat in a course that would eventually bring us over the spine of hills again.

I chewed thoughtfully on a lump of moldy hardbread. That the hills were visible under the water again meant that we were nearing shallower seas. Soon we might be over land, and our journey would be over-

The windbags above were taut, but rippling slightly in the wind. Soon the ripplings would increase some more, folds of cloth would hang loose, the bags would droop heavily - and all the while we would descend lower and lower.

Purple began emptying the last of the ballast bags - all except two which we would save for drinking water. Shoogar moaned, when he said that. The boat rose some as he dumped the ballast, but not by any significant amount. 'Well, that's it,' he said. 'We make it on the gas we've got left, or not at all.'

Wilville and Orbur pumped silently and steadily. They no longer chanted happily while they worked. Rather, they seemed almost in a trance, trying to endure from one moment to the next. They had both developed sores and blisters on their hands and buttocks. Purple had sprayed them each with a salve, but then they had gone back out onto the out-riggers, and I suspected that the salve would not do much good.

We took up our position over the spine of hills and pumped steadily north. I wobbled to the front of the boat and joined Shoogar. Although the red sun was still bright in the west, he wanted to miss not a moment of the impending darkness. 'The moons,' he chortled happily, 'the moons should be visible soon.'

I ignored him. I was not so much concerned with what was above as with what was ahead. Was that a line of narrow darkness on the forward horizon? It was too dark to tell.

I called it to Purple's attention. He shouldered roughly past Shoogar and peered eagerly forward. 'Umph,' he said, 'I can't see.'

'Use your flashlight,' I suggested.

'No, Lant, it hasn't enough power to reach that far.'

'Attach it to your big battery. That still has some power left in it.'

He smiled. 'I could do that, but it hasn't got enough power left in it to turn the flashlight up that bright. Besides, blue dawn will be here in slightly more than an hour. If it is land, we'll see it then.'

The red sun faded away then, and we throbbed impatiently through the darkness, only the steady sssssss of the bicycles reminding us that we were moving. Purple paced restlessly in the back of the boat, while Shoogar chanted steadily in the bow.

I tried to sleep, but couldn't.

Morning snapped up over the east and as one, Purple and I rushed forward. Wilville was already crying, 'Land! I can see it! Land! We've made it! We've made it!'

'Keep pedaling,' Purple shouted. 'Keep pedaling!'

We were lower now - much lower - the airbags were not holding their hydrogen as long as they used to, and we were only a few manheights above the water.

It mattered not. Far ahead of us we could see the craggy shore of the North, and behind it, jagged hills rising toward a familiar mountain range - The Teeth Of Despair.

'Oh, pump, Wilville, pump!' cried Purple. 'Pump, Orbur, pump!' He peered so far forward out of the boat, I thought he was ready to leap out and swim for land. 'Just a little bit farther!'

The sea below us was mottled and ugly. We could see jagged reefs below us - and here and there a whirlpool. All slid past, but we were sinking lower and lower.

Purple noticed it too. 'What the-' He moved back inside the boat and began tugging experimentally at the rigging.

'One of the bags must have a leak-' He started climbing upward. 'Is it this one?' He pulled at a rope. 'No. Maybe it s that one. Yes, the seam there - see it?'

I looked. Just above him, one of the airbags had a narrow slit of darkness in its belly. Purple took a step higher in the rigging-

And then it happened.

The seam ripped wide open - a great stretching and tearing sound. The bag folded open, and the boat gave a sudden lurch as it collapsed. Huge lengths of aircloth began falling across the rigging. Wilville and Orbur screamed.

'Throw some ballast! Throw some ballast!' cried Shoogar.

He ran frantically about the boat, but we only had two ballast bags. He pulled at them furiously.

'No!' shouted Purple. 'That won't do any good. There's not enough!' He half climbed, half fell from the rigging.

'Lant, get my airmaker!'

'Where is it?'

'In the back of the boat, I think! Hurry!'

We were losing altitude fast. And I could see why he wanted me to hurry. A swirling whirlpool lay below us, hungry and sucking. It was huge-

Purple already had a windbag nozzle untied and waiting above an open sack of water. He grabbed the airmaker and shoved its funnel into the airhose and into the water, both in one motion. He snapped his battery on. The windbag swelled frantically, strove to rise. The airboat gave a lurch.

Purple flung away the empty water bag. 'Give me the other.' Shoogar shoved it into position before the words were out of his mouth, and again Purple plunged his wires and funnel into it. Again the windbag puffed with a mixture that was half hydrogen, half throw-away gas.

We could hear the roar of the whirlpool now - and little else. We were less than two manheights above the water. Wilville and Orbur were frantically pulling their airpushers up so they would not get caught in the maelstrom below.

But we had stopped our descent!

The great whirling walls of water slipped thunderously past us - crashing and black. We could feel the wet mist I across our faces. Foam sprayed the beat.

'The mouth of Teev,' whispered Shoogar. 'It appears at the end of every summer. As the waters recede, it sucks up everything within its reach, men, boats, trees, rocks-'

'But summer isn't over yet,' said Purple. His face was I white, and the bones of his knuckles showed where he gripped the railing.

'No,' said Shoogar, 'but it's starting to wane. By summer's end the Mouth will be much bigger than this. Its roar will be audible for miles.'

Purple peered nervously backward. The dark thundering water was slipping steadily behind us. Wilville and Orbur lay clenched across their outriggers.

'I never thought I'd live to see it that close,' Shoogar said weakly.

Purple grunted thoughtfully. He was looking at his airmaker.

'What's the matter?' I asked.

'My battery. I think it's dead.'

'What? No! Again?'

'I think so.' He disconnected the battery and shook it experimentally. 'Look, the dial doesn't even light up. We used up all the power we had.'

'We needed it. We'd be in the Mouth of Teev if we hadn't made more gas.'

'We could have swum for it. Or cut the boat loose and hung onto the ropes! Or - anything -' He put his face in his hands and made sounds of pain. Then suddenly he stood up, picked up the battery and - for an endless moment I thought he was going to fling it overboard and perhaps follow it.

Instead he called briskly, Wilville! Orbur! Back on the bicycles. We're so close to land, you don't want to quit now!'

I could see that he was only acting. He didn't want the others to see how deeply he felt his loss. He pretended to busy himself checking the rigging, but several times I caught him staring off into the sky with a faraway look.

The boys unslung the windmakers again and Shoogar began to chant with them - the I Think Icon, a fast chant, strong and purposeful.

The shore line loomed ever nearer - the surf was white and foaming; Shoogar steadily increased the pace of the chant. Even so, we kept sinking lower and lower toward the water - not as fast as before, but it was apparent that the airbags were no longer as tight as they had been.

The water slipped past us, the windmakers dipping through the higher waves; then cutting through the swells themselves, becoming visible only in the troughs between the waves; and at last, no longer visible at all. The outriggers hung low along the sides of the boat, and pushed us through the surf. The balloons hung in silent stillness overhead, and the sea splashed below. An occasional spray of wet foam came through the rigging.

Shoogar interrupted his chanting to call, 'Lant, look! Do you recognize where we are heading? Come look!'

I climbed forward. Ahead lay a bleak and forbidding landscape of jagged black and brown. It was streaked with gray and purple, and ominously stained whites. All was pitted and scarred. Here and there a flash of red testified to a scorch-blossom's attempt to take root, but little more was visible. Except - was that the fire-blackened shell of a wild housetree? It looked like a gaunt hand frozen in an anguished skyward grasp.

'Lant! It is the Cove of Mysteries - or what's left of it. We are not far from the old village, just a few miles south of it.'

Purple came up behind me, a clicking device in his hands. I had noticed it on his belt before, but he had never explained its use. Now he tapped it experimentally and frowned. At last he smiled, 'The level of - ' He used a demon word here, 'is not as high as I thought it would be, not much higher than the normal background level. Certainly not dangerous, anyway. It will be safe to walk in this area.'

The boat was splashing through the waves now, and Purple directed the boys to head for a place where the ground sloped gently into the water. We could see one not too far ahead, and the boys shifted direction to make for it.

Purple peered ahead. 'Lant, how far are we from Critic's Tooth?'

'Well, it used to be over there, Purple,' I pointed. A few cracked, half-melted slabs of rock marked a conspicuous gap in the mountains to the north.

He misunderstood. 'That peak is Critic's Tooth?'

'No, that's Viper's Bite - one of the lesser foothills before Critic's Tooth. Critic's Tooth is gone.'

'Oh.'

The whole range of jagged mountains is called the Teeth of Despair. Critic's Tooth was one of the sharpest peaks. The region is ruled by the mad demon, Peers, who gnashes and gnarls mightily. He attacks natives and strangers alike. We should approach no closer, lest he blame us for the damage to his Teeth.'

Purple was looking at his ticking thing again, waving it and pointing it. 'A good idea.'

We bounced through the surf. There was a gentle bump as the nose of the boat slid up onto the sand. We had reached the northern shore.

'The Cathawk has landed!' shouted Wilville. The Cathawk has landed!'

-----

AS one person we jumped for shore, Shoogar and Purple and I scrambling over each other.

At last we stood on solid ground again. The land was desolate, mostly naked rock, blood-colored in the westering light of Ouells and the overhead glow of Virn, but it was solid. No more standing in air, no more standing in water. No more standing in both at the same time.

If ever I returned safely home, I swore, I would never again risk my life in so foolhardy a venture. The skies were not friendly.

Wilville and Orbur had slung up the airpushers and pulled the Cathawk high on the shore, out of reach of the lapping waves. Immediately they began filling the ballast bags, and the interior of the boat as well, with a low level of water. They began checking the rigging, the bicycle frames, and even the watertightness of the boatframe and the balloons. They acted as if they expected the Cathawk to fly again. How, I could not imagine. The gasbags were all limp from leakage, and I did not trust the seams on several of them. They still extended upward from their ropes, but none were very determined about it.

How they hoped to refill the windbags, I did not know.

Shoogar was walking around and chuckling to himself. 'I won't have to acquaint myself with the local spells or the local gods at all. I can start as soon as I check the moons...' and he wandered off toward a distant blackened hill, carrying his spell kit.

A strange black crust covered everything. It shattered when one stepped on it and left miniscule shards, or stinging dust which went up in wisps before the surly wind. Curious, I crunched across the ground toward the hill where Purple stood. He was attaching his big battery to another of his endless spell devices.

He looked both sheepish and defiant as I came up. 'Well, I have to try it, don't I ?'

'But you said it was dead.'

'Perhaps I've come to believe in magic,' said Purple. 'Nothing else seems to work.' And he finished attaching the wires to the disc-shaped thing from his belt.

He twisted a knob, but nothing happened.

'This yellow eye should light up to show it's working,' Purple explained, smiling foolishly. He twisted the knob again, harder this time, but the yellow light still did not appear.

'Magic doesn't work either,' he said. He sighed.

I knew just how he felt then. I longed to be going home myself.

How strange! - that I should consider an area that I had lived in for only a short time as my home; while this bleak map, the blasted remains of the village where I had spent most of my life, was no longer home but a strange and alien land. 'Home' was a new land and a different life across the sea.

For that one terrible moment Purple and I were alike. Two strangers, marooned on a bleak and blackened shore, each longing for his home, his wives, and his Quaff.

'All I needed was one surge of power,' said Purple. 'Shoogar was right. You can't mix symbols.'

He picked up his useless devices and trudged slowly down the hill. The ground crunched beneath his feet.

-----

THERE was nothing to eat. I lay therein the darkness and listened to the roar of the surf and the rumble of my stomach. Man was not meant to live without bread alone. I was dizzy with hunger. My thoughts didn't even make sense any more.

Purple had spent the red day wandering dully up and down this landscape of despair. I and my sons waited. There was little else we could do. Shoogar was the only one with a sense of purpose. He had positioned himself patiently at the top of a nearby slope to wait for the moons. He chanted a song of triumph.

Purple muttered incessantly. 'When the seas recede, we could walk back. Lant's people did it before. We can do it again. Yes, we could walk back. The generators are still there, the looms are still there. I could recharge my battery. We could make another flying machine. Yes, of course. And this time, we would know better. I would have my battery fully charged. Fully charged. We wouldn't have to make the same mistakes again. That's it, we left before we were fully ready. We weren't tested or experienced enough. But we came so close, so close. Next time, we'll do it better and we II succeed. Next time, next time. Next time-'

He crunched through the dark, mumbling insanely. He would pick up rocks and examine them, then throw them down again and stumble on.

I stared up into the dark at the twinkling moons. There would be no next time. I was sure of that. Shoogar wasn't going to let there be a next time. From his hill there was only silence now.

I turned over on my blanket and raised up on my elbows. 'Purple,' I called, 'you should try to rest'

'I can't, Lant,' he called back. There was a skidding sound and a thump. 'Ow-'

'What's the matter?' I leapt to my feet, thinking Shoogar had struck in the dark.

But no - Purple's flashlight went on revealing that he had tripped over a boulder. He lay there in his impact suit, grinning foolishly. ,. , , ,

I walked over and helped him up. The night was stale and still; the surf was a distant rumble. We stood in the dark, Purple's light the only thing in existence, casting an eerie white aura into the chaotic blackness.

Purple switched it off. 'I guess I'd better save my power,' he said - and stopped.

There was deathly silence. Not even insects still lived in this accursed land. 'Save my power,' Purple repeated quietly. His hands clamped on my shoulders and he screamed, 'Power! In my flashlight! In my flashlight, Lant!'

'Let go, curse it!' He was as strong as an old ram.

'Power, Lant! Power!'

'Don't get your hopes up, Purple. Wait until you get a response from your mother nest.'

He sobered instantly. 'Yes, you're right, Lant' There was a scraping sound in the dark as he removed the flashlight's small battery, another sound as he pulled the calling device from his belt, an incomprehensible curse as he tried to attach the wires in the dark. He worked eagerly, impatiently - I could not blame him.

At last he said, 'I'm ready.' There was a click as he switched on the device. A dial on its face gave off a soft glow. Before he even pressed the call button, he peered at this dial. 'There is power enough, Lant. More than enough. I can call my mother nest ten times, maybe more, with the power in this battery.'

'Is it enough to recharge the windbags too?' I asked hopefully.

His face was a dark blur. 'No, not that much. That requires vast amounts of power, Lant. It needs a heavy-duty battery like my other one - but don't worry. When my mother egg gets here, I'll see that you and your sons get safely home.

'Home,' he repeated. 'I'm going home. No more double shadows. No more furry women. No more black plants-'

'Green, Purple. Plants are green.'

'Green is a bright color where I come from. No more odd food and foul drink. No more scratchy clothing. No more medicine shows for yokels.' He chanted this litany in man's tongue and demon's tongue. It was a homegoing spell and he spoke it intensely. 'I'll have books, music, normal weight-'

'You intend to diet?'

He laughed at that and kept laughing from sheer joy. 'I'm going home!' he bellowed into the night.

'Why not try your calling device?' I was getting impatient.

He said, '¾m afraid to.';

'Oh.',

He turned the knob. A yellow eye opened brilliantly.

'Hah!' Purple shouted. 'And the red eye means that the mother nest has answered.'

'What red eye?'

Purple twiddled the knob impatiently. 'Come on,' he whispered. 'Come on.'

Nothing happened.

He shook the device. 'Come on, damn you! I want to go home!'

The yellow eye burned steadily. There was no red response light.

'We're far enough north,' said Purple. 'Close enough to the equator. The seeing should be good; the curve of the planet isn't in the way. What could be wrong? It can't be sending the wrong frequency,' he mumbled. If he was making magic, it wasn't working.

'Perhaps it's your battery.' I suggested.

'It's not my battery. Why doesn't it answer? Why doesn't it answer?' He jumped to his feet and went raging off into the dark. After a moment, I followed him.

I found him sitting in ashes and despair. He had his device on the ground in front of him and was banging on it with a rock.

He hadn't damaged it though - only pounded it deeper into the soft dead earth.

'Purple, stop,' I said softly. 'Stop.'

'Why should I?' he said bitterly. 'We've come all this way for nothing. All of your devices have worked, Lant. None of mine have. Your aircloth got us here, your generators got us here, your airpushers got us here - but my calling device doesn't work. So why did we bother to come at all. The only one who's going to get any benefit out of this will be Shoogar.'

'Huh?' Did he know about the duel ? Had he realized?

'Yes, Shoogar,' he answered my questioning look. 'He needed to know about the moons. He had to come north.

The rest of us might as well have stayed home.' He started pounding again.

'Perhaps we have not come far enough north,' I suggested.

He made a sound that suggested he thought me a fool.

I was grabbing for ideas now, anything to restore his spirit. 'Or perhaps there is still a planet in the way.' Whatever that meant. He had used the word before.

For a moment, there was silence. 'What did you say?-'

I opened my mouth to repeat it.

'Never mind. I heard it the first time.' There was a sound of digging in the dirt. A scraping and a crunching. 'Damn me. I'm so stupid sometimes-'

'What are you talking about?'

He stood up, a blur in the darkness. He held his device in his hands. 'Lant, you are a genius sometimes. And all this time I thought you didn't understand a thing I was talking about but were only being polite and pretending that you did. Of course there's a planet in the way,' he stamped his foot. 'This one.'

'H'm,' I said, pretending to understand. Who was I to shatter his illusion?

'Don't you see? My egg hasn't risen yet. Like the suns, it's probably on the other side of the world. I will have to wait until it is in sight, before I try calling it again. That's probably why it didn't work before.'

When magic doesn't work, a good magician usually has an explanation ready. Purple was one of the best. I wondered if he understood his own explanation. I asked, 'How long will it take before you can call it down?'

'A couple of hours should be all I need. I'll try calling it every fifteen minutes. Its orbit is only two and a half hours. I couldn't possibly miss it, no matter how low on the horizon it is.'

I left him mumbling happily to himself, explaining things to no one in particular.

-----

BLUE dawn snapped up over the eastern rim, revealing a world even bleaker and drearier than before - if such was possible.

Aching with hunger I stumbled up a black hill to find Shoogar tracing a gigantic pattern in the greasy dust. He was using a brilliant white powder and mixing it with various colored potions as he trickled it into graceful curves. Every so often he stopped to consult a parchment in his hand.

I recognized the skin, with its circles and ellipses looping around a central dot - then I recognized the larger pattern. 'Shoogar! What are you doing?'

'What does it look like I'm doing? I'm casting a spell!'

'And your oath of fealty?'

'You know perfectly well that I swore by the local gods. Different territories imply different gods and different oaths. Now we're on my home territory. Here, I painted the runes of the duel against Purple. Here, that duel is still in progress!'

'But so much has changed-' I stopped, for he was right. 'And you stole his map of the moonpaths.'

'No. He gave it to me, the fool. I'll use his own magic against him. And his own name - his real name! Of course, he wasn't worried before. He knew I couldn't hurt him because his speakerspell hadn't told his true name. But this time-'

'Maybe he was lying,' I said quickly.

Shoogar gave me a contemptuous look. 'Lant,' he explained patiently, 'the act of saying "my real name is," is a consecration spell. Even if he was lying when he said it, the act of saying it made it as good as his real name. And it can be used against him! If this were not so, a magician would have no power at all. People would change names at will to avoid local spells.'

'But why the moonpaths?' I said. Then it dawned on me. 'No - you can't!'

'I can - and I will. I'm going to drop a moon on his head.'

I felt a strong urge to laugh. It was insane. Wildly, incredibly insane.

And he meant every word of it.

'Shoogar,' I said. 'A moon did fall once. Do you know what the results were?'

'I have seen the Circle Sea.'

'Circle Sea

was once a rich farming area. Now the sea rolls in a circular depression of blasted stone, where nothing grows at all.'

Shoogar shrugged unconcernedly. 'This place is already accursed, Lant. What harm can a falling moon do here?'

'It can kill us!' I almost shouted.

'I'll pick one of the little ones-'

'Even a little one can kill us - they say that the Circle Sea was a ring of molten rock for many years, before the sea stopped boiling and moved in to cover it.'

'Probably, they exaggerate.'

'But-'

'Lant,' he said, 'I can do no less. Consider: Purple has insulted the Gods themselves. He has claimed repeatedly that they do not exist at all - and he has had the incredible effrontery to build a flying machine that proves it! In his violations of reason, such as his games with the ballast concept, he mocks the laws that even the gods obey.'

Shoogar paced furiously as he spoke, red-eyed and wild. 'He has insulted custom, Lant. He has given names to women and taught them the trades of men! He has interrupted housetree consecrations, and turned housetrees into prickly plants. He has reduced our village life to chaos. Some of our traditional trades no longer exist, while others, like coppersmithery, have swollen monstrously in importance.'

He stopped pacing and looked at me. 'He has introduced new concepts to us, Lant. He has taught us evil things that lessen the value of life and increase the importance of things!

'But most of all,' he said. 'He has insulted me. He would not teach me to fly, until he needed to fly himself; and he still has not taught me the spells that make electrissy. We depend on his charity for his lightning boxes and airmakers! He has undermined my authority with his spurious cures, so that they trade my spells for his at ten to one!'

'I was bound to him by an oath of servitude, but he never asked for my help in anything. Never, not once. He even threw my sails overboard!'

'No little death spell would retrieve my honor,' Shoogar screamed. 'I will bring a moon down upon his head! This one last time I must show my might, before he escapes me forever!'

'It won't help you,' I said feebly.

'You don't have to, Lant. I'm sure it was your help last time that yn gvied me up.'

'How long will this take?' ;

'Not long. I will finish this soon and then I will chant. I will chant until the red sun is high in the west. Then we will move off and wait.'

'I would rather you do something about finding us some food,' I grumbled.

'Forget your stomach for once, Lant. Before the blue sun rises again, Purple will be destroyed.'

-----

PURPLE tried his calling thing three more times. On the third try the red light flashed. It began winking steadily.

Purple screamed with delight and threw the device joyously into the air. He capered about wildly, singing and dancing. 'I'm going home, I'm going home - I'm going home.'

He flung himself on the ground and rolled and kicked. -He jumped up with a holler and ran furiously in all directions. Back and forth, in a great circle about me, he pranced and yelled.

At last - it seemed like days - he tired and came gasping up to me. 'Lant, I can hardly believe it. It has been so long,' he panted. 'But it's true. It's happening. My mother egg has heard.'

I glanced nervously at the hill where Shoogar still worked. He was sitting and chanting now. 'Uh, how long will it take before your egg gets here, Purple?'

He frowned. 'Who cares? It's coming - that's all

'I care!' I almost screamed.

He gave me a peculiar look. 'I hadn't realized this meant so much to you.'

'Well, it does,' I said, in a slightly quieter tone. 'How long will it take?'

'Maybe a day,' he said. 'Maybe a little longer. The egg was on standby. It will have to activate itself, come to full power, take bearings, check its systems, plot a course, make an approach - it will take time, Lant. The egg could not possibly be here before blue sunset'

I groaned.

'I know how it must pain you, my friend. But fear not. I have waited this long. I can wait a little longer.'

I groaned and trudged away, clutching at the ache in my stomach.

I went down to the shore. The sea surged restlessly at the slope where Wilville and Orbur worked.

'Father, you look ill,' said one.

'I am,' I said. 'I am tired and hungry and I hurt all over. I long for a decent bed and a decent meal-'

'Wilville has found some cavernmouth eggs,' said Orbur. 'Do you want one?'

I groaned. But it was better than nothing. I took the heavy sphere and bit at its rind. A salty-sweet taste flowed into my mouth. 'Oh, that's awful,' I said. I took a drink of water from a ballast sack.

'Don't let Shoogar see you doing that.'

'Curse Shoogar-' I said. 'Do you know what he's doing? He's trying to call down a moon!'

Orbur snorted. Wilville didn't say anything.

'Didn't you hear what I said?'

'We heard you,' said Wilville. 'Shoogar is trying to call down a moon. At least it will keep him out of our way.'

'Oh,' I said. Apparently they were so intent on what they were doing, they were oblivious to what was going on around them. 'What are you working on?' I asked. I squatted down on my haunches to look.

They explained. One of the pulleys had worked loose from a bicycle frame. But they had almost no tools at all to work with. Purple had thrown them all overboard. They were working now with rocks and sticks and shreds of aircloth. 'If we can get this working again, we can use the boat to get away from here, whether we have windbags or not.'

I nodded and offered my help, but Orbur said I would only be in the way. I gathered up the cavernmouth eggs and took them off a ways. I found some driftwood and made a small fire to roast them. They were still awful, but they were food.

I took one up to Purple, but he had spread out a piece of aircloth from the ripped balloon and was snoring blissfully and peacefully; it was the first time that I had seen him completely relaxed since I had known him.

I let him sleep and trudged across the slope to Shoogar. He shook his head at the sight of the egg, 'I will have it later, when I finish my chant.'

I looked at his gigantic spell pattern. 'Why don't you draw it around Purple?' I asked.

'Why bother? If a moon falls on him, it won't matter if it hits him directly or not - it's going to make another Circle Sea.'

'Oh,' I said. I went back to my sons and watched them work.

They worked for most of the day, stopping only to chew on a piece of roast cavernmouth egg or to swill down some water. By the time night had fallen and the red sun was seeping into the west, the bicycle pulley was working again as well as it would ever be.

The day was rapidly nearing its end. Purple's egg had still not arrived, and Shoogar was still on the hill chanting.

My sons stretched out tiredly on their blankets and chewed gratefully on the rubbery eggmeat. Had they had their tools, they might have finished the job in less than an hour, but encumbered as they were, it took nearly all day. They were exhausted from the frustrations involved.

I lay on my back and stared into the sky. Already one of the moons had emerged in the darkening east, and others would join it shortly. I watched with a helpless feeling. I had been unable to dissuade Shoogar in his spellmaking. Warning Purple would do no good; I knew what he thought of Shoogar's magic.

I tried to guess what pattern the moons had assumed. Two of the three big ones made a diagonal across a line of four small ones, so tiny they barely showed their colors.

The sign of the Bent Cross?

No matter. Whatever sign it was, Shoogar would think of a way to use it-

He came running over the hill then. He pulled me roughly to my feet, 'Come on, Lant. It's time to retreat.'

'Huh?' I said sleepily. 'What-?'

'I've finished my spell. All we have to do now is wait.' He pulled at my arm.

I followed him down to the boat. He was grabbing things at random and throwing them into the craft where they splashed into the water. 'Come on, Lant, come on - we haven't got any time.'

I woke my sons. They were just as confused and upset as I - and twice as grumpy. 'If Shoogar's spell really does work,' I insisted, 'this is no place we want to be.' They allowed themselves to be pushed down the slope. Wilville pulled the plug to drain the water from the boat - it was no longer needed - the airbags were so limp they could no longer hold up even the rigging.

Orbur gathered the last of the aircloth shreds we had been using as blankets, and the remaining cavernmouth eggs. We pounded the plug back into the hole, and shoved the boat roughly into the water.

'Hurry, hurry,' snapped Shoogar. The moon will be falling soon!'

'Does Purple know?' asked Orbur.

'Of course not. Why should I tell Purple?'

'Oh, no reason,' Orbur said as he pulled himself out of the water and onto his outrigger. 'Except that he might have died of fright, and then you wouldn't have needed to go through with the spell.'

Shoogar snorted and climbed into the boat. I followed. Our robes were wet from our thighs down. We had had to push the boat out past the breakers before we could climb in. Wilville was the last to mount. He swung the boat around so that its stern was toward the sea - it would have taken too long to try to turn it the other way.

He swung himself up on the bike frame, and the two boys unslung their airpushers and began backpedaling furiously. Within moments we were moving away from the shore. Purple, up there in the dark with his many-eyed calling device, did not notice at first. But by and by he came strolling across the sand to call, 'What are you doing?'

'Testing the boat!' Shoogar called across the black water.

'Good idea,' Purple called back. He went back up the hill. There was sufficient light from the moons and the still westering sun to see him as a puffy form on the crest of the slope.

Wilville kept backpedaling then, while Orbur began pedaling forward. The boat swung around to head away from the Teeth of Despair. Bow forward, we moved across the water.

We made little progress though. The wind was headed shoreward and hampered our efforts.

'Pedal faster,' Shoogar urged them, 'lest the falling moon destroy us!'

'This is nonsense,' Orbur complained. 'Shoogar can't bring down a moon!'

'Don't you believe in magic?' I demanded.

'Well-'

'You've flown, you fool! How can you not believe in magic?'

'Of course, I believe in magic!' Orbur whispered to me. 'It's Shoogar I don't believe in!'

'I notice,' I said, 'that despite your skepticism you still thought enough to whisper.'

'I don't care. He's not the magician Purple is. Even Purple never claimed the power to bring down a moon.'

I didn't answer. The boys continued to pedal, but without conviction. Ssss - the bicycles droned, and the water churned.

The boat was a fragile frame with limp bags hanging above it. The sea was restless, like an endless vat of ink; the water was a greasy black oil, flecked with foam. The shore was dark, and Purple was a motionless silhouette on a blackened hill.

I looked at the moons - two were disks, pink on one side, blue-white on the other. Four were too small to show as disks - and there was something wrong up there, something dreadfully wrong.

he boys felt it too. The ssssss of the bicycles rose frantically. The boat bounced across the water.

I continued to stare, frozen.

One of the little moons, the tail of the crooked cross, was drifting out of alignment.

I looked toward the shore. Did Purple suspect?

He was a doll-sized silhouette capering wildly on a darkened mound. Yes, he must be trying to force it back into the sky. Even now as we watched, he was jumping and crying - but this was Shoogar's home ground.

I glanced over at him as he leaned out the back of the boat. His teeth gleamed as he watched. My sons pedaled furiously, frantically. Our wake was a churning froth.

The moon grew larger.

At first it was a bright dot against the black sky like the other moons - but moving, always moving - faster than any moon had a right to move! Then it was a clear disk like the major moons, red on one side and blue on the other. It was the largest moon in the sky now.

And still it grew!

It should have been sinking toward Purple - should have been. Instead, it seemed to hover overhead growing steadily.

The blue-white side suddenly darkened, now dimmed to almost black. The moon grew faster, and the red side commenced to dim also.

In the middle of the nearly black globe a yellow eye stared down at us.

And the moon grew huge, huge, and huger still!

'Pedal! Curse you! Faster! Faster!' Shoogar and I were both screaming.

He had miscalculated, the blithering toad - a moon is too big a thing for one man's revenge! Its weight would destroy a world for one man's pride!

And then it was drifting down, down like a monstrous soap bubble - Shoogar hadn't miscalculated - down to where Purple capered on the black-scarred hill.

It stopped over Purple's head - and directly over Shoogar's design.

'Well, don't stop now!' Shoogar shrieked. He practically leapt out of the boat. 'Crush him! Crush him! Another two manheights, is that too much to manage? Arrrgh!' For the moon would fall no further. Instead, Purple was rising, rising toward the yellow eye. He disappeared into it.

'It ate him!' Shoogar was flabbergasted. 'Why did it do that? It wasn't in any of the runes.'

'Maybe it was in Purple's runes,' said Wilville.

'Yes! He's right,' I said. 'I see it now! Your moon and Purple's mother egg are one and the same.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's going home in it,' I said. 'Home. I'm glad.'

'Purple? In my moon? He can't I won't let him! Boys, turn around!'

'Do it,' I told them. As the boat swung slowly around, Shoogar stamped toward the bow. I followed to reason with him.

'He's probably going to wait for us,' I said quietly. 'He told me he'd make sure we could get home before he left. What are you going to tell him?'

'Tell him? I'll tell him to get his hairless rump out of my moon! What else would I tell him?'

'And what do you think he will answer?'

'What do you mean ?'

There's only one thing Purple can say if he wants to keep the moon. He'll have to say that this is his vehicle; that he brought it down; that you had nothing at all to do with it.'

'But that's a black lie!'

'Of course it is, Shoogar. But he needs the moon to get home. He'll have to say it. And as your only witness,' I explained softly, 'I'll have to tell the villagers that Purple denied your claim that you brought down a moon.'

'But it's a lie, a black outrageous lie!' Shoogar was flabbergasted at the mad magician's perfidy. 'I did too bring it down! And they'll know it, too! Who will the villagers believe, me or that insane bald magician?!!'

'They will believe their Speaker,' I said.

For a moment Shoogar glared at me. Then he stamped back to the stern to sulk. We were twenty minutes pedaling back to shore.

-----

THE great black moon waited for us, shedding yellow light on the sand.

'I never thought he could do it,' Orbur kept repeating as he pulled the boat onto the shore. 'Imagine Shoogar bringing down a moon! And he couldn't even cure baldness.'

'Perhaps he had help,' I said, jumping out of the boat, splashing into ankle-deep water. 'Orbur,' I complained. 'Couldn't you have beached it a little higher? Look at my robe.'

'Sorry, Father,' said Orbur. He. gave another tug at his outrigger. 'You think Purple brought the moon down?'

'Not by himself. Obviously he had to wait for Shoogar's spells. But they both wanted the same thing: a falling moon and Purple's departure. Two such powerful magicians working in concert, is it surprising that they succeeded?'

Wilville came up on the other side of me. There was a splash from behind as Shoogar stamped grumpily from the boat. We turned to look at him.

He returned our stare, pulled himself up to his full height of half a manlength, and stamped forward. He brushed imperiously past us-

'Shoogar!' I called.

He stopped, folded his arms and surveyed the giant glowing sphere at the top of the hill. As I came up beside him, he said, 'Let him keep my moon, then, if it will take him home! My oath binds me to drive him from my territory, and that I have certainly done!'

'Well said,' I bellowed, 'you're a generous magician, Shoogar!'

With not another word the four of us trudged up the hill to where Purple waited. His mood was one of frantic impatience - but the lines of worry seemed to have vanished from his face and he beamed with a smile as wide as the world.

We approached cautiously. That great dark mass hung over us like the Doom of the Gods, and we could see nothing holding it up. It was no windbag, that was for certain - it neither behaved nor looked like one.

'Don't be afraid,' said Purple. 'It's safe.'

We advanced into the cone of the peculiar yellow light that poured from Purple's moon. It was that same colour that turned green into something eye-hurtingly bright, and I wondered how anyone could stand it for long. The moon towered brightly above us, seeming as high as Idiot's Crag, perhaps higher.

Shoogar leaned back, back as far as he could, to peer up at its height. Absent-mindedly, he brought out a cavernmouth egg and began scratching a rune into it.

Purple reached behind him then - I noticed a huge stack of items lying there - and handed Orbur a new battery. It was identical with the one Purple had used to charge our windbags, but this one, Purple said, was fully powered. There was no danger at all of our running it down. It would fill more windbags than we could make before it would even begin to weaken. 'It has enough power to make a dozen Journeys like this, Lant. This dial, Orbur, shows you how much power you have left in it. This knob controls the rate at which you use it.'

He handed the device to Wilville to examine, and reached behind him for another. This was a large box with a hinged opening on its top. 'This is a chest of emergency rations. I have given you five of them. There is enough food here for a one-month journey.' He shoved the box forward and reached again. We crowded forward, interestedly. These are blankets, of course,' said Purple. 'You will need new ones for the upper atmosphere and - let's see, what else?'

He rummaged happily through his pile, presenting things to Wilville and Orbur. One by one he would hand them to the boys, who would pass them on to me. After examining each one, I put them in a stack behind me. His pile shrank while ours grew.

Shoogar was not at all interested. He kept wandering around and around the base of the giant egg, scratching runes on the cavernmouth rind.

'Here are the flashlights, and this is a simple medkit. I have labeled the sprays in here that you will want to use for hairlessness and things. You should be careful with this, even though there's nothing here that can kill you.' Purple picked up one or two last items, meaningless things. One was a flat folder of odd pictures - Purple called it a book - we would have to examine it later. But Shoogar gasped when he saw it, 'Spell images!'

Purple tried to convince him that they were not, but Shoogar wouldn't listen. No matter. Few of the images made sense anyway. After a while, Shoogar tossed the book in with the other stuff and went back to his egg marking.

At last there was only one item left, a shapeless mass of glimmering white. Purple didn't even try to pick it up, it seemed too big for that. He merely pointed at it. 'I think you will find this the most useful of all.'

'What is it?' I asked.

'A new windbag,' he said. He smiled. 'I am afraid that the ones we made weren't as good as I thought. They hardly lasted the journey. One is already ripped, and I fear the rest will rip too. My friends - and I know you are my friends-'

Behind me Shoogar snorted.

'I want your journey home to be as pleasant as mine. This windbag is used for weather testing on strange worlds. It will be big enough to hold your weights. Use it with your other windbags, and you should be able to make it home.'

Orbur was already examining it eagerly. The material was light and transparent and thinner than anything we had ever seen. There's no weave!' he exclaimed. 'Wilville, come look at this!'

But Wilville had disappeared. A moment later he came panting up the hill. 'This is a terrible place to park a moon,' he gasped. 'Why couldn't you have guided it lower.'

'Where were you?'

He indicated his laden arms. 'I have brought Purple a gift too.' He held out his hands. 'An aircloth blanket, Purple, and - and a sack of ballast. Just in case. You might need it.'

Purple was visibly moved. He took the bulging sack and held it tenderly, like a child. His eyes were moist, but there \vas a smile on his face. He allowed Wilville to drape the blanket over his arm. Thank you,' he said, 'these are fine gifts.' His voice choked as he said it.

He turned to me. 'Lant, thank you for everything. Thank you for your help, for being such a fine Speaker. I - wait, I have something for you.' He disappeared up into his moon.

Almost immediately, he reappeared; he had stowed our gifts and carried something else. A sphere, with strange knobs and protrusions on it. 'Lant, this is for you-'

'What is it?' I took it curiously. It was heavy - as heavy as a small child.

'It is your Speaker's token. I know Shoogar never had time to make one for you. I hope he will not mind if I present you with this. See there - that is my name in the markings of my own language. You are the Speaker of the Purple magician.'

I was confused, shocked, delighted, horrified - a tumble of emotions poured across my mind. 'I - I -'

'Don't say anything, Lant. Just take it. It is a special token. It will be recognized and honoured by any of my people who should ever again come to this world. And should I ever return it makes you my official Speaker. Keep it, Lant.'

I nodded dumbly and staggered back with it.

Finally, Purple turned to Shoogar who had stood patiently throughout this all.

'Shoogar,' he said, extending his empty hands. 'I have nothing to give you. You are too great a magician for me to insult you. I cannot offer you anything at all that you do not already have, and for me to presume that I can would be an affront to your skill and greatness.'

Shoogar's jaw dropped. He almost dropped his egg - then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'No gift-?' he asked. I didn't know whether to feel hurt or pleased for him.

'Only this,' said Purple, 'and it is one that you cannot carry with you, it is already there. I leave you the two villages. You are now the official magician there.'

Shoogar stared at him wide-eyed. Purple stood there, tall and impressive. In that peculiar-colored light, he looked almost a God himself. No longer the pudgy, almost comical figure who had terrorized us for so many months. Suddenly he seemed a kind of nobility itself: generous, loving, all-knowing.

Shoogar managed to say, 'You admit it - you admit that I am a greater magician-?'

'Shoogar, I admit it. You know more about the magic and the Gods of this world than anyone - including me. You are the greatest - and you have your flying machine now.' He looked at all of us then, a great friendly figure. 'I will miss you,' he whispered. 'All of you. Even you, Shoogar. And your duels.'

And with that he rose up into his moon and vanished.

The yellow light glowed brighter for a second, then winked out.

The moon vanished as silently as it had come, rising, rising, ever upward, dwindling, shrinking; snapping brilliant for a second, and then vanishing altogether.

Shoogar was so startled he almost forgot his cavernmouth egg spell. Hurriedly, he bit into it with a noisy chomp.

He started choking then, and we had to pound him hard on the back before he would stop.

-----

THE sea tumbled and broke on the blackened shore.

Except for that, all was silent. Above hung the pinpoint brightness of Ouells, blue and glaring. The Cathawk lay beached on the shore, her balloons full but flaccid. A larger white one blossomed above them; only one tenth full, it was a narrow cylinder with a gentle bulge at its top. A full load of water kept the boat from rising.

Our supplies lay scattered on the sand to protect them from the water in the boat. The four of us sat there and stared glumly at it.

'I knew we had forgotten something,' repeated Wilville. It was the eleventh time he had said it.

'North,' said Orbur, 'we forgot about north.'

'We forgot that the wind blows north,' I said.

'No matter,' shrugged Orbur. He tossed a pebble toward the sea. we're still not going anywhere. Wilville and I just can't pump hard enough to fight our way south.' He tossed another pebble. 'Curse it, anyway.'

'Don't swear,' mumbled Shoogar. 'Greatest magician in the world, and I can't even change the wind. Curse it all.'

'You're swearing,' said Orbur petulantly.

'That's my job. I'm a magician.'

We had tried to lift the boat four times already. Each time the best we had done was to maintain our position over the shore - and each time, as the boys had slackened, the wind had threatened to push us inland. Each time, we had brought the airboat down again.

'I don't care how much power that battery has got in it,' Wilville said. 'If we're not getting anywhere, we might as well not have it at all. We're only wasting its power this way.'

'It doesn't show on the dial yet,' I said.

That doesn't mean we haven't wasted the power we've used,' said Wilville. 'And if we keep this up, we'll keep going until there's no more left.'

We were miles east of where we had first touched shore. It was a spot that had once been below our old village. It was as desolate as the other. I chewed thoughtfully on one of Purple's food sticks - it was soft and brown and had an odd taste. There must be a way,' I said. There must be.'

'Not through the air,' grumbled Wilville.

Orbur tossed a rock, 'Then let's go through the water.'

'Why not? The boat will float, won't it?'

'Yes, but - the whirlpools, the reefs-' I said.

'We lift above them!' Wilville was shouting now. 'Yes, I've got it. We put just enough gas in the windbags to hold the boat out of water - but not the outriggers! The airpushers will move water too, and we can pedal our way home. Whenever the wind dies, we can lift into the air.'

'But,' I said, 'if the wind works on balloons like it does on sails - it pushes - won't it push against us in the water too?'

'Yes, but the water will be pushing back. That is, the water will give us the leverage we need to move forward. Besides, we won't pump the balloons as full as they are now - they won't present as much area to the wind and we won't be fighting it as much.'

'Wilville and Orbur were right, of course. They usually were in matters concerning the flying machine. It was almost as if they knew as much about it as Purple - certainly more so than Shoogar. Shoogar had protested their whole discussion equating the action of the wind on the balloons with the action of wind on sails. But, said Orbur, wind is wind. And Wilville and Orbur were right.

The water splashed slowly under us, the airmakers churned it into froth behind us. The boys had to pedal nearly twice as hard as they would have in the air.

The sea was sinking again, and rapids and whirlpools were frequent. Often, we had to take to the air. When we did this, we would usually slip backwards, but then the boys would begin driving either east or west, and in this manner we managed to avoid most of the dangers of our first journey.

Whenever the boys tired of pedaling, we either took on ballast or released some gas. In the water, our backward slippage was slight.

We trailed fishing lines behind us. They had been a gift from Purple and not understood at first, but once they had been explained we were eager to put them to use. Once we caught something big and it pulled us eastward for half a day before we could cut through the line. We had to use a special tool to do that.

It was not that the food Purple had given us was inadequate. It was just that it tasted bad. We ate it only when there was nothing else available.

On the fifth day we were lucky enough to slip into a section of water that was receding rapidly southward. We stayed with it as long as we could until it became too savage. Then we lifted into the air. The boys were delighted to find that the wind was behind us now.

The darknesses were longer now - nearly two hours - and the seasons were changing. The oceans were slipping away again. They would continue to slip for months, but the process had begun.

The sea below churned over razor-sharp reefs that were becoming mountain peaks. There was a period when we saw nothing but fog: blue fog, white fog, red fog, black fog, blue fog, and so on, endlessly repeated with the cycle of the suns.

We had lost three of our aircloth windbags by now. Their seams had given way abruptly, one right after the other, smacking the boat solidly into the water. We made up the difference by inflating Purple's weather windbag even more. It was only half full, but more than offset the loss of the others.

We lost two more bags in as many days. Apparently there was something seriously wrong with the glue Grimm had used to seal the seams - and perhaps his stitching wasn't as strong as it should have been. The bags that we still had held their air for little more than a day. Shoogar and I were constantly recharging them. The aircloth had been tight when we had woven it, but it was certainly no longer so. Something tended to weaken it with continual use.

We still trailed our fishing lines below us, they hung like slender threads of shimmering gossamer. I wondered how they were made, and if we could duplicate them.

We sailed into another wall of fog. Blue fog, white fog, red fog-

In black fog we hooked something big, too big to draw in.

We dared not cut the line. It was too precious to lose. The wind whistled past us - how fast were we moving?

And then the fog cleared as the blue sun burnt it off, and we saw that we had hooked land.

The desert we had crossed so many months ago - which had been sea bottom for the last few seasons - was a swamp now; a marsh of riotous colors, blooming briefly and frenetically during the few short hands of days it would take it to dry. There were roots to chew down there - and possibly meat.

We reeled in the line and pulled ourselves down.

We were within walking distance of home.

-----

WE returned to the peaceful life of the twin villages.

Indeed, life turned out to be even more peaceful than we remembered it. And Shoogar and I were responsible. On the - Cathawk's departure we had dropped the dust of yearning across the cheering crowd. The resultant orgy lasted for three weeks.

Most improper, of course, but it left a feeling of fellowship between the Upper and Lower Village.

Another bond between us is Shoogar himself. He is now resident magician of both tribes.

Before Gortik would let him assume that post though, he secured from Shoogar an oath to redeem and honor all spell chips in the village at their full value. Shoogar had needed some persuading before he would redeem Purple's chips, but Purple's parting words left him in what could only be called a good humor. Once, he was even seen smiling.

There were one or two who were upset about the arrangement, of course. Hinc, who had invested heavily in Purple chips, felt that they should be redeemed at their old value of ten for one. Hinc has been scratching for the past three hands of days.

But life is peaceful here. In the evenings I sit and listen to the wives quarrelling and the children crying and think how good it is to be home. Life has returned to its gentle pace. I carve the bone into chips, and regulate the flow of commerce as I have always done. Others work out the new processes and make the goods and I distribute the chips, blue ones only since Purple has gone.

Weaving is still our major industry here. Traders come not only from the other villages on the island, but from the mainland as well - even from as far south as the Land of Frozen Water. Every five days a new party arrives, always from further and further away. We are a powerful trading village now, gaining power as the fame of our cloth is spreading.

Wilville and Orbur are at work on a new Cathawk. The old one sits in a place of honor in a special clearing owned by the son of Trone the Smith. It is Smith's Son's Clearing, and no trader ever comes without stopping to peer curiously at the boat out of water.

The new Cathawk will be huge - nearly fifteen manlengths - it will require over one hundred windbags and ten men on bicycles to propel it; but the next wading season will not interrupt our trade with the mainland. The boatmaking and weaving apprentices have never worked so hard in their lives.

At first, when Wilville and Orbur announced their plans, there was some dissent - 'What do we need another flying machine for? We've already built one. We've proved we can do it, why do we have to do it again? What a waste of effort and aircloth! Better to use the aircloth for trading!'

'But how will you get it there to trade?' was the answer. 'And if we do not build another Cathawk, there will be no need for the generators, or for the generator teams - or for the betmongers. You will have nothing on which to spend the chips you earn from your weaving, and no place to trade your cloth.'

Those who could not see the value of it were soon shouted down. Gortik and I gave my sons the go-ahead, and up on the crag the new cradle rises impressively.

It seems likely that the women will have names forever. Shoogar had thought that after the airboat was finished we could deconsecrate even the Missa names - but as long as we need them for spinning, we dare not do that.

And the plague spreads. The new wife, whom I bought on the mainland, had not been in my home but two days before she too asked for a name. My other wives support her. Somehow they have gotten the idea that all women must have names - even if they are only Missas.

The only exception is my hairless daughter. Shoogar is planning to consecrate her soon. She will have a secret name of her own.

Shoogar is frantically busy these days. He can deconsecrate, bleed and reconsecrate a housetree in almost no time at all. And it costs the nest owner only a spell token. It was lucky that Shoogar discovered that housetree bleeding is a good way to ward off the demons. He resells the housetree blood to the clothmakers for less than one chip per tree load - which is eminently fair of him.

Because of Shoogar's increased status I have had to take on extra apprentices. I have more than ten now, and they carve more chips in a day than can possibly be redeemed by any one magician. Many of the villagers no longer seem to regard the redemption of the spells as necessary. They trade the chips like lightweight, valuable, indestructible goods.

But others still value the chips well enough to keep Shoogar constantly busy. There is cloth to be blessed, looms to be consecrated, housetrees to be unblessed, bled and blessed again, fertility spells and name givings - and always he must watch out for his apprentices who are getting better and better in their attempts to kill him.

'Run and chant, run and chant' he complains. 'Never a time to rest! And do you know, Lant, they are still trading Purple's chips at four for one! Why? Purple is gone!'

'But his magic lingers on. It clings to the chips and makes them lucky.'

Shoogar snorted angrily.

'Besides you do a better, more impressive job for a Purple chip. Or so I have been told,' I added.

'It's true. It's because I want Purple's chips. When I have destroyed the last of them, there will be no sign of him anywhere! And all will be as it was before the mad magician came to us. I will expunge his memory, Lant!'

'I think it is hopeless, Shoogar. The purple-stained chips have spread as far as our new cloth. You will never be able to redeem them all.'

'I can try, Lant. I can try. I drove him out - you saw it yourself - I can drive out his chips.' And he bustled off to his next appointment.

I returned to my carving and staining. It is a lost cause, of course, for Shoogar. Every time he destroys a purple chip, the rest just go up in value because he has made them that much rarer. The people become less willing to part with them every day. But I will have to see what I can do for him.