Ship of Dreams by Brian Lumley Read Free Book Online

in air and washed by hot, spicy, billowing vapors. Dass, too, had entered the “pool,” and he quickly made his way to where the pair floated at the ends of their chains.
    “How do you do that?” asked Hero breathlessly as Dass emerged from opaquely swirling walls of vapor, his arms and legs sculling like the limbs of some great frog. “Are you swimming?”
    “Yes,” answered Dass with a grin. “It’s not as fast as water swimming, but you get there in the end.” He turned on his back, placed his hands under his head and closed his eyes. “I’m for a nap,” he informed. “You’d be advised to do the same. About an hour from now the sprays will wake us up.”
    “Sprays?” Eldin repeated him. “What sprays?”
    “Hot and cold water sprays that hit you from all sides, so that you don’t know whether to freeze or fry,” Dass answered. “Very uplifting …” And he drifted off to sleep.
    Now the adventurers began to experiment, twisting this way and that and hauling themselves along their chains. Delighted with the weird sensation of weightlessness, Eldin said, “Why, it’s like a free–fall sauna!”
    “A what?” questioned Hero, equally exhilarated.
    “Something from the waking world,” said Eldin with a frown as vague, half-glimpsed memories faded back into forgotten regions of his mind. “I think.”
    They played and floundered and fell about like fools for a few minutes more until, from close at hand, suddenly they heard female voices chattering and giggling. Now the pair twisted about until they faced each other with widening eyes. Women? Girls used the air-baths too? Mixed bathing? In the nude?
    The sight of Eldin imitating a great frog was more than Hero could bear. He doubled with laughter as his burly companion went sculling away into the billowing vapors; but a few moments later, as Eldin’s uproarious chortling reached back to him intermingled with the delighted Oohs and Aahs and coy giggles of a dozen girlish voices …
     
    “That’s a neat trick,” said Hero much later, as they dined in a restaurant that looked out over the Cerenerian Sea. “The air-bath, I mean. How’s it done, Limnar? How do they suspend you like that in the mid-air?”
    “Shh!” Dass answered. “Just sit still for a minute and listen … There, do you hear it?”
    “I hear it,” said Eldin, nodding. “I’ve been hearing it ever since we stepped off your ship onto the quayside. A deep down throbbing and humming. What does it mean?”
    “Those are the mighty engines that manufacture the essence which keeps Serannian afloat,” Dass explained. “And the air-baths-they were built above the vents where the city’s engineers blow the stuff off. As its potency wanes, so it’s vented. Add a mixture of steam and a few exotic scents—”
    “Amazing!” said Hero. “And you were right. So invigorating, so refreshing—”
    “So sexy!” Eldin interrupted. “All those girls.”
    “Ahem!” said Dass. “Yes, well, you’re not really supposed to go cavorting with the females, Eldin.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” answered the Wanderer. “What say you, David?”
    Hero looked up with a broad smile on his face. “The air-baths were a lot of fun, Limnar,” he said, “but you can keep them for me. I’ll settle for a good cavort any old time!”

CHAPTER VI
    The Curator
    “Since we’re on this side of Serannian,” said Dass as they left the restaurant, “and since we’ve an hour or so to spare before the Tilt, I suggest we visit the Museum.”
    “You know, Limnar,” Eldin sighed after a moment’s thought, “I’ve somehow grown to like you—despite the fact that you constantly speak in riddles! What, pray tell, is the Tilt?”
    “And what,” Hero added, “has it to do with our seeing Kuranes?”
    “Transport problems in Serannian,” Dass began by way of explanation, “are nonexistent. We have bicycles, and we have the Tilt. Serannian’s surface is more or less flat, or would be under normal