The Sword Lord by Robert Leader Read Free Book Online Page A

pods of its subsidiary rockets. It was designed for atmospheric as well as deep space flight, and so its long, smooth curves were aerodynamic. Kaseem had likened it to a bird, a mighty black raven poised for flight, but Kananda could still see the resemblance to the trimaran. He could imagine the ship sailing between the stars on the heavens as the trimaran had sailed on the waves of the ocean.
    Three of them walked slowly around the ship: Zela, Kananda and Kaseem. The other members of the spacecraft’s crew had formed their own friendships among the Hindus, and due to their combined and determined efforts the language barrier was slowly breaking down. Kyle and Laurya, always inseparable, were trying their skill at archery and spear-throwing, much to the amusement of Gujar and a group of his companions who had loaned their weapons. Blair was somewhere in the forest with the head huntsman, having recognized that the man had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the planet’s terrain and wildlife. Cadel was rolling dice with a circle of warriors, and was wryly trying to calculate mathematical probability against chance.
    Kananda and Kaseem had ventured inside the ship at Zela’s invitation, but they had found the interior cramped and claustrophobic, and the bewildering array of dials, screens and switches was totally beyond their comprehension. They had been apprehensive and relieved to escape again to the blue sky and fresh air, but they never tired of walking round the ship and gazing up at its triple spires in awe-struck wonder. With difficulty Kananda asked where were the sails which enabled the vessel to make a passage between the stars. He imagined that they must be folded away inside the hull, together with the masts, although he could not see where they might emerge, nor fathom out how.
    Zela smiled when she grasped the question, although she was perplexed as to how best to answer it. The ship’s main propulsion was derived from a nuclear pulse rocket engine, in which pellets of deuterium and helium-3 were ignited by electronic beam energy to create controlled fusion. The secondary engines used for atmospheric flight, together with the lazer banks, were all powered by energy converted from the intense friction heat that was generated by each planetary orbit during space launch and re-entry. All of this she could have explained in explicit technical detail in her own language, with an expertise equal to that of Cadel or the engineers who had designed the ship, but there were no equivalent earth words to explain these things even in simplified terms to the Hindu prince.
    There are no sails,” she said carefully. “When we leave your world to travel to our world there is no air and no wind. There is nothing to move sails.”
    â€œThen how does this ship move?”
    â€œPerhaps it flies,” Kaseem suggested. He was still thinking of its likeness to a bird. “Perhaps the wings move.”
    â€œIt does not fly in that way,” Zela told him. “Even a bird needs air in which to fly.” She saw the priest’s brow wrinkle even more deeply with hopeless concentration on her words, and sought for some descriptive example. A shout of applause caused her to glance to where Laurya had just shot an arrow into a target and she seized on the inspiration it gave her. “It flies like an arrow.” she said awkwardly, “Without the flapping of wings or sails.”
    Prince and priest were still baffled. Kananda stared up at the towering height of the spaceship, and then searchingly at the jungle all around. There was a long silence while Kananda considered what Zela had just said, and Kaseem found his own gaze drawn back to where Laurya was still surrounded by the laughing circle of young men. He felt the now familiar surge of anguished emotion, anguished because he could not understand it.
    She was the other reason for his indulgence of Kananda’s obvious attraction to Zela.