Part IV
As they began their descent, the ship which was their target suddenly rose from the Moon! Within a few seconds, it became obvious that it was taking a course directly towards them. It was a collision course! "Avoid them," screamed Matobolus -- uselessly, for Setondal's expert hands had already lurched the ship sharply to port. Two of the spellcasters in the ship had the presence to cast spells of aversion -- uselessly, as far as Matobolus could tell, for all that happened was that they froze themselves.
Unfortunately, whomever was piloting the other ship -- backwards, Matobolus suddenly recognized -- had anticipated Setondal's move -- for he moved his ship directly in the way. Matobolus closed his eyes, expecting a collision which would kill everyone on the ship.
Two seconds later, he opened his eyes, for nothing had happened. He glanced around in bewilderment, for the other ship had vanished. Then he saw it, behind them, still going backwards, and curving away around the Moon.
There was no time left to observe the other ship, though, for the Moon itself was almost upon them. As they settled on the ground, Matobolus was struck by three things. First, the mysterious sense of wrongness that had oppressed him ever since their return to this devastated Glorantha -- and, indeed, since their departure from increasingly loked like a the lost paradise of what could only be called the ancient world -- had vanished.
Second, wrongness was replaced by a sense of strangeness, and of great antiquity. Somehow, he felt for the third time on this wretched trip, that he had been translated into a realm where the rules were different.
Third, looking at the strange spires around the flat plaza on which the ship was settling, he was struck by how the doorsizes and proportions seemed somehow wrong. Whatever lived here, was not human. In the distance, behind the spires, loomed a jagged row of mountains, white as everything else on this orb seemed to be.
As Sentondal turned off the generator, Matobolus realized that it was time to use the searchers in the side compartment. First, they could sample the atmosphere, to make sure that it was breathable. Second, they could see if there were any other dangers on this strange place.
A few hours later, the searchers -- those strange mixtures of animal and machine - -- returned, with both good news and bad. The good news was that there was nothing dangerous either in the air or on the ground. The bad was that there seemed to be nothing particularly interesting, either. The magicians reported - -- after two of their number were awakened from the strange paralysis which had fallen upon them after casting their aversion spells on the other ship -- that here, too, not all their magics worked, but that the spells which worked and those which did not were different from those which had worked and those which had not on the planet below.
It was surprising that an object that had passed through such a great explosion seemed so undisturbed, unless the fine white dust that seemed to cover everything was a result of the explosion. Matobolus ordered the crew to dinner and to sleep, explaining that they could search the Moon on the "morrow."
He himself slept badly again, dreaming of explosions and destructions, and great inhuman Krjalk coming to kill his people. But he was interrupted in the middle of the night by the crewman on watch.
It appeared that once again, the mysterious ship, enemy or friend, was trying to communicate with them. Once again, its message was unintelligible. "What should we do?" asked the crewman. "Well," he responded, " wake Flavius and let's see where it is coming from."
He was not surprised to hear and to see that the message came from the same twin of his own ship that had messaged him before. "Oh well," grumbled Matobolus, wake up the crew and let's take a quick poll of whether we should answer them again."
After several hours of tired discussion, the decision, probably futile, thought Matobolus was to try once again to get an answer from them. He gave the orders, and watched gloomily as, once more, the other ship failed to respond. In fact, he realized just after the message was sent, that the other ship was no longer to be seen. It was surprising to see that the turmoil below them was increasing rather than decreasing, Matobolus thought idly.
The crew took to bed once again, and getting everyone up in the morning proved somewhat difficult. Leaving a skeleton crew to man the ship, the rest of the group disembarked and began to search the buildings. What they discovered was interesting, but unenlightening. It appeared that some of the buildings were built to human, or at least humanoid specifications, while others were built with races of quite different proportions in mind. Judging by appearances, one race must have been very wide, and extremely squat, for entrances to its residences were almost the opposite of "human" doors. The few remaining items of "furniture," if that was what it was, was equally puzzling, as were several objects and some sort of illustrations which were incomprehensible even to the trained eyes of the Godlearners.
Another race was clearly extremely tall and spindly. Apparently it did not need windows, for there were none.
There were several buildings whose layouts and purposes were totally incomprehensible. Janaspus suggested that it was possible that they were occupied by creatures that were either octopoid or winged, but this was simply pure speculation, based on no Logic.
Every piece of evidence suggested that these buildings had been empty for many years, yet, surprisingly, there was no evidence of rot or decay in the few objects which were left. Whomever these people were, they had left a long time ago. In fact, the odor on the gentle breeze, while strange and unearthly, was not unpleasant.
It seemed to be coming from the mountain range, thought Matobolus with a sort of dreamy speculation, half wonder and half tiredness. Then the ground began to shake. The mountain range began to move. A giant head lifted off the ground. It was that of a Dragon -- indeed, as the white dust shook off its head, it seemed to be that of one of the two Dragons they had seen landing on the Moon the other day!
Suddenly, the horrible truth came upon Matobolus. "Man the ship, man the ship!" he screamed. He rushed to sound the alarm, hoping that all the crew could get back to the ship on time. As Setondal assumed his post, he ordered him to prepare for take-off.
The ground shook further as the great Dragon lifted itself from the ground. As he expected, the ground shook even more from something Matobolus did not see, but knew was either the other Dragon or the mighty buffets of an explosion which was only a few minutes away -- and had already occurred!
He knew that they had only minutes if they were to survive, but, luckily, the last crew member, Janaspus, carrying the very few objects they had recovered from their cursory search, staggered aboard in time for the doors to be closed. As the magicians hastily chanted their spells, Setondal shoved the levers and the ship lifted away from the Moon. Behind him, the two Dragons began to take to the Air.
As he knew it would, another ship appeared in front of them, once more apparently determined to collide with them. "Ignore it, just move fast" Matobolus yelled, as Setondal nodded with sudden understanding.
Once again, the non-collision occurred, and Matobolus glanced backward, in time to see the two great Dragons suddenly alter course and land once more on the White Moon, and the little ship settle back behind them. The ship shuddered and was driven in the forefront of the great explosion that had just happened a few minutes before, and Matobolus glanced downwards as the various pieces of the Red Moon destroyed a large part of Dara Happa, far below.
This time Matobolus himself was braced for the turmoil, as was most of the crew, and so the damage to the crew, and to sokme degree the ship, was less than before. "That's because we avoided the explosion itself" murmered Matobolus to himself.
"We should have understood," he said, surprising himself by uttering an
hysterical cackle. He said in a calmer voice, "In a sense space and time are the
same, and it is only our perception of things that make them different. The
arrow of time points BOTH ways."
"The presence of enough matter going one way drags lesser bits along with it --
that is what happened to us on the White Moon. For a bit we saw the world the
way the Dragons do."
"What?" said Flavius the Lesser.
"Dragon time goes backwards. This moon was -- or is -- or whatever you want to
say -- going backwards in time itself, and was taking us with it. If we hadn't
gotten off, we would have been destroyed in the White Moon's collision with the
Red Moon."
"The ship needs to be repaired again -- let's go south to the coast, since we
can descend at an angle, and see if this "closing" is real or still real."
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #2
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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