thank you for it,” Raleigh opined. “If we have learned a lesson...well, I believe that I shall be inclined to treat insects with a little more respect and kindness in future—although I might not feel the need to extend the same courtesy to spiders.”
“They weren’t demons, John,” Thomas said, quietly. “Whether or not they have demons of their own, none of them is an imp of Satan. They are not angels either, alas, for all that they are message-bearers—but we must deal with the world as we find it, not as we would rather it were.”
“We’ll have a tale to tell, though, won’t we?” said de Vere. “A traveler’s tale to put John Mandeville and Odysseus to shame. Will anyone believe us, do you think?”
“I am an honest man,” Field said, carefully making no claim on behalf of anyone else. “What I have seen, I have seen. God is my witness, and my counselor. Archbishop Foxe will believe me; the Church of England will believe me; the faithful will believe me.”
“Master Dee will trust Tom,” said Drake, pensively, as he checked the instruments with a frown slowly gathering on his brow. “He’s a mathematician, after all. As for me—well, some will and some won’t, but that’s the kind of company I keep.”
“The queen will believe us,” Raleigh supplied. “That’s what matters. The queen will believe us.”
“I don’t want to alarm you, Tom,” Drake said, softly, “but I believe we have a problem.”
It only required a few minutes urgent enquiry for Thomas to ascertain that Drake was right. He had to untether himself to do it, and make his way about the cabin as best he could, feeling very strange as he did so, but it did not take long to locate the hairline crack in the ethership’s hull. It was impossible to tell whether it had resulted from the stress and strain of their outward journey or whether it was the result of subtle sabotage.
In theory, the descent to Earth should have been simple enough. Dee had fitted the ethership with a heat-shield so that it would not burn up from the friction of its passage through the air, and a large parachute to slow its descent as it approached the surface. The arc of the descent had been calculated in advance; provided that Thomas could make certain that they began their descent over the correct point on the Earth’s surface, with the ship properly orientated, the Queen Jane ought to have been able to drift down into the fields of Kent with no particular difficulty
It was possible that the crack would make no significant difference, if it remained no wider than a hair. Given that the ether was breathable, at least in the short term, any exchange of air and ether would be harmless, but the difference in pressure between the interior and exterior of the hull was dangerous in two ways. As the cabin pressure dropped, breathing would become more difficult, as it did during an ascent of a high mountain. More importantly, the pressure exerted on the crack would tend to increase its dimensions, further weakening the hull. When the Queen Jane re-entered the atmosphere and began to accelerate in the tightening grip of affinity, it might break up.
Thomas did what he could to seal the hole with the means that Dee had thought to provide, but he could not help looking regretfully at the backs of his hands, at the dressings the Selenite insects had applied to his wounds. With a sealant of that sort, he might have made a much better job of it.
“Would you like to leave me now?” Thomas said, silently, to his unobtrusive passenger. “Or will you wait to see me die, and flee my body in company with my soul?”
“I might have left you, had I been sure that you would be safe,” the ethereal replied, “but now I dare not. You might need me, Thomas Digges. I cannot work miracles, but I have means of dealing with your flesh that are cleverer than your own. I might be able to make the difference between life and death.”
“Shall I open the hatch again, so that you can invite your brethren to assist my companions in the same fashion?” Thomas asked.
“My kind is not as gregarious as the members of the True Civilization,” Lumen said, apologetically. “The ether is unimaginably vast, and our manifold species were not shaped by the crude demands of affinity. No help that I could summon could possibly arrive in time—but I shall do what I can, and it may be that I can enable you to help your companions.”
To his crewmen, Thomas said: “The Queen Jane might still come safely to ground. If not...well, we have individual parachutes, for use in dire emergency. I’ll hand them out, so that you can put them on.”
“What are our chances, Captain?” de Vere wanted to now.
“I don’t know,” Thomas confessed. “I have no way to tell. Drake and I will do our very best to guide the ship; the rest of you might do well to pray.”
“God would not allow us to see what we have seen, only to die before bring back the news,” de Vere said, in a sudden attack of piety.
“God moves in mysterious ways,” Raleigh observed, dryly, “his wonders to perform. If Field is right, and there are things that men are not meant to know, so much the worse for those who find them out.”
“Be quiet, Raleigh!” Field commanded, as if Thomas’ advice to pray had given him an authority he had not had before—and the Puritan did indeed begin to pray, in a voice whose sheer determination suppressed its incipient unsteadiness. He prayed in English, and improvised as he went rather than using any repetitive formula that might be reminiscent of rosary-counting. To Thomas, however, the words seemed like a mere insect hum, devoid of any real significance—as prayer always had to him, although he would never have confessed such a thing, even to his father or John Dee.
While Field prayed, Thomas worked, and was glad to be able to do it, though he felt no terror. It was not that he was not afraid to die, but rather that he was committed to do his utmost to avoid it—not merely for himself but for his loyal crew. He could not help wondering as he worked, though, whether the crack had been formed by some freak of chance—or act of God—or made by the deft stroke of an insectile talon.
Thomas was certain in his own mind that the five of them had not been taken to the heart of the Milky Way in order to be tried, but merely in order to be inspected, investigated at closer range than had previously been convenient. He had no idea how much, or exactly what, the representatives of the True Civilization might have taken from his body and his mind, or how much use it might be to them. He had been in essence, some specimen casually placed beneath a magnifying lens because the opportunity had presented itself. He did not suppose for a instant that any of his captors—not even the specialist Aristocles, who had died in consequence of his curiosity—had actually cared about him as a individual, or an as intelligence. In such circumstances, the promises of a being like the Great Fleshcore were probably worthless, in principle and in practice.
Such thoughts as those, and not the love or fear of God, were what was in the captain’s mind as the ship began its perilous descent into the Earth’s affinity-well, when every passing second would henceforth bring it closer to salvation or destruction.
In the meantime, Field’s rambling prayer continued, gathering passion as it went—and Thomas could see clearly enough that even Raleigh had committed himself fully to its cause. If de Vere would have preferred a Romanist priest to lead him, there was no sign of it now.
“Thank you, lads,” Thomas said, softly. “You’ve done England proud. Should we be separated somehow, I’ll buy you all a drink when we meet up in London.”
The Queen Jane almost made it—but not quite. She did, however, remain intact long enough to allow Thomas to see the whole of the southeast corner of England looming up beneath him as he finally jumped clear of the disintegrating ship—the last man to do so, as was required of a captain in Her Majesty’s service. When he had bid farewell to Drake, the last of his human companions to exit the disintegrating craft, he said to his one remaining friend: “Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather go up than down? I shall be safe, I trust, in God’s hands.”
“We shall both be safe, God willing,” Lumen assured him. “In any case, you need not fear for me.”
Thomas