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.Momentarily the mutineers drew back from the ferocious blades.“Give up!” a voice cried hoarsely.“You haven’t got a chance!”At that moment a loud pounding noise came from the far end of the messdeck.A door that led to a storeroom burst open.Through it piled four men whose faces Zhorga had noticed were missing from the gathering—those same diehards who had already saved the ship when she had been caught in the hurricane.Yelling wildly, the four raced the length of the mess-deck, shoving aside any who stood in their way and grabbing up chairs to attack the renegades from the rear.For a while the scene resembled a tavern brawl.In the confusion Zhorga managed to disarm one of the swordsmen facing him, snatching up the weapon and tossing it to his new fillies.Axes and knives were no match for three skillfully wielded swords, and suddenly the fight did not seem so uneven.Even so, more blood was spilled before the mutineers lost heart, threw down their weapons and backed grudgingly against the bunks.Three were dead; four others lay injured.Zhorga called for Salwees, a sailor who doubled as barber and amateur surgeon.While the wounds were being dressed he turned to Bruge, one of those who had come bursting in from the storeroom.“Thanks for your intervention,” he said.“I was wondering where you were.”“We couldn’t get loose straight away,” Bruge replied.He grinned crookedly.“They took us by surprise, you know.But you needn’t worry about us—we’re with you, all the way.”Zhorga nodded.He turned to face the rest of the crew, who were staring ashen-faced.“So, you want to go home,” he rumbled.“Well, there’s only one thing I can say to you—put the thought out of your minds.It’s Mars we’re bound for, and Mars is where we’re going.When we come back, you’ll all be rich.”“We’ll never get there!” a sailor backed against the bunks protested in a tremulous voice.“The ship’s simply not up to it.Already we must be way off course!”“It’s true we’re a few degrees off,” Zhorga admitted in an even, reasonable tone, “but it’s nothing we can’t compensate for.We’re navigable; we can correct errors.” His voice became suddenly impatient.“Do you think I can’t read an astrolabe?”“You can’t correct for space monsters,” another voice muttered.“Don’t talk nonsense.There are no such things,” Zhorga retorted firmly.“Now listen to me, all of you.Instead of quaking in your boots the way you are, you should be feeling proud of yourselves.You’ve proved that a wooden hulk like the Queen can be taken up into space, given enough sail—and enough guts—and that’s an achievement.Everyone will look up to you when you get back to Earth—and you’ll get back, never fear.You’ll be wealthy into the bargain, if we return with a hold full of silk.Thanks to you, the interplanetary trade might even revive.“Now there’s nothing much between us and Mars, so from now on I anticipate an easy journey,” he continued.“As for turning back, well, I wouldn’t try it even if I wanted to.We’re in space now, and you can’t backtrack on your course just like that.If you could, you’d find the Earth had moved on and you’d likely never catch her.These things have to be planned a long time in advance.To put it bluntly, to go back we have to reach Mars first.”Zhorga’s words, consisting mainly of half-truths, were greeted by silence.Nevertheless he knew the rebellion was over.He hoped his men understood now that if they wanted to stay alive there was only one person they could rely on—himself.***Back in his cabin with Rachad, Zhorga sat down and began to brood anew over a problem that had occupied him ever since the sail canopy had been extended.It would not have reassured the crew to know that the dangers of takeoff they had so narrowly survived were not, in Zhorga’s view, anything like so hazardous as the business of landing on Mars.The tricky part of traveling to a downwind planet lay in being able to shed the velocity that had been gained on the way over, if one were not to go streaking through its atmosphere like a meteor.The recognized way of doing this was to fly past the target planet at short range, allowing its natural attraction to pull the ship into circum-planetary orbit.The ether itself could then be used to reduce speed, during as many circuits as were necessary.But Zhorga did not trust his sense of computation too far [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]