Strong stared intently into the image in the scrying mirror, mentally willing the scout ship to come into view, and he relaxed in relief when he saw it. Its sails were being furled and its masts folded against the hull by her crew, all of whom wore Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing which turned out to work equally well as a protection against poison gas. The ship, now propelled solely by its Orb of Levitation, crept slowly forward towards its mothership, while one of the crewmen hurriedly took down the rope handrail that ran around the small ship's fore and aft decks.

     To slide into its cradle it had to be exactly on target, so one of the men in the hanger deck waved directions to a crewman on the scout ship, who conveyed them to the smaller ship's Orbmaster. Up a bit, left a bit, down a bit... Strong commanded the scrying mirror to show the Jules Verne from outside and watched as the Dragonfly nudged its way in through the door, where the ship's gravity pulled it down onto the oiled slipway of the cradle. The scoutship slid easily the rest of the way to sit beside its twin, its upper decks mere inches below the hanger's ceiling, and then the door was winched closed. The crew, crouched over so as not to bang their heads on the hanger's ceiling, then eased their way out through the door in the scout ship's hull and began slipping locking bolts into position to hold the Dragonfly firmly in place.

     "Captain Strong," the hanger master said. "The Dragonfly is aboard and secure."

     "Very good," Strong replied. "I'll be down momentarily." He ended the Farspeaking link, and the magical connection was broken with a brief squawk.

     Arriving on the hanger deck, Strong took Matthew Winterwell to one side to hear his preliminary report. Like the rest of the Dragonfly's crew, Matthew was wrapped up in several layers of thick clothing, to keep out the bitter cold, and there were ice crystals frozen around his bearded mouth. It was colder than the Ice Continent out there. A climatic condition they'd expected after discovering that the worlds orbiting closer to the yellow sun than Tharia were also hotter than their homeworld.

     "There's nothing out there, sir," the Flight Leader stated flatly. "Nothing but rocks, wind and dust. We saw no sign of life at all." He began to flush with heat and struggled out of his heavy coat, draping it casually across a coil of rope sitting on the deck before starting on the thick, woollen layers below.

     "Nothing out of the ordinary?" Strong demanded. "Nothing worth a mention?"

     "Well, one thing, perhaps. At the extreme southern end of our search pattern, Rin Wellin said he could sense a very faint magical field. Probably nothing but a local concentration of ambient magic, he says, and he couldn't be sure there was anything there at all. It was at the very limit of his perception. We couldn't investigate without leaving the search area, and that far from the volcano it would have been too dark to see a thing anyway. It's probably nothing, like he says, sir."

     Strong nodded. "We'd better check it out anyway. We can use a Sun Stone to illuminate the area. The ship performed well?"

     "Perfectly. No problems at all. The only real problem was that all the winds blew towards the volcano. We had to use the elemental to move us outwards, but that wasn't the ship's fault. Sir, how can the winds blow inwards from all directions? The air has to go somewhere, doesn't it?"

     "We'll let the sages worry about that. Go see to your men. I'll be on the bridge."

     He returned to the centre of the ship, where Father Blandor was waiting for him. He gave his orders to the Orbmaster and the Jules Verne began to drift eastwards.

     "Found something?" asked the cleric.

     "Probably not," replied the Captain, who went on to explain the possible magical anomaly. "Saturn'll expect a full report, so we've got to check it out."

     "What if it's nothing?" the cleric asked. "Sereena's freezing, just as expected. The other planets will be even worse as we get further from the yellow sun. Possibly too cold for the scout ships to operate without some kind of protection. Certainly too cold for people to live on, and we know that the crew of the Rossem ship came from a temperate world. I'm more convinced than ever that their world does not orbit Tharsol."

     "I'm sure you're right, but we've got to explore the worlds we know about before looking for mythical transdimensional portals. Besides, a world may have a source of heat other than the yellow sun. You yourself mentioned the possibility of underground caverns, and we know it gets hotter the further underground you go. The wizard Ascar once told me of an inside out world he visited once, in the plane of stone. A great round cave thousands of miles across. Maybe one of the outer planets is like that, like a passion fruit. A thin shell of a world. Cold on the outside, warm and cosy on the inside. The Helm of Farsensing will tell us when we're closer."

     He picked up the Coronet of Farspeaking to send a message back to Tharia. "Strong to Lexandria. Can you hear me?"

     "Loud and clear," replied the junior wizard on duty. There was always someone back in the valley wearing a Coronet, in case a message came in. So long as the interference affecting long range magic was still present, long range communication was only possible if both participants were using one of the useful artifacts. "Have you found something?"

     Strong ignored the enquiry. "Tell Saturn to report in. Quick."

     There was silence for a few minutes while the young man went off to find the senior wizard, and then an older, gruff voice was sounding in his head. "Saturn here. You have something to report?"

     Strong bristled at the tone of authority and command. The wizard clearly considered himself to be Strong's superior, and that was an attitude he would have to be cured of when he came up to join the crew on a permanent basis. The men needed to know which way the chain of command ran. Morale and discipline depended on it, and any confusion in an emergency could be fatal.

     He shelved the problem for the moment, though. "Probably not," he replied. "Just a magical anomaly I want to check out before we leave Sereena. Send up a wizard. One with a good, strong magic sense."

     He sensed Saturn bristling in turn at his tone of command, probably remembering the time when mundanes showed proper reverence and respect towards wizards. A time he'd recently visited thanks to a powerful artifact they'd found drifting in space a few months before. Strong smiled. Those days are long gone, he thought, and you'd best remember that if you don't want to share the fates of your long vanished colleagues.

     Saturn clearly thought that Strong's appointment as Captain was a political necessity. Something they had to put up with if they wanted to continue to receive support from Belthar. The man wasn't stupid, though. He had to know the true situation. He had to know that a ship, any ship, needed a proper Captain. Someone who knew how to organise a crew and handle the delicate situations they might find themselves in. Saturn might have gotten away with his voyage to the Southern Continent without any major mishaps but that didn't mean he could handle a ship as large and complex as the Jules Verne.

     He did his best to avoid communicating any of this over the telepathic link, even though he could feel his face reddening at the wizard's imperious tone. "A conventional magic field?" Saturn asked. "Yes, of course it is if one of the shae folk sensed it. Only Gown can sense Rossemian magic unaided. Very well, I'll come myself. Don't approach too closely until I've checked it out."

     "Thank you for your advice, mister Mon Morchov," replied Strong acidly, and this time there was no mistaking the shocked outrage in the wizard's thoughts. A senior wizard, addressed as a civilian non crew member! As if he were nothing more than a carpenter or a sailsmith! Strong allowed himself a smile of savage amusement.

     "I have no intention of placing the ship at risk," he continued. "I look forward to seeing you here."

     He broke the connection before the wizard could reply and took several deep breaths to control his anger. "I can see myself having that man clapped in irons before this mission's over," he growled, rising from his seat and pacing back and forth across the small room.

     "I'd like to see that," grinned the elderly cleric. "You trying to put one of the world's most powerful wizards in irons. Don't worry, I'll look after you. A nice quiet pond to live in. Fresh flies every day..."

     "He is a member of my crew!" snapped the Captain. "His powers are mine to command. If he doesn't like that he can be replaced. The final crew selection is mine to make, and I can make changes any time I like."

     Even as he was saying it, though, he knew that Saturn was the only senior wizard who showed any enthusiasm for actually travelling aboard the ship of space, as opposed to the rest of the faculty who were happy to wait in their safe, comfortable laboratories for news to come back to them. Strong gritted his teeth in impotent fury. Somehow he would have to find some way of getting along with the wizard, but the man had to be made to acknowledge the Captain's authority! If the rest of the crew saw one of his men openly defying him, it could fatally undermine his credibility as a commander and bring disaster to the whole ship.

☆☆☆

      Saturn arrived a couple of hours later.

     The ship was hovering a few hundred yards above the surface, and when Strong joined the wizard on the railing they looked out across the planet's desolate, tortured landscape, still barely visible in the dull red glow of the volcano behind them. The clouds were lower here, and wreaths of smoke snaked their way between boulders the size of houses, hurled from the heart of the planet during the last major eruption. Despite the necklaces that surrounded them with a thin layer of fresh, breathable air, both men were almost gagging from the reek of sulphur and ammonia, and both men would sooner have died than reveal their discomfort to the other.

     "This is as far as the Dragonfly came," said Strong. "Can you sense any magic anywhere?"

     Saturn was silent for a while, gazing ahead into the darkness. "There's something," he said. "Not natural, unless I'm very much mistaken. Could be the remains of a coherent magical field. Some kind of area effect spell. I'd say there was a wizard here once, although not necessarily a human wizard. I don't think we need worry about him still being here, though. The magics are old and badly degraded. He's been gone for some time."

     "But he may have left something behind," said Strong. "Traps, perhaps, to guard his property until his return. How far away would you say?"

     "Difficult to say. A couple of miles. Maybe three, possibly four. No further than that, though."

     "Then we'll walk the rest of the way. No point taking the ship into danger. Orbmaster, There's a level plain directly below us. I want you to land the ship on it."

     "Land the ship?" asked Saturn, giving him a quizzical look.

     "No point taking a scout ship for such a short journey. By the time we've gone through the whole rigmarole of launching it and getting it under way we could have simply walked there. The Jules Verne has landing legs, we might as well use them. Also, if we run into trouble you can teleport us back a lot faster than a scout ship can travel."

     "Us? The Captain's place is on his ship. I will give a full report upon my return."

     "I'm coming with you," insisted Strong, though. "I need to stretch my legs. We'll take a couple of men with us, just in case."

     He turned and strode off before the wizard could argue further, cycling himself back in through the airlock, and as soon as the door was closed between them he cursed under his breath. The wizard was right, of course. The Captain's place was on his ship. He'd spoken before thinking, and if anyone else had reminded him of it he would have accepted the correction gracefully, with perhaps a slightly mocking smile to tell the bold crewman that he was humouring him. Sharing a kind of bantering camaraderie with him. It was a tactic he'd used back in his seafaring days to accept correction when he knew he was wrong without losing any authority.

     Saturn would have taken it as a sign of submission, though, and would have been encouraged to assert himself even further in future. He was therefore trapped into leading the mission in person, something that the soldiers among the crew, who knew what correct procedure demanded, would wonder at.

     Think before you speak, he scolded himself angrily as he waited for the pressure to equalise. Don't allow yourself to be trapped in a corner again.