Thomas found Karog Gunlubber in the crew recreation room, part of the hastily erected complex of prefabricated wooden buildings near the village of the mundanes in the centre of the valley. It was an area from which wizards were usually excluded, but he'd gotten special dispensation to visit it.

     The mood in the rec room was sombre. The two other human deaths had both been soldiers and conversations were quiet and subdued as everyone remembered the friends and comrades who'd been taken from them. Karog was sitting at the bar, staring into a huge mug of ale whose frothy head had long since gone flat, and Thomas sat beside him. He sat there, saying nothing, until the trog's sagging, wrinkled head turned to look at him.

     "He were one o' the very few humans I ever met who really appreciated numbers," he said, his gravelly voice low and reflective. "He saw the beauty of them as I thought only a priest of Caratheodory could. I was beginning to think I might've made a convert of him."

     Thomas said nothing, could think of nothing to say. The barman placed a drink in front of him, then walked away without asking for payment. Thomas hardly noticed it.

     "The thing I remember best," continued Karog, "is how terrified he was the first time we went into space, and how that fear turned to joy and wonder once he actually experienced it. After that they could hardly keep him on the ground. He was going to be a member of the crew if he had to stow away in the laundry room! He admitted to me once that he'd progressed as far along the path of wizardry as he was ever going to. His career had reached its pinnacle and all that lay ahead was a gradual decline into retirement. That's why the Ship of Space was such a godsend to him. It gave him the only chance he was ever going to get to do something new and exciting. He would have made the same choices, even if he'd known, known..."

     The trog let himself down from his stool and hurried from the room before his self control broke. Trogs never show that kind of emotion in public. Not even before their closest friends.

     Thomas remained where he was, thinking back on his few, all too brief meetings with the other wizard. Then he became aware that a soldier was standing beside him. He looked up and saw a young, freckle face man in a spotless uniform hovering, shy and embarrassed, as if trying to summon the courage to speak.

     "Sir?" he ventured at last. "You're the wizard Gown?"

     "Yes," confirmed Thomas, wondering what this was about. Was he about to be asked to leave this sanctuary for non-wizards?

     "You're the one who rescued the wizard Fugh from the Southern Continent?"

     "I was one of them, yes."

     "But you did the hardest part, the most dangerous part. I'm Private Bacon. I'm one of the men who was on the ship with him. He saved us all when he ordered us to abandon ship so fast. Someone else might have hesitated, and we might all be dead, but he saw immediately how serious the situation was and he had the common sense to act at once, so he saved us. And you saved him, so in a way you could say that you saved us."

     Thomas smiled a nervous, self conscious kind of smile. "I wouldn't say that..." he muttered unhappily.

     "Well, anyway, the thing is, you're a wizard, like he was, so you must have known him fairly well."

     "Not as well as I'd have liked. Most of what I know I heard from other people."

     Private Bacon sat on the next stool and stared eagerly at him. "I'd like to know all you can tell me," he begged. "I want to know everything about him. Please."

     Some of the other men in the room were beginning to gather around. Normally Thomas hated being the centre of attention, but on this occasion it seemed only right and proper that it be so. He took a deep breath, therefore, and tried to decide where to start.

☆☆☆

     Saturn, Tassley Kimber and Edward Parsley gently guided the trolley bearing the second Orb of Skydeath Protection into the teleportation chamber, taking the very greatest care not to subject it to any unnecessary bumps or jars. They were all very aware that their lives would depend on it when they arrived aboard the Jules Verne.

     "I thought orbs couldn't be teleported," muttered Edward as a serious looking young soldier closed the door behind them. "The teleportation spell interferes with the orb's magics and they stop working."

     "There is that danger with solo teleporting," agreed Saturn distractedly. "There was a danger that the prototype orb would stop working when Gunther and Karog teleported it down to the Southern Comtinent. We got lucky that time. With cubicles, however, having a device at both ends reduces the danger considerably."

     "Reduces?" said the assistant wizard nervously. "Not eliminates?"

     "You run a risk every time you cast a spell," growled the senior wizard irritably. "If that worries you I recommend a change of occupation."

     "I just like to be aware of the risks I'm taking," said Edward defensively. A thought struck him. "Could that be what happened to the first orb? Some sort of delayed reaction to the..."

     "Eddie!" said Tassley irritably, but the fear on her face showed that she shared his concerns. "Just leave it, will you?"

     "Ignoring the risks won't make them go away," pointed out her male colleague and sometime lover. "What we're doing here is potentially dangerous..."

     "And you are receiving credit points on your permanent record for volunteering to take those risks," snapped Saturn angrily. "Your careers will benefit as a result. Now shut up before I close the skin over your mouth."

     Edward shut up, half suspecting that the older wizard might actually do it. Volunteer, he thought however, half in amusement, half in angry resentment. Volunteer indeed. Saturn opened the cubicle's other door and they gently pushed the trolley out into the hanger deck of the Jules Verne.

     Edward tensed up nervously, even though he knew the replacement orb would be protecting him from the skydeath, but the glass sphere was so terribly fragile. One little bump on the way up to its setting... He put the thought out of his head with an effort. The first orb was put in place without difficulty. They'd have no problems here either. He worked hard to make himself believe it.

     Saturn spoke a word to activate the dormant levitation spell contained in the trolley and it rose gently above the ridged steel deck, coming to hover at about knee height. Edward and Tassley then guided it gently forward while Saturn went on ahead, making sure the way was clear. Some items had been dropped on the stairs and in the corridor above by the frantic crewmembers in their haste to leave. Items of clothing. A tin of metal polish. An oily rag. A leatherbound book, its open pages creased and crumpled where someone had stepped on it. Saturn kicked them aside as he marched on ahead, clearing the way for his assistants so they wouldn't trip over them.

     The Jules Verne had been transformed since Thomas and Matthew had gone through the Rings of Salammis. Then, the walls had been bare metal. Now, those areas of metal that could still be seen were painted battleship grey. The rest was covered with wood panelling, varnished to bring out the grain, and shiny brass handrails ran along every wall. Every floor was covered with richly embroidered carpet and, when they passed the crew lounge, they saw that the furniture might have come from a nobleman's mansion. The cutlery was fine porcelain and every chair was padded with rich velvet.

     Elmias Pastin, when he'd seen the plans and artists impressions during the ship's design phase, had laughed and said that it looked like the Nautilus; a fictional ship that his hero, Jules Verne, had created in one of his most famous novels. If he'd seen the finished ship, he would have joked about there being a gigantic church organ aboard somewhere.

     The three wizards reached their destination without incident, the open area under the bridge where two corridors crossed. Before they began work, though, Saturn went up to the bridge itself to check the ship's position. If it was about to crash into one of the moons they wanted to know about it. A moment with a Helm of Farsensing on his head was enough to reassure him on that point, but it was the scene still showing in the scrying mirror that captured his attention and kept him staring at it for several long minutes, an expression of awe and wonder on his face that he would never have let another person see.

     The mirror was showing the planet Rama. The second largest planet in the Tharsolar system, second only to mighty Talphon itself. Gunther's last command had been to take the ship away from the giant planet, but it still filled the mirror with its turbulent cloud tops arranged in striped bands and swirling oval storm systems, the winds that formed them blowing so fast and so fiercely that he could actually see wisps of colour rearranging themselves even as he watched.

     The planet was tilted a little towards him, allowing him to see its south pole, and that part that was in darkness was glowing with auroral discharges so bright that they outshone the rest of the planet, something that amazed the elderly wizard with its power and beauty. He had no idea that they were related to the tragedy that had befallen the ship's crew. Instead, he allowed his eyes to be drawn to the two small shadows cast by two of the planet's innermost moons as they moved across the planet's day side. He allowed himself the luxury of admiring the scene for a few moments longer, then gave a sigh and returned to where his assistants were waiting below.

     A hemisphere of steel in the ceiling protected the orb inside and Saturn reached into a pocket of his robes for the small wand he kept there. Much smaller than an ordinary wand, it looked like a silver pencil with a small, glowing crystal at the end. He reached it up to one of the rivets holding the hemisphere of steel in place, then paused, a look of puzzlement on his face.

     "What is it?" asked Tassley, staring at him in concern.

     "I sense magic in there," replied Saturn. He reached up to stroke the steel with the tips of his fingers. "As if the orb's still functioning."

     "But that's impossible," protested Edward. "The orb failed. We know it did."

     "Do we?" said Saturn to himself.

     "He's right," Tassley replied, her eyes unfocused and staring ahead at nothing as she concentrated on her magic sense. "I feel it too. The same feeling I get from the replacement orb."

     "Let's have a look," said Saturn.

     He used the wand on every rivet in turn until he was able to ease the metal cover away and lower it carefully to the deck. Inside, held in place now only by six thickly padded slats of wood, the orb glowed serenely, as it had since the day it had been created. Wrapping a protective blanket of magical energy about the ship exactly as it was supposed to. Edward and Tassley stared at each other in frank disbelief, but the look on Saturn's face was one of grim satisfaction and triumph.