Pondar Walton cursed violently as his legs began to drift out from under him again and he had to grab the nearest handhold to get himself back under control. "Drassed low gravity! The gravity's supposed to be done by now!"

     "It was," replied Carlanta, the strikingly beautiful woman helping him to install the large glass sphere in its setting. "They had to take it off again when it interfered with the light spells. I tell you, my old friend, when this thing's finished it'll be so full of magic they won't dare cast a spell inside her in case it sends everything haywire."

     "It may go haywire anyway. Even with Shayen separation magics, you can't have this much magic in such a small place and expect it not to interfere, but..." He swore again as he struggled to get his feet back in contact with the floor. "I just wish they'd get the gravity sorted out."

     Carlanta chuckled. She'd gotten the hang of the low gravity in just a couple of hours, but then she was younger than Pondar Walton. A full two years younger. She examined her reflection in the smooth glass of the orb. People still called her beautiful, even when she wasn't wearing the beauty spells that concealed her grey hair and wrinkled face. She'd been one of the world's greatest alterers back in the days of her youth, and had dabbled more than a little with enchantment as well.

     She had been a power in the Kingdom of Kenestra, a force to be reckoned with, but younger wizards, also University trained, had been biting at her heels lately and so, with the advancing years taking the cutting edge from her powers, she'd decided to quit while she was ahead, retiring to a country estate with her huge fortune and a small army of retainers. She'd been prepared to spend her declining years there, but then she'd heard of the Rossem Project, the construction of a Ship of Space, and her imagination had been fired up as it hadn't been since the glory days of her youth. Leaving her estate in the hands of trusted managers, therefore, she had hurried back to the valley to volunteer. She'd never even considered research before, and it scared her a little to think how close she'd come to missing out on such a fascinating and rewarding pastime.

     The low gravity had one benefit. It made it easy for the two of them to move the four foot wide glass sphere into its cradle, padded with soft velvet and mounted on sturdy springs. Although the orb was very heavy (in Tharian gravity at least), it was also fragile, being hollow and filled with a special alchemical gas that Pondar had spent years researching. Even a relatively light blow would probably have shattered it. Pondar breathed a sigh of relief, therefore, as they eased it gently into position and fastened a pair of stout, padded straps over it, holding it firmly in place. No matter what violent manoeuvres the ship might make now, the orb would be safe and secure. They wouldn't have to worry about it falling out of its cradle and rolling around on the floor.
     "Want to try activating it?" asked Carlanta eagerly. "See if all our hard work bears fruit?"

     "It had better," grumbled the other wizard. "Three years of my life have gone into this."

     He reached out to touch the smooth, cold glass and spoke a sequence of tonguetwisting magic words. For a moment nothing happened and the old wizard's heart quivered with apprehension, but then the orb began to glow with a soft red light and he released his pent up breath with a great sigh. "So far, so good," he said thankfully.

     Carlanta led the way out of the tiny room, just barely big enough for the orb and two people. The walls, floor and ceiling of this very special room were twelve inches of solid sheet steel, an almost unbelievable amount of the precious metal, and the one door was built like the door of a bank vault. Once they were sure that the orb was functioning properly and wasn't interfering with anything else, that door would be welded permanently closed. No-one would ever again need to come in here, and this orb was one of three aboard the ship that absolutely had to be protected at all costs.

     Carlanta's hair, made to appear golden and lustrous by the power of the beauty spells she wore and that bore an organic fragrance that a man would want to bury his face in, waved around her head like seaweed in a gentle current as she pulled her way through the larger room adjoining the orb room. At the moment the room contained only a single bale of straw, but when the Ship of Space was ready to be launched it would be filled with organic matter. Mainly wood, paper and dead leaves because they were readily available all over the world in unlimited quantities.

     Over the duration of the voyage, though, it would gradually be processed into the uneaten residues of meals and bodily waste. This was the reservoir chamber, where the raw materials from which all their meals would be made would be stored, and to which it would return to be re-used when it had passed through the bodies of the crew. Like the orb chamber itself, this room would be permanently sealed when the ship was ready to lift. No-one would ever again have either the need or the desire to come here.

     The exit, which again would be permanently sealed once the reservoir had been filled, led into a foyer containing the stairs to the decks above and below. It also contained the entrance to the crew quarters, where the eleven soldiers would be berthed, and the gangway; a fifth airlock, larger than the others in the deck above, which would only be used if the ship ever landed on the surface of a planet. it was a possibility the designers had allowed for but which was not expected to actually occur.

     A pair of bored looking guards were on duty here, keeping a constant watch for saboteurs. All sabotage activity seemed to have ceased since the killing of Schoena Scull, the creator of the Orbs of Skydeath Protection, but the Beltharans hadn't relaxed their guard and there were still soldiers posted to cover all the project's most sensitive areas. They looked up as the two wizards passed them by, giving them a cursory looking over, but it was obvious from their manner that they were thoroughly fed up with this boring duty and would much rather be elsewhere.

     They were carrying loaded crossbows, since swords were useless in low gravity, and they looked as though they were ready to use them just as a way to relieve the tedium. Nevertheless, their presence comforted the old wizard, and he felt slightly better about leaving the orb unattended, although he resolved to have a word with their commanding officer about waking them up a little. Until the moment the orb was safely sealed away, it was an open invitation to the saboteurs to hurt the project in a really serious way. If anything happened to the orb, it would take weeks, maybe months, to replace it, and it wasn't just a matter of repeating his previous work, as the inherently unpredictable nature of magic meant that what had worked once might very well not work the next time. He still felt a burning resentment for the saboteurs for their attack on his laboratory over a year before, and he would dearly have loved to get his hands on one of them. He'd teach the bastards what it meant to defile a wizard's laboratory!

     Most of this deck was taken up by the enlisted men's quarters; a single open space which would, when the ship was ready to be launched, contain eleven bunks and lockers for personal possessions. There would be no room for privacy aboard the small ship, not for the lowest ranks of crewmen at least. It was like an ordinary ocean going vessel in that respect. There was a small laundry room, in which magic spells cleaned and repaired clothes left there for an hour or two, and a sanitary room containing toilets and a single shower, all that the available space permitted. The showers were a luxury that the shae folk had insisted upon, since their sense of smell was far more sensitive than that of humans and their confinement aboard the enclosed space of the ship was hard enough for them to tolerate without their having to endure the reek of smelly, unwashed bodies as well.

     This level was level four on the blueprints, Level one was the entire top half of the ship's twenty yard wide inner sphere, which would be landscaped with realistic artificial trees and real, living forest floor plants, with illusion spells cast on the hemispherical inner surface to give the impression that it went on for miles. This would be where the ship's eight shae folk would live, and the elaborate decoration was necessary to combat the chronic claustrophobia to which the entire shayen race was prone. Even so, Pondar knew they were having difficulties finding enough shae folk able to cope with the confinement.

     The bottom half of the inner sphere would be home to the two dozen humans, and was the only part of the ship that was divided into traditional rooms and corridors. Deck two would be where most of the actual work would take place and included the bridge in the centre, various laboratories and workplaces, storerooms, the galley and the chapel. Moon trogs would be able to come and go in wheelchairs, and the shae folk would also be expected to put in the occasional appearance.

     Deck three would contain the living quarters of the upper echelon of the human contingent. The officers, the four clerics, each representing a different God to cover all possible contingencies, and the four wizards. It would also contain the common room and the very limited recreational facilities which would probably amount to little more than a kala table and a dart board. Deck three would also contain the airlocks leading out onto the walkway that ran around the ship a few yards below its equator and which, apart from the hangar deck and the gangway, were the only way into and out of the ship.

     Soon, the ship would be sumptuously decorated, with wood panelling, concealed lighting and plush, padded furniture, but at the moment it was still stark bare metal. Hideously ugly in its functional efficiency. Pondar Walton cared nothing for the ship's appearance, though. At the moment, he was only concerned that the multitude of magics it contained worked properly. He made his way over to an alcove in the wall, therefore. An alcove from which a faint tingle of magic emanated. Soon, it would be fitted with a wooden door and would be divided into shelves and compartments, but for the moment it was just a square opening in the wall. Three feet high, three feet wide and a foot deep.

     Tassley Kimber was floating beside it, her golden hair tied back in a ponytail to keep it under control. She was steadying herself with a hand on a handhold, seemingly quite at home in the low gravity, and Pondar found himself fascinated by the way her sizeable breasts bounced lazily under her tunic. He made sure no sign of his interest showed on his face, though, knowing that she would take ruthless advantage of it in her continuing attempt to seduce him, along with every other male she came across, that being her way of controlling them and bending them to her will. It was a mercy that she had no talent at all for enchantment, but her beautiful body and her knowledge of how to please men gave her more than enough power as it was. For her, physical beauty was just a weapon. An asset to be used to get her what she wanted.

     She looked up as she heard the two older wizards approaching, and arched her back to show her shapely figure to its best advantage. It had become such a habit with her that she no longer knew she was doing it. "I've cast the spells as you instructed," she said, looking steadily and directly into the man's eyes. A stare she had perfected to the point where it could weaken a man's knees all by itself.

     Pondar returned her gaze coldly, though, feeling a slight amusement at her ongoing assault. She'd been one of his assistants for over two years now. If she hadn't learned by now that he was proof against her wiles, she never would. Persistence was to be admired, of course, and he found himself respecting her for that, but he'd have to see if he could get her married off to someone. She'd be her husband's responsibility then, and he'd see that she behaved herself. Perhaps young Edward, one of her more regular bedmates. They seemed to get on well together, made a good pair.

     "Exactly as I instructed?" he demanded, deliberately glaring and feeling satisfaction as her eyes widened a little with fear.

     "Yes, master," she replied timidly, dropping her eyes to the floor. "I followed your instructions exactly."

     "Hmph," the older wizard said doubtfully. "We'll see."

     He spoke a few words and swirls of light began to appear in the alcove, forming patterns of dazzling complexity which repeatedly broke up to reform in new patterns. Both women found themselves fascinated by the display, even though they'd expected it and had seen it before. Carlanta gave a gasp of appreciation as one particularly beautiful pattern appeared; an array of dazzling spokes revolving about a glittering, pulsating centre, surrounded by a nimbus of kaleidoscopic light, and she gave a sigh of disappointment as it too faded away. Pattern after pattern formed and broke up, dozens of them. Some of them were so beautiful that even Pondar's cold heart was moved by them, but finally the display came to an end. The last sparks of colour faded away like the embers of a dying fire, and then there was only the bare metal alcove again, with nothing to show that it was anything but an ordinary hole in the wall.

     "Hmph," said Pondar grudgingly as Tassley beamed with pleasure and relief. "The matrix seems to have formed properly, but now for the real test."

     He spoke a single word, and the alcove filled up with an assortment of food items. Apples, pears and oranges. Crusty brown biscuits, haunches of beef, lamb and pork. Entire cooked ducks and chickens, bottles of wine and water and a collection of sweetmeats, the originals of which had been prepared by the finest chefs in Belthar. With no shelves for them to stand on, no door to keep them in and very little gravity to pull them down, the multitude of food items drifted lazily out into the air, and as each one left the alcove an exact replica was created to take its place, each one created by the orb Pondar and Carlanta had installed on deck six using the bale of straw in the reservoir as its raw material.

     Pondar imagined that bale of straw getting smaller and smaller as its mass was consumed by the orb, and he knew that it had all been used up when food stopped appearing in the alcove, or the Pantry as it could now be called. The Pantrys of Kronosia had been the inspiration for this. They had been created three hundred years before by one of the last of the Immortal Wizards to help a group of eight noble houses and their descendants escape the fall of Agglemon, and Saturn had ordered an identical system created for the Ship of Space. That had been Pondar's job, and he felt a warm glow of satisfaction that he had succeeded in that seemingly impossible task.

     There still remained one crucial test, of course, and he grabbed an apple out of the air, staring at it longingly. He'd loved apples in his youth, and this one was firm and solid. He knew that it would be sweet and juicy; knew exactly how it would crunch if he dared take a bite out of it. His teeth weren't what they were, though, and even those he had left were getting loose in their sockets.

     He handed it to Tassley, therefore, and watched as she sank her even, white teeth into it. Watched her lips sliding along the skin as she slurped up the juice. She nodded that it tasted right, then shuddered at the sharpness of it. She preferred her apples soft and red.

     Pondar grabbed a sweetmeat out of the air, a small sugar confection with a cherry on top. He popped it into his mouth and sucked it thoughtfully. "The pantry appears to be functioning properly," he said at last. He spoke another word to de-activate its magic, then told Tassley to gather up the floating food and put it down the waste chute that led back down to the reservoir. On the way, the waste would be treated with death spells to sterilise it, otherwise the reservoir would soon fill up with mould and fungi. Not that that would interfere in the least with the food generation system, but it would be bad for morale to imagine what was festering beneath their feet.

     "I'll leave you to initialise the other Pantries," he then said. "It's a straightforward procedure and you don't need me any more. If you have any problems, you know where to find me."

     "Yes, master," said Tassley, who was wondering how to get the food to go down the chute in the absence of gravity. Perhaps she could throw it down. That was her problem, though. She had her instructions and she had to carry them out, so she meekly began fishing food items out of the air.

     "Leave it to us, you gorgeous hunk you," said Carlanta with a grin, popping a sweetmeat into her mouth.

     Pondar scowled, but the older woman was a colleague, not a subordinate, so he bit off the sharp rebuke that had appeared fully formed on the tip of his tongue and pushed himself away. Carlanta had a streak of flippancy that sometimes made him want to scream at her. She just wouldn't take anything seriously! But she was a fine wizard and had accomplished everything he'd asked of her. She and Tassley would probably get on like a house on fire as soon as he was out of the way, and sure enough he heard merry peals of laughter as he reached the stairs. Laughing about him, no doubt. Well Tassley would be too tired to laugh when she got back to Tharia and saw the workload he'd left waiting for her.