Thomas, Timothy and Prup Chull returned to the bridge together, the wizard pushing the moon trog's wheelchair, the cleric strolling along at their side. All three chatting happily as new friends will who discover that they have so much in common despite their widely varying backgrounds. For Thomas, their visit to the ship's outer shell, the zero gravity moon trog area, had been a confirmation of his great liking of the entire moon trog race which he'd formed during his first visit to Kronos back in the war.

     They left him speechless with awe, that such physically frail creatures could achieve so much; could perform the architectural miracles he'd seen on and in the smallest moon, but for Timothy, for whom this was his first real meeting with the frail, thin limbed humanoids, the sense of wonder had been much greater. He could only listen in stunned silence as Prup had described their gigantic farm domes, their vast road tunnels that ran horizontally, vertically and diagonally through the smallest moon, and their habitation chambers; lined with vegetation on walls, floor and ceiling and illuminated by sunlight channeled down from the surface by mirrors and fat bundles of optical fibres.

     When he'd gone on to speak of the projects that had been planned for centuries but which were only now becoming practical because of the help they were receiving from Belthar and the wizards of Lexandria, he did so with such confidence and assurance that the wizard could almost have believed them to be already accomplished. Covering all Kronos with a shell of glass, so that crops could be grown all over the surface of the smallest moon. Constructing arrays of mirrors for miles out into space so that all the interior tunnels and caverns could be illuminated more brightly than ever before. Even the colonisation of the other two moons.

     The elderly moon trog's eyes had glowed with dreamy excitement as he'd described fragile, spidery ships of space bearing vast sails of gossamer thin material to capture the winds of space; the gentle breeze that blew from Tharsol and the raging hurricanes that occasionally swept in from blood red Derro, signaled days in advance by the appearance of dark smudges on the face of the red sun. The deathspots, Prup Chull had explained, were constantly looked out for because they heralded the onset of a mysterious plague that struck down anyone caught up on the surface during its two or three day duration. Everything in the farm domes was killed as well, so that they had to be replanted with fresh seed stocked in the centre of Kronos.

     These sunblights, which fortunately only occurred once every thirty years or so, had traditionally been dreaded and feared, but now, thanks to the space winds that accompanied them, they could become a positive boon, allowing the moon trog race to increase by a thousandfold the territory they occupied. And when all three of the moons were occupied, there were other moons circling Tharia's neighbours in space, and other moons that seemed to circle no planet at all but which orbited the yellow sun directly. Their astronomers had discovered hundreds of them, crowded close in to the yellow sun inside the orbit of the first planet, and that must only be a small fraction of all that must exist. Ultimately, the aged but irrepressible moon trog could see no limit to the expansion of his race.

     "But we require one thing to make it possible," he had then said, some of the light fading from his eyes as the awkward practicalities intruded themselves. "When the spacewind blows from Tharsol it is too weak for us, unless one of our alchemists invents a sail material thinner and lighter than any before. Only when the wind blows from Derro is it strong enough for us to use with what we have now, but when the wind blows from Derro the blight comes as well, killing everything not sheltered by rock. Our ships of space may arrive at their destinations, but with crews of corpses."

     "I suspect that would happen even if you used the light winds that blow from Tharsol," Thomas had replied solemnly. "Our experiments reveal that the skydeath, as we call it, exists at a lethal intensity in deep space all the time. Kronos is protected by something most of the time, but my guess is that when the wind blows from Derro it reaches such an intensity that it's able to overcome that protection. Your ships would require protection from it whenever they set out."

     "Something like your Orbs of Skydeath Protection? Would you be willing to sell them to us?"

     Thomas gasped in shock and outrage before he could stop himself. "I'm sorry," he said as the moon trog spluttered an apology, not knowing what he'd said to offend the wizard. "You didn't know, but magical artifacts are never, absolutely never, bought and sold as if they were ordinary commodities. You can't put a price on the priceless. It would be like putting a price on a human life. There are three acceptable ways in which magical artifacts change hands. They can be given freely, as gifts, they can be lost by a careless wizard and found by somebody else, or they can be stolen."

     "Stolen?" grinned the cleric. "That's an acceptable way for a magical artifact to change hands?"

     "As far as other wizards are concerned it is," replied Thomas. "Of course, the rightful owner might not see it that way, but that's a separate problem. The important thing is that theft doesn't put a value on the thing that is stolen, whereas commerce does, so there's no way, no way at all, that Lexandria will sell Orbs of Skydeath Protection to the moon trogs. They might, though, donate them freely in return for something equally priceless. Information, perhaps. Knowledge that can only be gained from space. The use of moon trog facilities in space, that sort of thing. You'll have to talk to Saturn about it. Ask if he'll give them to you, for free. For nothing. He'll either refuse outright or ask for something in return, in which case you can take it from there."

     The moon trog nodded thoughtfully and thanked him for the advice, and as they took their places on the bridge Thomas found himself hoping that he would be able to work out a deal with the elderly wizard. It was too wonderful a vision for it not to become reality. Fleets of feathery, diaphanous ships of space plying their way between the rocks and moons of the Tharsolian system. Sailing the winds of the suns. He found himself entranced by the wonder and the beauty of it, and somehow he knew that it would one day come to pass, just as Prup Chull had described.

     What incredible creatures, he thought again. Such vision! Such ambition! Surely the future belongs to them! They will be the lords of the spaceways, and we humans just a bunch of groundbound apes fated always to stare enviously up at them. He found suddenly that the thought disturbed him, because envious people sometimes do terrible things, and for the time being at least the entire moon trog race was still confined to Kronos. Weak and vulnerable...

     Saturn entered the bridge a few moments later, nodding in satisfaction to see everyone else already there, and he took the Captain's chair with a sigh, letting himself sink luxuriantly down into it. "Anything to report?" he asked amiably.

     "No, Sir," replied Tana Antallan, who had replaced Rin Wellin according to a prearranged rota system. "We are in the final stages of deceleration. We will be at a dead stop in approximately five minutes."

     "Very good," the wizard replied. "Very good indeed. Well, let's have a look around, shall we? Crastalanta Window!"

     The magic words activated the scrying mirror so that it showed a view of the sky outside as though it were a window in the outer hull. Stars appeared in it, and as the elderly wizard rotated the angle of view the breathtakingly beautiful orb of Tharia edged into view, three quarters full. The Southern Continent was visible, green and brown and wreathed in feathery clouds, and Thomas felt a moment of fear as he remembered Jayra-Na, who had died from some mysterious form of death magic while observing it through a Lens of Farseeing. How safe are we? he wondered uneasily. We're no further away from that dreaded land than he was, so we're well in range of whatever killed him, but we're not examining it using magnification magic. Will that be enough to make us safe? He thought briefly of mentioning it to Saturn, but of course he already knew and didn't seem to think it worth worrying about. He tried to make himself relax, therefore, and put the idea out of his mind.

     "No sign of it," muttered Saturn when he'd swept the scene in the mirror back and forth a few times, "but that's only to be expected. Our aim was only approximate, after all, and we might still be a thousand miles away from it. Let's have a proper look." He reached for the Helm of Farsensing stored under his chair. "By the way, Master Gown, you might be interested to know that the clay man you failed to apprehend led Seskip straight to the saboteurs' hideout. Two of them are now in custody, and their reaction to some comments the Head Proctor made seems to support your theory regarding their feline nature."

     "That's wonderful!" cried Thomas in delight, but with a twinge of irritation at the 'clay man you failed to apprehend' bit. By the Gods! he thought with some anger, fingering the bruises that still showed on his throat. I saved the lives of everyone aboard. Isn't that enough? He was careful to keep his feelings out of his voice, though. "Maybe we've seen the last of the sabotage incidents then."

     "Possibly," agreed the elder wizard, "but there may be as many as four of them still at liberty. The Head Proctor has all his men on alert in case they try anything. An act of retribution, perhaps, or a rescue attempt."

     The Head Proctor, thought Thomas with a rueful smile. He still refers to him by his title in front of me, as though I were still an apprentice. When he speaks of him to me using his name, then I'll know he really sees me as a peer.

     Saturn placed the Helm of Farsensing on his head and closed his eye, waiting for the images to appear in his mind. As he was doing so, Thomas looked back at the scrying mirror, staring in wonder at the globe of Tharia and its backdrop of stars looking like diamonds sprinkled on black velvet. One of the moons was visible as well. Lara so far as he could tell, although it was on the far side of Tharia and therefore at a greater distance than most humans had ever seen it. And where's Kronos? he wondered idly. It was strange to think that he was as far from Kronos as if he were standing on the surface of Tharia, and as far from Tharia as if he were standing on the surface of Kronos. An equal distance from both of them. They formed a triangle of three equal sides, a...

     “Tana Antallan,” said Saturn, without looking at him or even removing the helmet. “I gave the order for this ship to go to the ring, did I not?”

     “You did, my friend,” the shae replied, frowning with confusion. “You heard me give the order before you left the bridge. We followed your instructions precisely.”

     “We should have crossed the distance by now, should we not?”

     “Of course. We completed the voyage some time ago.”

     “Did we? Then perhaps you can explain to me how we are still less than three thousand miles away from Kronos?”

     “That is impossible, my very good friend. We accelerated away from Kronos, towards the ring. By all the rules of navigation and mathematics, we should be ten thousand miles away from Kronos.” He looked across at Karog, who nodded his confirmation.

     “Perhaps you would like to look for yourself?” said Saturn icily, offering him the helmet.”

     “That will not be necessary. Your word is good enough for me, my friend…”

     “Don't friend me! The voyage we should have taken was the simplest possible. Just head directly towards an object we could clearly see ahead of us.” His hands balled into tight fists on the arms of his chair as if he were controlling an impulse to smash them into the shae man's face. "If this is a repeat of the Hummingbird incident then the collaboration between your people and mine ends here and now."

     "Please, my good friend!" The shae man was so shocked he looked about to burst into tears. "I beg of you! We set course for the ring, as you ordered. I cannot understand what went wrong."

     Thomas gave commands to the scrying mirror telling it to look in a different direction, and he stared in amazement as the battered, slightly egg shaped form of Kronos appeared in it. Much closer than it was supposed to be. “Saturn's right,” he said hesitantly, as if afraid that even agreeing with him would earn his wrath. “We've barely moved.”

     Saturn glared accusingly at the shae man, who continued to protest his innocence and ignorance, growing steadily more distressed as he did so until Timothy got to his feet to stand between them, anxious to calm things down before they got completely out of hand. "Please, both of you. Clearly something inexplicable has happened. Something that's no-one's fault but just..."

     "Use none of your clerical tricks on me!" roared Saturn in fury. "When I want the benefit of your soothing voice I'll ask for it!" Nevertheless he seemed to calm down after that, and Timothy returned to his seat with a sigh of relief.