“Build a glider, you mean?”
“It could be done—I believe it could.
Those wings are long enough.
Strong.
The thing’s body was larger than mine.
And the wind is blowing across the river, toward the jungle and the walls.
There would be rising currents.”
“Here are the wings.
But the rest———?”
“Not much would be needed.
The wings are already ribbed.
We need posts to brace them together, but we could cut canes in the jungle.
And twist fiber cords to lash them together.”
“There isn’t much time.”
“No.
It will soon be too cold to work.
Just a few hours.
But we’ve no shelter, no weapons.
We’d never live through the night.
No, Jay, it seems the only thing.”
“Yes!” Jay Kalam spoke suddenly, accepting the idea.
“Yes, we shall try.
But it’s a desperate undertaking, John.
You realize that.
An uncertain craft—if we can build one that will fly at all.
The danger you will be discovered.
The difficulty of getting on board; and then getting the better of Adam Ulnar, with only a thorn dagger.
Even if you get to the controls, there’s that spider-ship on guard.”
“I know,” John Star said soberly.
“But it seems the only thing.”
So they set out, in the face of every conceivable obstacle and danger, to do the impossible, first searching for tools, for sharp-edged shells, for rocks that would serve as knives and hammers, for the iron-hard jungle thorns.
Measuring the bright wings, John Star drew on all his old knowledge for a design into which they would fit, sketched it with charcoal on a slab of bark.
Then, in increasing cold and darkness, with the glistening wings, with struts and braces shaped from jungle cane, with twisted fiber cables and members shaped from the tough thorn wood, he labored hour after hour to construct the glider, while the four others roved the beach and the jungle fringe for materials.
They did not rest until it was finished, a simple thing, frail and slight.
Merely the four bright wings, braced together, with fiber thongs to fasten them to John Star’s body.
They bound it on him, and he ran with it a few times down the sand bar, into the bitter wind, the others hauling him with a rope of twisted bark, to try its balance.
He thrust two thorn-daggers into his belt, then, and fastened a long black spear to the frame beside him.
He ran down the sand, the others tugging on the rope.
He rose, cast it off.
His strange craft came up unsteadily, swerved and dived toward the sand.
He righted it with a desperate twist of his body—its only control was by shifting his weight.
And he soared up in the strong current that rose over the jungle.
He looked down, once, at the tiny group on the bar of black sand —three ragged men and a weary girl whose hopes had sent him up.
Four tiny figures, alone in the red dusk.
He waved a hand; they waved back.
Heart aching queerly, he soared on.
He could not fail them, for they would surely die unless he took the ship.
Jay and Hal and Giles —and Aladoree!
He could not let them die, even if their safety had not meant the survival of humanity.
Over the black thorns, now.