The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Attack - Part 5

     The Captain accepted his account impassively, giving no outward sign of what he thought of it, but Saturn never took his eye off him and Thomas could feel the older wizard's anger. His scorn and contempt.

     The others seemed sympathetic, though, and Timothy in particular gave him an encouraging wink when he came to the point in his account where he'd thrown the contaminated ruler. The instinctive, unthinking act that had turned the problem into a possible crisis. Thomas felt a wave of gratitude towards the cleric rushing through him. It was the only thing that kept him going.

     Throughout the five minutes it took him to tell it, a steady stream of other people popped in and out of the bridge bringing situation reports. The hull in the sections now in vacuum had been breached in two more places, and the airtight door leading to section four was under attack. Section four was being evacuated even as he spoke.

     "How far will this thing spread?" asked Strong when Thomas finished speaking. "Will we lose the ship?"

     "There's no way to know," replied Saturn, still glaring at the younger wizard. "If we're lucky it'll simply burn itself out in due course, but how much of the ship'll be left by then is anyone's guess."

     "What can we do?"

     Saturn gave a sigh and dropped his eye at last. "Nothing," he said. "I've already tried the only spell I've got that might have stopped it. If we were back in the University we’d gather a dozen or so senior wizards to tackle it, but here…”

     “Once we’re back in our own universe they can teleport aboard, can’t they?” asked Timothy.

     “No,” said Saturn. “They can’t. It takes a full day to teleport that distance, and by the time they arrive there may be no ship left. There may be no teleportation cubicle left for them to arrive in, and even if there is, it may no longer be working.”

     ”No longer working? What do you mean?”

     "The cancer is intensely magical, and it'll be interfering with every magic on the ship. Frankly, I'm surprised the Orb of Propulsion still works. The fact that it's in the centre of the ship, while the cancer's attacking the hull, may be a factor. The distance between them may he helping."

     "How soon before we're through the portal?" the Captain asked Prup Chull.

     "We can be there in just a few hours, but it won’t open onto our universe for nearly two days."

     "And the cancer's spreading at an inch a minute," said Saturn, his angry, accusing eye fixing on Thomas again. "Five feet in an hour. The smallest hole will be ten feet wide by then. The holes will begin joining together… If the central stairwell's breached, each deck will be isolated and we’ll be trapped in whatever part of the ship we find ourselves in.”

     “Activate the Orb of Skydeath Protection,” ordered the Captain. “Use it to put a bubble of force around the ship to keep the air in, like you did while we were searching for the portal. That’ll give us a little more time.”

     “For as long as the Orb keeps working,” replied Saturn, but he obeyed the Captain’s order and a couple of minutes later the moon trogs reported that they were no longer losing air through the holes in the hull.

     There was a knock on the door, and Borlin Bakklan entered, saluting smartly. "Yes?" snapped Strong, tensing up as he waited to hear the bad news.

     "Sorry to report that the galley's been breached," the navy man said calmly. "There's a hole in the ceiling connecting deck six and the wizard's laboratory. Commander Callan's ordered all nonessential personnel to the chapel, on the opposite side of the ship."