The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Ring - Part 1



Saturn didn't waste time trying to find a door but simply disintegrated a small hole in the wall of the block. He then moved aside to allow air to escape, giving no thought for the consequences to anything or anyone inside. He showed no reaction when nothing happened, however. No hiss of escaping air. Nothing whatsoever. He simply raised the wand again and disintegrated a larger hole in the wall, large enough to pull himself through.

It was totally dark inside, until the elderly wizard cast a light spell creating a small ball of radiance that floated beside him as he moved. Behind him, Matthew poked his head through the opening and looked warily around before following Saturn in, followed in turn by the other Tharians.

As soon as they were all in, Saturn cast a Wall of Stone spell at the hole to close themselves in, then cast another spell. A new one that Thomas had never seen before. Its effect wasn't immediately obvious, but soon the Tharians realised that they could hear again. Saturn had filled the chamber with breathable air.

"How long will the air last?" asked Drenn.

"That depends upon the volume of the chamber," Saturn replied. "The spell will create just enough air to fill a volume of up to a million cubic feet at normal sea level pressure. This place is large enough that there should be enough air to last us several hours, but so long as we're wearing the Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing it doesn't matter how long we stay. I filled the place with air so we could talk, not because we need it to breathe."

Thomas looked around. It had clearly been a dwelling place of some kind. A place where someone had lived. Someone's home. The chamber they'd broken into had been a bedroom, but it wasn't immediately obvious which of the walls had been the floor, or even whether it had had a floor. The block was currently without gravity, and if it had always been that way then they may not have seen any need to keep to a single up and down direction.

The idea that the inhabitants had lived without gravity was supported by the straps lying across the bed, similar to those used by the moon trogs to hold themselves in place while they tossed and turned in their sleep. The size of the bed suggested that the inhabitants had been roughly human sized, maybe just a little smaller. There were several drawers and cupboards in the walls, so stiff from disuse that Matthew and the other soldiers had to exert all their strength to open them, but when they finally succeeded they were rewarded only by clothes and various personal items that Saturn merely glanced at before discarding with a scowl of disappointment.

Pushing themselves out through the door, they found another bedroom further down the corridor containing two smaller beds. The children's bedroom. The blankets disintegrated into a fine powder as Drenn touched them, and the elastic straps broke away in his hand, crumbling to powdery fragments that formed a cloud around his head. The priest coughed and waved his hands, which only fanned the cloud out into the rest of the room, and the Tharians left hurriedly before they breathed it in as well.

"Nobody home," said Matthew as they entered a much larger room, one wall of which contained a large window through which a splendid view of the ring could be seen. The living room, thought Thomas. The place where the inhabitants had relaxed in the evenings, reading a good book or entertaining guests. The room was almost perfectly cubic in shape, with each wall a dozen yards square, and the wide space they contained was crossed by spars and beams to which padded handholds were attached. The Tharians used them to help guide themselves around, just as the original inhabitants must have done. Attached to the spars were various items of furniture, some of which, looked like rock climbing harnesses and could only have been the local equivalent of chairs. The inhabitants would presumably have buckled themselves in to stop themselves drifting about the room while they read books or whatever it was they did in their leisure time.