Thordad held out his bony hand. Angus grinned and clasped it. He chuckled, "Tell the Hierarch to dust off a shelf in his Literatum. I'll fill it with the Book of Nard."
Thordad smiled, turned on a heel and strode off into the darkness of an alleyway. Angus went on, eyes gleaming up at the hulk of the ship. He heard the wind whistling in the rooftops, and across the flat stretch of the square. With eyes and ears already occupied, he did not hear the sobbed cry Thordad managed as a hand closed on his throat, nor did he see the dagger dripping crimson in the hand of the man with the zigzag scar, rising to fall again and again in Thordad's body.
Angus went across the gangplank into the curved port. He pressed a stud and the door slid into place. Lights sprang to full illumination, revealing shimmering metal beams and cross-braces, glittering crimson floor, and long banks of control panels. Glowing tubes, slowly warming, flooded the gigantic room with a soft blue color.
Angus studied the meters. He drew down a red-handled lever. Far below the plasticine-sheltered engines throbbed, roared their power. Slowly the great hull of the globe-ship began to revolve, circling the inner ball. The fine margin of air-space, charged with electronically regulated magnets, made a soft, swooshing sound as the outer ball rotated faster. The inner ball, a gigantic gyroscope set in a magnetic field, held steady, while the outer globe swirled rapidly.
The globe-ship seemed a huge ball that some giant's hand was shoving through the water. It flipped water from it as it raced. Its bulk, designed for the minimum amount of friction in water, danced across the waves with terrific speed.
Angus watched the great bulk of swaying, restless water ahead of him, saw combers flee by, watched huge swells come and go, split by the globular hull. He flipped over the light-map and studied his progress, making changes in the directional needle.
He headed out across the heaving Car Carolan Sea toward the Flaming Lands, where no living man had ever gone before.
The Diktor turned from a contemplation of the serried bands of light glistening across the beaded spectragraph screen. A young attendant in golden jacket and breeches touched a button at his command and the screen went dead.
The drapes over the arched doorway at the end of the room billowed aside as an officer entered, clicked heels and bowed. His voice was hoarse. "Teoman has returned, Eminence. He bears news of the pirate."