The air grew thin as the chimaera climbed. Tony found himself panting for breath.
“Easy, Abdul!” he gasped. “No higher! This is enough!”
The chimaera leveled off. Tony’s heart pounded horribly because of the lack of oxygen at this height. He felt dizzy. He sucked in great gulps of the unsatisfying thin stuff. Then he heard Abdul saying appreciatively:
“Pardon, Majesty! I had forgotten that even you will not wish to be too close to your enemies when they explode!”
Chapter 18
Tony could not answer. The way to live at great heights is not to exert yourself and to breathe fast and deep. He busied himself with getting his breath. Presently he felt a little better. A little, not much. The horizon had broadened for hundreds of miles, it seemed. He saw the halted djinn caravan far below. It looked like a short length of string on a sand-colored blanket. But overhead, the climbing, writhing djinns —the ex-king and those who still obeyed him—were such tiny motes that, strain his eyes as he would, he lost them.
He understood. Not only was his own weapon mysterious to the djinn, so that even Abdul expected him to strike down the fugitives from afar, but there was an even more rational reason for this long climb. Es-Souk, exploding at a fifty-mile altitude, had dimmed the sun and given off a momentarily intolerable heat. If the former king believed that the human-made apparatus Tony had seen would detonate his rebellious subjects at a distance, he must expect a much more terrible cataclysm below. He would get as far away as possible, though he had still to remain in atmosphere for support.
The chimaera soared in huge, easy circles. Abdul said inquiringly:
“Majesty? They have not exploded.”
“I—can’t see them,” said Tony absurdly.