33

Jill was about to ask him if he had not sent scouts out to look for materials to make another laser. At that moment Firebrass' secretary knocked at the door. Would Mr. Firebrass see Piscator?

Firebrass said he would. The Japanese entered and, after inquir­ing about their health, said that he had good news. The engineers making the synthetic diesel-oil fuel would be able to deliver the first supply a week ahead of time.

"That's great!" Firebrass said. He grinned at Jill. "That means you can take the Minerva up tomorrow! Start the training seven days ahead of schedule! Fabulous!"

Jill felt even happier.

Firebrass proposed a drink to celebrate. The skull-bloom had no sooner been poured, however, than the secretary entered again.

Smiling broadly, she said, "I wouldn't interrupt if it weren't so important. I think we've got a new airshipman for you, one with much experience. He just got here a few minutes ago."

Jill's near-ecstasy whistled out of her, like gas from a ruptured cell. Her chest seemed to be caving in on her. So far, she had seemed to have the post of first mate secured. But here was a person who might have as much, or even more, experience than she. A male, of course. He might even be an officer of the Graf Zeppelin or the Hindenburg. A veteran of the large rigid dirigibles would have more clout, in Firebrass' estimation, than one with only blimp experience.

Her heart beating hard, she looked at the man who followed the secretary into the office. She did not recognize him, but that meant little. There were scores of airship personnel of her day and of the pre-Hindenburg era whose photographs she had not seen. Besides, those pictures had been of middle-aged men who wore civilian clothes or uniforms. And many of them had facial hair.

"Chief Firebrass," Agatha Rennick said. "Barry Thorn."

The newcomer wore fish-skin sandals, a bright red-, white-, and blue-striped kilt, and a long black cloth fastened at the throat. The handle of his grail was in one hand and the neck of a large fish-skin bag in the other.

He stood about 1.7 meter tall, and his shoulders seemed to be almost half that wide. His physique was massive, irresistibly evok­ing to Jill the image of a bull. Yet his legs, though thickly muscled, were long in proportion to his trunk. His chest and arms were gorillalike, but he had almost no pectoral hair.

Short, curly yellow hair framed on a broad face. The eyebrows were straw colored; the eyes, a dark blue. His nose was long and straight. The lips were full. Smiling, he revealed very white teeth. The jaw was thick, ending in a prominent rounded, deeply cleft chin. The ears were small and close to his head.

At Firebrass' invitation he put down the grail and bag. He flexed his fingers as if they had been carrying a load for a long time. Probably, though, he had been paddling a canoe for a long distance. Despite the broadness of his hands, the fingers were long and slim.

He seemed very much at ease despite being with strangers and facing an interview on his qualifications. In fact, he radiated a well-being and a magnetism that inevitably made Jill think of that much overused and often inappropriate word "charisma."

Later, she would find that he had a curious gift of being able to shut that off as if it were light from a lamp. Then, despite his obvious physical qualities, he seemed almost to become one with his background. A psychic chameleon.

Jill, glancing at Piscator, saw that he was intensely curious about the stranger. His black eyes were narrowed, and his head was cocked slightly to one side, as if he were listening to some soft, faraway sound.

Firebrass shook hands with Thorn.

"Wow! What a grip! Glad to have you aboard, sir, if you are what Agatha claims you are. Sit down, take a load off your feet. Have you traveled a long way? You have? Forty thousand stones? Would you care for food? Coffee? Tea? Booze or beer?"

Thorn declined everything except the chair. He spoke in a very pleasant baritone without the usual pauses, hesitations, and incom­plete phrases that distinguished the speech of most people.

Finding that Thorn was a Canadian, Firebrass switched from Esperanto to English. In a few minutes of questioning, he got a capsule biography .of the newcomer.

Barry Thorn was born in 1920 on_his parents' farm outside Regina, Saskatchewan. After getting a degree in electromechanical engineering in 1938, he enlisted in the British Navy while in England. During the war, he was the commander of a naval blimp. He married an American girl and after the war went to the States to live because his wife, an Ohioan who wanted to be close to her parents, had insisted. Besides, the opportunities were better there for blimp pilots.

He picked up a commercial pilot's license also, intending to work for the American airlines. But after his divorce he quit Goodyear and became a bush pilot for several years in the Yukon. Then he had returned to Goodyear and married again. After his second wife died, he had gotten a job with a newly formed British-West German airship company. For some years he had captained a great blimp-tug which towed floating containers of natural gas from the Middle East to Europe.

Jill asked him a few questions in the hope that his answers would jog her memory. She had known a few airshipmen at Thorn's company, and some of these might have mentioned him. He replied that he remembered one of them-he thought. He wasn't sure because that had been so long ago.

He had died in 1983 while on leave in Friedrichshafen. He did not know the cause of his death. Heart failure, probably. He had gone to sleep one night and when he had awakened he was lying naked on a bank of The River-along with everybody else.

Since then he had been wandering up and down the Valley. One day, hearing a rumor that a giant dirigible was being built down-River, he had decided to find out for himself if the tale was true.

Firebrass, beaming, said, "This is luck! You're more than wel­come, Barry. Agatha, will you make arrangements to house Mr. Thorn?"

Thorn shook hands with everybody and left. Firebrass almost danced with delight. "We're coming along famously."

Jill said, "Does this change my situation?"

Firebrass looked surprised. "No. I said you'd be the head instruc­tor and captain of the Minerva. Firebrass always keeps his prom­ises. Well, almost always.

"Now, I know what you're thinking. I made no promises about who'll be the first mate of the Parsevol. You're a strong contender for the post, Jill. But it's too early to decide on that. All I can say is, 'May the best man win. Or the best woman.' "

Piscator patted her hand. At another time, she would have resent­ed the gesture. Now, she felt warmed.

Later, after they had left the office, Piscator said, "I am not certain that Thorn is telling the truth. Not all of it, anyway. His story may be true as far as it goes. But there's something that rings falsely in his voice. He could be concealing something."

"Sometimes you frighten me," she said.

"I could be wrong about him."

Jill got the impression that he did not believe that.