"Thank you!"he said eagerly. After all, it's not as if I'm deliberately looking.

And while he'd been aloft in balloons and gliders once or twice, he'd never been up in a powered craft. It would be like a little hint of the fabulous days of old. His grandfather had been a helicopter pilot in a place called Vietnam, and the old man had lived through the Change, lived long enough to tell stories of marvels to a young boy then named Karl Bergfried. He had never seen his grand mother, though it was her inheritance that gave the slight umber tone to his skin and the tilt to his dark eyes.

The boat-shaped open gondola dipped and swayed beneath him as he kirted up his robe and climbed care fully into it, stepping onto the aluminum treads of the central catwalk. The crewmen-crew-women-were settling into the seats and pedal sets on either side, strapping themselves in. Their positions left them facing backward, and he noticed that a few wore crucifixes. Not an ounce of spare weight otherwise, though there were clips above each position for a bow and quiver, and a bundled parachute strapped ready.

Hanks sat behind the wheel, his feet on rudder pedals, and a board with control levers and dials beside him.

"Water ballast, emergency valves, ballonet superheat and venting," he said, indicating them. "Altimeter-that's from a small airplane-airspeed indicator, rpm on the propeller shaft, main cell pressure, reserve tank pressure. We can switch the torque on the main shaft to a compressor that takes hydrogen from the lift cells and pumps it into metal tanks just above the keel. It's more economical than venting if we have time."

"Fascinating!" Ignatius said again, his eyes taking the instruments in greedily.

"No, when we hit clear air turbulence, that's fascinating," Hanks said cheerfully. "So what say you strap in too, eh, padre?"

There was a seat on the other side; Ignatius took the suggestion. Hanks turned his head.

"Bosun, drop keel weights three through fifteen!"

The noncom went down the walkway, stopping at every second square of flooring to raise it and flip some thing underneath. Solid thumps sounded from under neath the gondola, and the blimp bobbled very slowly upward until it hung at twice a man's height from the ground.

"Lead ballast," Hank explained. "It counterbalances our fixed weight. We drop some of 'em at the beginning to set basic load for the trip, so we've got neutral buoy ancy at about ground level. The rest are for emergencies, and the side ballast-"

He pointed to aluminum water tanks along the rail.

"-is for ordinary maneuvering. We try to avoid valving gas or dropping ballast as long as we can-hydrogen isn't cheap."

Then, louder: "On superheat!"

One of the crew fiddled with something amidships. There was a thump and a muffled roar as a compressed gas burner went on. That made him itch a little, until he reflected that if it leaked at all, hydrogen leaked up.

And only a mixture with air is really dangerous, he told himself stoutly. And I do have this parachute.

The hot air went up a tube into the central body of the gasbag above. As the hot air ballonet expanded the outer skin creaked a little inside its netting. A sensation of lightness put a grin on Ignatius's usually solemn face; the ground was beginning to slide away beneath them. The anchor cable rose off the ground and ran up the mooring pole; then it dropped away as Hanks pulled a lever.

"All ahead full!"

"All ahead full!" the bosun cried, in an alto roar.

There was a mass grunt as the crew pushed at the ped als, fighting the inertia of the system-it was as light as possible, but Ignatius did a quick mental calculation and realized that it must still mass a fair bit in absolute terms. The big propeller at the rear of the gondola started to turn, slowly at first and then shifting into a flickering circular blur. Wicker and rope creaked and metal com plained as the thrust surged through gondola and keel and pushed the gasbag against the resisting air.

"We're under way!" Ignatius said in delight, feeling the slight but definite force pressing him backward in his seat, and suppressing an impulse to bounce up and down in it.

It was a little like being in a pedal car on a railroad, though the feeling was statelier than that alarmingly fast mode of transport. Buildings sank away to toy size below him, and people to scarcely more than dolls-as marvelous now as the other two times he'd seen it. The air grew cooler…

"Damn! Double damn fucking hell!" Hanks barked.

"What is the problem?" Ignatius asked.

"Wind's out of the east and we're going backward. But we're still rising… yup, that's better. We're getting some forward movement now."

The LeMay turned northeast, struck an updraft and soared, then curved around the city as the crew settled into a steady pumping rhythm.

Looking down, Ignatius was shocked out of his happy technical preoccupation. Roads pointed inward towards Boise from every direction, and they were crowded-crowded with columns of marching troops and baggage wagons. Sunlight glittered off spear points like morning on rippling water, and long plumes of dust rose from herds of stock driven along for provisions; wagon trains lumbered forward on rail and road with their beige canvas tilts strapped over bale and barrel.

White rows of tents were already going up in places, as regiments dug their marching camps. Cavalry patrols cantered about, tying the whole together. His lips pursed silently, and he gave a slow nod. The lack of frantic bus tle in Boise itself had made him think the locals were taking their time about gathering their host.

I was wrong, he thought. Then with a slight smile: Thank you, Lord, for a lesson in humility!

Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable; as a sage had said before the Change, in plea sure God whispered, in logic He spoke, but in pain He shouted.

"Yeah," Hanks said proudly, following his gaze."If the Corwin crazies think they can fuck with us and get away with it, they can think again."

Chapter Twenty

Snake River Plain, East Of Wendell

Near The Boise/New Deseret Border

July 21, CY23/2021 A.D.

"Good looking farming country, but too hot and dry for my taste," Edain said.

Rudi nodded silent acknowledgment, hear ing the effort it took the younger man to sound casual. The Snake River plain was flat here, flat and rich with wheat and alfalfa and potatoes and orchards where the fruit swelled towards ripeness, wherever the irrigation canals from the old-time dams still stretched; silvery-gray sagebrush-filled fields had gone out of cultivation for lack of hands to work them or pumps to raise the precious fluid. Much still endured, tilled by the soldier farmers whose earth-and concrete walled villages dot ted the land, grain turning gold under the hot sun, nearly ready for the reapers.

But the fields looked empty today, nobody at work, the livestock driven within the walls for safety or to the distant hills on the edge of sight northward. The gates of the farm towns were tightly barred now, with families and older re servists anxiously atop the fighting platforms watching the army of the Republic march by… and their sons and husbands and younger brothers joining it, trickles that joined together to swell the endless river of green and brown and steel-sheen that passed, with a rumble of boots and wheels and hooves, a trail of dust and the strong smell of sweat and oil and metal.

Edain lowered his voice: "I'm a bit worried about Garbh, Chief. In a battle and all, a big one."

The big mastiff bitch looked up at her name, grinning and wagging her tail slightly, then going back to plodding in the dust.

"If it's any consolation, I don't think we're going to do any of the fighting. It'll be a spectator's position for us, like the watchers at a baseball game."