Free The Early Pohl by Frederik Pohl Page A

fiddle note again—that was the second glider. Two gliders, each carrying two men, were gone; three gliders and eight men, if I'd counted correctly, were left.
    A third glider had taken off before we gained the position I wanted, commanding the catapults. I counted the men in the clearing. There were five; I'd made an error before, but it was all to the good—it meant one man less to take care of later.
    It seemed hours before the fourth glider was off and the time it took the three men remaining to wind the catapult again was weeks. But finally it was done.
    I have said that I am a good marksman. Though I had always had a horror of killing men, the thought of what would happen to Clory and me if I weakened strengthened my resolve; as fast as I could speed the arrows, the three men dropped, one after another, and Glory and I broke for the glider. We fastened ourselves securely and I yanked on the release cable. There was a dizzying surge of motion and the loudest sound I ever heard, as the catapult arm threw us far out and up into the sky. We were free and away!
    Clory had never been in the air before—few women or girls had. Her exuberance was unbounded as we skimmed on our way. I felt joyous too. It was a wondrous morning.
    Morning is the best time for gliding, because there are all sorts of convection currents caused by the rising of the sun. I pushed over the lever arm to send us down in a flat glide for the river bank. There was a small formation of cliffs there, big enough to send us a needed up-current. We reached it easily, and I spun the glider in a slow spiral as we climbed. We gained hundreds of feet of altitude before I levelled out, and headed in a straight line for the mountains to the North.
    The flight was uneventful. Almost automatically I took the lift from every up-draft under a cloud. We weren't going really fast—I've run faster—but we were making steady progress over forests and swamps and rivers. There was only one fly in my ointment. I was tired—had had no sleep to speak of, and I certainly couldn't sleep while we flew. Yet we could land only one way: permanently, since we had no catapult.
    My drowsiness grew and grew, as the miles slid by us. I had no particular destination; I steered by my shadow in front of me, cast by the morning sun behind. Though I kept reminding myself to stay awake, I drowsed again and again, each time coming a little closer to falling completely asleep and thus losing control. If only we could have landed for a second . . .
    I suddenly realized that Clory was tugging at the back of my coat. "Keefe!" she was crying urgently. "Look!" I thrust off my sleepiness and turned to her smiling.
    But there was a real alarm in her eyes as she pointed out over the forests, and my smile died when I saw what she had seen.
    It was another glider and it was flying straight for us.
    In my amazement I nearly lost control. One of the other ships from our Tribe—it had to be that. Though it was a mile away or more, between me and the sun, it was much higher than we were and was coming at us impossibly fast, faster than I'd ever seen a glider go.
    I had only one course—to flee. Cursing savagely, I dipped our craft until it was just skimming along the surface of the trees, fast as we could go.
    But not nearly fast enough. The other glider was catching up with us as easily as we were overtaking the motionless trees ahead.
    I wondered briefly how it had attained the altitude that gave it such speed from its initial dive, then turned all my attention to the controls.
    Clory was holding to my coat with fervor. I could feel her body shaking with sobs as we both leaned forward, trying to cut down air resistance. I hung on to the controls tightly, fighting with all my energy for an extra foot of altitude, a trifle more speed.
    A peak of green whipped up at us—crack! The ship jolted and faltered. I darted a glance below; we'd struck the top of a tree. Our landing skids had been wrecked.
    But