Free Mazes of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page A

traffic, although twice we passed above argenters, their fat sails bellying and their fat hulls punching into the sea.
    We sat and talked and fiddled with our equipment and eyed the fleeing airboat.
    “He makes no signs of changing course.”
    “He is well aware we are following.”
    “Of course. And,” said Seg, “I’ll wager he doesn’t care!”
    “You think he wants us to follow into a trap?”
    “More than likely.” Seg ran an oiled rag down a sword blade that had been polished to a blinding reflection. “He knows you’re aboard.”
    “Maybe,” I said, deliberately ignoring Seg’s suggestion that if I were around then everyone would be setting traps for me. Mind you, by Vox, it was uncomfortably near the truth... “I’d suggest he’s a cautious navigator. He hugs the coast.”
    “Well, no one is stupid enough to fly northwest from Ruathytu, over the Western Hills and across whatever lies beyond. The wild men out there are plain murder.”
    “Yes. But it looks as though he’s going to fly along the coast and then turn due north for Pandahem. Cautious to a degree.”
    “It could be,” said Seg, looking up, “that he has one of the old Hamalian vollers that always broke down.”
    I nodded, realizing the justice of the suggestion.
    Now that we had formed bonds of friendship with Hamal, we did not have to buy inferior airboats that continually broke down. But there were still a lot about, despite the losses of the Times of Trouble and the wars.
    “If his flier does break down, we’re nicely situated to go down and haul him out of the drink. And Pancresta.”
    But the voller we pursued did not falter in her onward rush through the air of Kregen.
    Even at ten db [iii] the journey took a goodly time and I said to Seg, fretfully, “You’d think the Hamalese would provide the fastest vollers for their guards. Nedfar evidently overlooked that.”
    “Had they done so, that flier up front would be going as fast as we are.”
    Good old Seg! Trust him to sort out the idiotic remark and upend it for all to see. In this case the all was me.
    Then Seg stuck his face up, staring ahead.
    “Hullo. He’s changing course.”
    I joined Seg and we watched as the flier up ahead swung gently around, not losing distance over a too-acute turn, and headed into the northwest.
    “That course will—” Seg paused, and then went on “—take him between Wan Witherm and the Koroles. It looks like South Pandahem, after all.”
    We turned to follow.
    “It’s all jungles and stuff there, I believe.”
    “Well, he may fly on over the Central Mountains.”
    Settling down again to this stern chase, we brewed up, and ate some more of the rations. We estimated we could eat them all by the time we arrived at the south coast of the island of Pandahem. If the Spikatur people up front escaped from us over a simple matter like the lack of provender, we’d be looking silly.
    “Tighten our belts, my old dom. They won’t starve us into giving up the chase.”
    I laughed.
    “They will more likely escape through a lack of potables in this voller — yes?”
    And Seg laughed, too.
    We found a brass-bound spyglass in one of the lockers and took turns staring after the voller ahead. I summed up her lines, seeing they were identical for all practical purposes to our own voller’s. The differences were merely those of ornamentation. The reason why our speeds were so evenly matched was, therefore, simple. We all flew in the same breed of airboat.
    “When I worked in the voller yards of Sumbakir,” I said, “we built mostly personal fliers. But I recognize like and like. We’ll not catch that fellow unless he does something extremely foolish.”
    “That may be. But he has to come down somewhere, some time. Then we’ll drop down on top of him.”
    “Aye.”
    The air tanged with heat, now, the sea below a sweltering shimmer. The rush of the breeze blew as a solid wall of heat, hot and choking in our faces.
    “Southeast Pandahem,” I