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.He smiled when he saw me-a great big beaming smile.One might havethought I was his only friend in the whole world."I'm glad that you're well," he said."Very glad indeed.I've been waiting a long time.I think we're readyto make another little journey, now."He was not ungenerous, mind.After some persuasion, he agreed to let me eat before we set out bravelyto face the perils of the unknown.He also agreed that someone else could drive the buggy.We suffereda serious breakdown in diplomatic relations only when it came to deciding exactly who should go.Hadwe settled it democratically, there is no doubt the makeup of the expedition would have beenconsiderably different.As it was, however, Maslax had the only vote worth mentioning, and hecalled the tune.Thus, when the iron maiden rolled out of her harbour in the underbelly of the Swan she carried a crew offour.Eve was driving, and Ecdyon was in the front seat alongside her.I was in the back with him, thegun, and the trigger mechanism for the bomb.I knew, and he knew, that neither Nick nor Johnny knewenough about bombs to risk tampering with the one on the ship, but I wasn't so sure they wouldn't try.I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlhadn't told them not to, and secretly I was cherishing a fond hope that they might get reckless and luckyall at once and defuse the thing.At the same time, however, I could hardly avoid the corollary fear thatthey might get reckless without getting lucky.We were all suited up inside the maiden-we had no illusions about the amount of risk we could safelytake.The vehicle was built to take just about any amount of bartering, but nobody had ever thought thatshe might have to run around on a world like Mormyr.When I got my first look at the vaporous caldron into which I'd dropped the Hooded Swan I felt asudden renewal of all the agonies of the drop.The synesthetic psychedelia that I'd experienced wererepresented here in living colour.The sky seemed to be about twenty feet above our heads, a boiling curtain of vapours that writhed fromblue to grey to red.All the colours were very dark-though it was daylight here there was less light to seeby than the stars provided at night on Iniomi-and they gave the impression of being spectral patterns in anoil slick.I had never seen a sky which gave the impression of being so heavy.It was not merelyoppressive, it was positively claustrophobic! It was as though the ground was one surface and the cloudsanother, with the merest crack between them.And it was all too easy to conjure up the illusion that thecrack was slowly closing, the sky slowly falling.I felt like a grain of wheat trapped between slowlyturning millwheels.And the sky was angry.There was no doubt about that.From point-blank range it spat raindrops andhailstones at us.The hailstones were often as big as chestnuts, and they shattered as they hit the maiden'ssteel carcass.They came from all directions, blown about by the wind which eddied madly this close tothe ground, and their bombardment sounded like fingers racing on drumskins.It was worse when the bigones hit the shield or the windows, because they didn't shatter, but bounced instead, and made a dullthumping sound like a big bass drum booming steadily away behind the rattle of the kettledrums.Needless to say, visibility along the ground was not too good.We had a fairly sizeable patch ofclearshield, thanks to the overlip that kept most of the rain off and virtually all of the hailstones out, butthe vapours were thick enough to cut clear sight down to a matter of ten meters, and the gross irregularityof the terrain often cut that still more.With a perpetual storm raging over it, and rain washing it, hailstones hammering it, I would haveexpected the terrain to be smoothed flat as a pancake, eroded into a perfect plain.But this was by nomeans the case.For one thing the rock wasn't homogeneous, and it eroded at varying rates, so that allaround us were squat, stubby projections twisted into the weirdest shapes, often holed or honeycombed,like impressionistic statuary.The curves and the swirling vapours could hardly refrain from suggestingmovement, but the movements all seemed to be impossible writhings and wormings as though the statueswere not individual shapes at all but were heaped multitudes of tiny creatures-snakes and frogs and blackfish.In addition to the uneven erosion, the misshapen configuration of the terrain was the result of continualvolcanic activity and earth tremors.The crust of Mormyr was very deep, but in its upper regions it wasuneven and unstable.Most of the tremors were inconsequential, originating far below us and at greatdistances, so that all we perceived inside the maiden were slight shivers.No great cracks appearedaround us, nothing was broken.Only the dust was really disturbed by the quaking of the earth-it wasshaken and stirred.It danced, in a region mere inches above the smoothed skin of the rock, blurring theground.We had very little to fear from the volcanic eruptions-those we were aware of seemed very tame.No Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlmountains rose to hurl flames and magma high into the air, though no doubt such mountains were not veryfar away.All we saw were small slits in gullies slowly oozing viscous liquid which turned the coloured raininto coloured steam and which cooled and bubbled and cracked and oozed in a constant but sluggishturmoil.What I did fear more than almost anything else was the lightning.Although we were not a tall target-theiron maiden was not built to be proud, but to be discreet-the projections that surrounded us were evenless so.We were able to choose low ground, for the most part, but we dared not risk the gullies for fearof the magma that simmered there.We had to compromise and do the best we could.The lightning madepatterns in the sky all around us-when there were sudden sequences of burst, we were caged by the light.The electric glare was the only thing which penetrated the gloom of the ground-hugging clouds-it wasall that came to us from without our stormy cocoon.Needless to say, driving was extremely difficult, hazardous and slow.Eve was a good driver, but hadnever driven in conditions which were remotely similar to these.Ecdyon navigated for her-we knewexactly where the Varsovien lay-but we made painfully slow progress.Even Maslax, however, had tocurb his impatience under the prevailing conditions.We had less than forty miles to go, but it was going totake us several hours and there was no way of getting around the fact.We maintained a dogged silence for the first hour or so, but the silence became almost as oppressive asthe sky
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