"Dear, dear," Rainspot said, clucking his tongue. "Dear, dear." He reached for the astrolabe, still in place at Sighter's eye, with Sighter's hands clamped to it.

"No!" Kitiara and Sturm yelled. Trying to break the instrument loose would probably take Sighter's eye with it.

"T-take him below and thaw him out," said Stutts. "S- slowly."

"Someone will have to carry his feet," said Rainspot.

Stutts sighed and went over to help.

"He's g-going to be very angry that y-you broke his b-beard," he said.

"Dear, dear. Perhaps if we dampened the edge we could stick it back on."

"Don't be st-stupid. You'd never get it aligned p-properly."

"I can get some glue from Roperig --"

They disappeared down the hatch to the berth deck.

Sturm and Kitiara heard a loud crash, and both rushed to the opening, expecting to see poor Sighter broken to bits like a cheap clay vase. But, no, Stutts was on the deck, Sighter cushioned on top of him, and Rainspot was hanging upside down with his feet tangled in the rungs. "Dear, dear,"

he was saying. "Dear, dear."

They couldn't help but laugh. It felt good after spending so much time worrying whether they would ever walk the solid soil of Krynn again.

Kitiara stopped laughing first. "That was a crazy stunt, Sturm," she said.

"What?"

"Rescuing that gnome. You might have been frozen your- self, and I'll wager you wouldn't thaw out as easily as Sight- er will."

"Not with Rainspot as my doctor."

To his surprise, she embraced him. It was a comradely hug, with a clap on the back that staggered him.

"We're coming out of it! We're coming out!" Wingover yelled. Kitiara broke away and rushed to the gnome. He was hopping up and down in delight as the white shroud peeled away from the flying ship. The Cloudmaster emerged from the top of the snow squall into clear air.

Ahead of them was a vast red globe, far larger than the sun ever appeared from the ground. Below was nothing but an unbroken sheet of cloud, tinged scarlet from the moon's glow. All around, stars twinkled. The Cloudmaster was fly- ing headlong toward the red orb.

"Hydrodynamics," Wingover breathed. This was the gnomes' strongest oath. Neither Sturm nor Kitiara couldimprove on it just then.

"What is it?" Kitiara finally said.

"If my calculations are accurate, and I'm sure that they are, it is Lunitari, the red moon of Krynn," said Wingover.

Sighter appeared in the hatch. His hair was dripping, and his broken-off beard fluttered when he spoke. "Correct!

That's what I discovered before the snowstorm hit. We're a hundred thousand miles from home, and heading straight for Lunitari."

Chapter 8.

To the Red Moon.

The ship's complement assembled in the dining room. Reactions to Sighter's announcement were mixed.

Basically, the gnomes were delighted, while their human passengers were appalled.

"How can we be going to Lunitari?" Kitiara demanded.

"It's just a red dot in the sky!"

"Oh, no," said Sighter. "Lunitari is a large globular celes- tial body, just like Krynn and the other moons and planets. I estimate that it is thirty-five hundred miles in diameter and at least 150 thousand miles from Krynn."

"This is beyond me," Sturm said wearily. "How could we possibly have flown so high? We haven't been gone more than two days."

"Actually, time references are difficult to make at this alti- tude. We haven't seen the sun in a long time, but judging from the positions of the moons and stars, I would say we have been aloft for fifty-four hours," Sighter said, making a few jottings on the tabletop. "And forty-two minutes."

"Any other r-reports?" asked Stutts.

"We're out of raisins," said Fitter.

"And flour and bacon and onions," added Cutwood.

"What does that leave for food?" Kitiara asked. Birdcall made a very unbirdlike squawk. "What did he say?"

"Beans. Six sacks of dried white beans," said Roperig.

"What about the engine?" asked Sturm. "Have you fig- ured out how to fix it?"

Tweet-tweedle-tweet. "He says no," Bellcrank translated.

"The lightning bottles are holding up quite well," Flash reported. "My theory is, the cold, thin air offers less resist- ance to the wings, therefore, the engine doesn't have to work as hard."

"Rot!" said Bellcrank. "It's my ethereal air. All that flap- ping impedes our flight. If we lopped off those silly wings, we could have flown to Lunitari in half the time."

"Aerodynamic idiocy! That big bag is just a big drag!"

"Stop it!" Sturm snapped. "There's no time for these ridic- ulous disputes. I want to know what happens when we reach Lunitari." Ten pairs of gnome eyes looked at him and blinked. They do it in unison, he thought, just to unnerve me. "Well?"

"We land?" said Wingover.

"How? The engines won't shut off."

The room fairly buzzed with the brains of gnomes furi- ously thinking. Roperig began to shake. "What does a ship in distress do when it's driven toward the shoals?" asked Roperig feverishly.

"Crash and sink," said Bellcrank."No, no! It throws out an anchor!"

Sturm and Kitiara smiled. Here was something they could understand. Never mind lightning bottles and ethereal air -- throw out an anchor!

"Do we have an anchor?" asked Fitter.

"We have a few grappling hooks about this big,"

Wingover replied, holding his hands out, about a foot apart. "They won't stop Cloudmaster."

"I'll make a big one," Bellcrank vowed. "If we scrap a few ladders and iron fittings..."

"But what if we don't get the engine shut down?" Sturm said. "No anchor in the world will stop us."

Kitiara cocked her head and regarded Stutts severely.

"What about it?" she asked.

"How 1-long will it take you to m-make an anchor7" asked Stutts.

"With help, maybe three hours," said Bellcrank.

"When will we h-hit Lunitari?" Stutts asked Sighter.

Sighter scribbled across the table, around one corner, and up the other side. "As it stands now, we will hit Lunitari in five hours and sixteen minutes."

"Flash and B-Birdcall will keep working on the engine. If n-no other course is open, we m-may have to smash the engine b-before we can set down."

The gnomes erupted with cries of consternation. The humans objected, too.

"How will we ever get home if you wreck the engine?"

demanded Kitiara. "We'll be marooned on Lunitari forever."

"If we c-crash, we'll be on L-Lunitari a lot longer than that, and enjoy it a lot less," Stutts said. "W-we'll be dead." '

"Fitter and I will make a cable for the anchor," said Roperig, heading below.

"I'll fill the deckhouse with our blankets and pillows,"

Cutwood offered. "That way, we'll have something to cush- ion us when we crash, er, land."

The gnomes dispersed to their tasks, while Sturm and Kit- iara remained in the dining room. The scarlet expanse of the moon was visible through the skylight. Together they looked up at Lunitari.

Sturm said, "Another world. I wonder what it's like."

"Who can say? The gnomes could give you theories; I'm just a warrior," said Kitiara. She sighed. "If we end up marooned there, I hope there will be battles to be fought."

"There are always battles. Every place has its own version of good and evil."

"Oh, it doesn't matter to me who I fight for. Battle is my virtue. You can't go wrong with a sword in your hand and a good comrade at your side." She slipped a thickly gloved hand into Sturm's. He returned her grip, but could not dis- pel the anxiety that her words caused.

The gnomes, when aroused, had formidable amounts of energy. In less time than it takes to tell, Bellcrank had forged a monstrous anchor with four flukes and a huge weight made of miscellaneous metal parts from all over the ship. In his zeal to add weight to his creation, Bellcrank took ladder rungs, doorknobs, spoons from the dining room, door hinges, and only by threat of force could he be discouraged from removing half of Wingover's control knobs.Roperig and Fitter wove an appropriately stout cable; indeed, their first offering was too thick to thread through the eyelet that Bellcrank had fashioned in the anchor. Cut- wood filled the dining room so full of pillows and blankets that it was hard to walk across to the wheelhouse.

Lunitari grew visibly larger with each passing hour. From a featureless red globe, it had developed dark red mountain peaks, purple valleys, and wide scarlet plains. Stutts and Wingover debated endlessly as to why the moon was so dominated by red hues. As usual, they resolved nothing, Kitiara made the mistake of asking how it was that they seemed to be flying straight down at Lunitari when they had been going up since leaving Krynn.

"It's all a matter of relative reference," Wingover said.

"Our 'up' is down on Lunitari, and the 'down' on Lunitari will be up."

She set aside her sword, which she'd taken out to polish and sharpen. "You mean, if I drop a stone from my hand on Lunitari, it will fly up in the air and eventually fall on Krynn?"

Wingover opened and closed his mouth silently three times. His expression grew more and more puzzled. Finally, Kitiara asked, "What will keep our feet on the moon? Won't we fall back home?"

Wingover looked stricken. Stutts chuckled. "The same p-pressure that held you to the fertile soil of K-Krynn will allow us to walk normally on L-Lunitari," he said.

"Pressure?" asked Sturm.

"Yes, the p-pressure of the air. Air has weight, you know."

"I see," said Kitiara. "But what keeps the air in place?"

Now it was Stutts's turn to look stricken.

Sturm rescued them from their scientific quandary. "I want to know if there will be people there," he said.

"Why not?" Wingover said. "If the air thickens and gets warmer, we might find quite ordinary folk living on Luni- tari."

Kitiara drew the whetstone down the length of her blade.

"Strange," she mused, "to think that people like us live on the moon. I wonder what they see when they look up -- down? -- at our world."

Birdcall whistled for attention from the deck below. Bell- crank had removed the ladder halfway down, so the chirp- ing gnome couldn't reach a rung to pull himself up. Stutts and Sturm reached through the open hatch and hauled him out. Birdcall twittered a lengthy exposition, and Stutts translated.

"He says he and F-Flash have figured out a way to disen- gage the engine before we land. They will c-cut the main power cable a hundred feet up, and t-time the wing beats so that the wings will 1-lock in their extended position. That way, we can glide in to a landing."

"And if they don't?"

Birdcall held up one hand with the fingers flat together.

His hand dived into the open palm of his other, making a crunching noise when they smacked together.

"We have l-little ch-choice but to try." The others agreed.

Birdcall dropped to the deck below and hurried down to his engine. Roperig and Fitter pooled the anchor and cable on the deck by the ship's tail. Cutwood, Sighter, and Rainspotboxed up their most valuable possessions -- tools, instru- ments, and the big ledger with all the entries on raisin densi- ty in muffins -- and buried them amidst the pillows in the dining room.

"What can I do?" Sturm said to Wingover.