“The gravity fades off abruptly above the atmosphere,” she said, “and extends weakly through this universe. All the other planets have similar fields.”
Wolff did not wonder at this. The Lords could do things with fields and gravitons that the terrestrials had never dreamed of as yet
“This planet is entirely covered with water.”
“What about this island?” he said.
“It floats. Its origin is a plant which grows on the bottom of the sea. When it’s half-grown, its bladder starts to fill with gas, produced by a bacterium. It unroots itself and floats to the surface. There it extends roots or filaments, which meet with the filaments of others of its kind. Eventually, there’s a solid mass of such plants. The upper part of the plant dies off, while the lower part continues to grow. The decaying upper part forms a soil. Birds add their excrement to it. They come to new islands from old islands, and bring seeds in their droppings. These produce the fronds you see and the other vegetation.” She pointed at a clump of bamboo-like plants.
He asked, “Where did those rocks come from?”
There were several whitish boulders, with a diameter of about twelve feet, beyond the bamboos.
“The gas bladder plants that form islands are only one of perhaps several thousand species. There’s a type that attaches itself to sea-bottom rocks and that carries the rock to the surface when they’re buoyant enough. The natives bring them in and place them on the islands if they’re not too big. The white ones attract the garzhoo bird for some reason, and the natives kill the garzhoo or domesticate it.”
“What about the drinking water?”
“It’s a fresh-water ocean.”
Wolff, glancing through a break in the wilderness of purplish, yellow-streaked fronds and waist-high berry-burdened bushes, saw a tremendous black arc appear on the horizon. In sixty seconds, it had become a sphere and was climbing above the horizon.
“Our moon,” she said. “Here, things are reversed. There is no sun; the light comes from the sky. So the moon provides night or absence of light. It is a pale sort of night, but better than none.
“Later, you will see the planet of Appirmatzum. It is in the center of this universe, and around it the five secondary planets revolve. You will see them, too, all black and sky-filling like our moon.”
Wolff asked how she knew so much about the structure of Urizen’s world. She answered that Theotormon had given the information, though not willingly. He had learned much while a prisoner of Urizen. He had not wanted to part with the information, since he was a surly and selfish beast. But when his brothers, cousins, and sister had caught him, they had forced him to talk.
“Most of the scars are healed up,” she said. She laughed.
Wolff wondered if Theotormon did not have good reasons after all for wanting to kill them. And he wondered how much of her story of their dealings with him was true. He would have to have a talk with Theotormon some tune, at a safe distance from him, of course.
Vala stopped talking and seized Wolff’s arm. He started to jerk away, thinking that she meant to try some trick. But she was looking upwards with alarm and so was Rintrah.
III
THE FRONDS, SIXTY FEET HIGH, HAD HIDDEN THE OBJECT IN THE SKY. Now he saw a mass at least a quarter-mile wide, fifty feet thick, and almost a mile long floating fifty feet in the air. It was drifting with the wind, which came from an unknown quarter of the compass. In this world without sun, north, south, east, and west meant nothing.
“What is that?” he said.
“An island that floats in the air. Hurry. We have to get to the village before the attack starts.”
Wolff set off after the others. From time to tune, he looked up through the fronds at the aeronesus. It was descending rather swiftly at the opposite end of the island. He caught up with Vala and asked her how the floater could be navigated. She replied that its inhabitants used valves in the giant bladders to release their hydrogen. This procedure required almost all the natives, since each bladder-valve was operated by hand. During a descent, they would all be occupied with the navigation.