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“<>” He turned and saw Sergeant Broadax beam with pride and joy, inhaling deeply on her cigar. He saw the others nod their heads in agreement.
Even Swish-tail, now Broadax’s World, agreed completely. <
The Keel was made of a mysterious material carefully guarded by the secretive Celebrimbor shipwrights. This class of shipwrights existed in every race that sailed the seas of Flatland, and the men of Old Earth had joined that club. Ah, but at such a price, thought Melville. The “Crash” was the admission fee the Elder King claimed for Earth to join that club.
One end of the Keel was planted in the living earth. The other end disappeared up into two-space. Nothing of the Kestrel or Flatland could be seen from here, except for a rope ladder that hung down from the Ship above, seeming to be suspended in thin air.
It occurred to Melville that before he climbed up the ladder he should send his monkey on its way. He’d be sad to see the soft, gentle creature go, but it would be cruel to snatch it from its green home into impending battle. Broadax, Hans, and the three middies also moved to set down the baby monkeys that had adopted them. Prior to this the monkeys always permitted themselves to be set aside whenever their presence was unwelcome. Now the result was a comical, ludicrous dance as each of the sailors tried to grab a monkey that didn’t want to be grabbed.
The monkeys scampered round and about, up the Pier and back onto a shoulder. They were now in front, now down between legs, then they scrambled under jackets to hang just out of reach between shoulder blades. Melville braced himself against the Keel to grab his monkey and he felt Swish-tail say, <
That was good enough for him. While climbing up the Pier the monkeys were in direct contact with the Ship, and they couldn’t hide their true nature from this telepathic contact. “Enough!” said Melville. “We don’t have time for this. Let them come if they insist, and let us share our fates.”
“Aye,” said Hans, ” ‘Of’n the unbidden guest proves the best company.’ ”
Melville grabbed the rope ladder and scrambled up, followed by old Hans. His head popped into two-space and lo!, “the gray rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back.” And he beheld once again the stunning beauty of the “hidden land forlorn.” His ears were caressed again by that strange music, the celestial sounds of Flatland, and his eyes were bathed anew in the endless, vivid blue expanse of the “shoreless seas.”
Maxfield Parrish had known these blues. To the east was light, sunrise blue where this solar system’s star was influencing the vast plain of Flatland. Immediately around him was a small patch of blue-green that indicated a living world. To the south, west, and north Flatland began to darken into deep blue. In the distance he could see the midnight blue between solar systems. In the far distance he could see the sunrise blue of distant suns, blending together into a brightness that stretched all the way round the far horizon.
He looked once more upon all this beauty, and he knew again where “Kilmeny” had been.
. . . Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew.
But it seem’d as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been;
A land of love and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swa’d a living stream,
And the land a pure celestial beam;
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, and everlasting dream.
Flatland, or two-space (or the Calacirian, to call it by its Sylvan name), was what the sailors called the universe, the environment, the realm that they sailed in. Flatland was also what they called that blue, two dimensional barrier: the plane, the “sea” that the sailors sailed upon, which contains the whole galaxy.
In two-space the whole galaxy was squashed flat as a disc. Flatter than the flattest disc you can think of. Impossibly flat, since there was no third dimension. Except where they carried it around with them. This was Flatland. On a Ship you could view it from above or below, but the only way to get into real space is to go into Flatland, into the “real” galaxy.
The Keel, and the Elbereth Moss that grew in it and around it, created a field in which a piece of three-space could exist in two-space, in Flatland. Flatland wanted to squeeze you flat. It constantly compressed your little piece of three-space from top and bottom, and that downward, compacting pressure created a “wind” that pushed against their sails. The field of three-space concentrated the gravitational forces of flatland the way a sharp point will concentrate the electrical forces on a charged piece of metal, the way a lightning rod attracts the electrical forces above it. These stronger gravitational forces “above” the ship, on both sides of the plain, caused a downward flow of pressure on the ship that could be “caught” by the sails. The pressure was constant, a steady downward “wind.” By using forward-leaning masts and sails they could partially capture the force of this wind, making it possible to truly sail the shoreless seas.
Their galaxy was squashed flat, but other galaxies could be seen above and below them, as stars might hang above a flat earth. Above him hung old friends, spread thickly and densely across the black “sky” of two-space. Hanging directly above was Remmirath, a stunningly beautiful group of galaxies known also as the Netted Stars. All he had to do was look up at the Netted Stars to know that he was on the “upper” side of the galaxy, as convention and tradition agreed to call it. With one glance at this constellation, or any other patch of the Flatland sky, he could immediately orient himself to the cardinal directions.
To the “north” was red Borgil, and directly to the south was the constellation known as the Swordsman. One galaxy, its disc seen from the side so that it made a linear formation, formed the Swordsman’s shining belt. Two similar galaxies joined end-to-end to form his gleaming sword, thrusting to the west. The Swordsman was also known as Menelvagor to the Sylvan. Westerness had embraced it as a symbol of their kingdom, their vigorous young empire expanding to the galactic west from their beginning on Old Earth.
Direction of travel across the galaxy was designated as north toward the galactic center, and south toward the galactic rim, also sometimes called Hubward and Rimwards. Viewed from an arbitrarily agreed upon “above,” west was to the left, or Turnwise, when facing north. And east was designated to the right or Widdershins.
They had only been able to loosely relate what they found in two-space to what astronomers saw in three-space. The galaxies that hung above and below them in two-space, and the destinations they arrived at, often could not be made to match any “known” location in three-space. It drove astronomers mad trying to relate the sights and destinations of Flatland to what they “knew” existed in the “real” world.
A sailor popped into two-space. He sailed across the endless seas of Flatland. He navigated by the “stars” to a new world. He popped back into three-space, and the stars were different. Who cared about some astronomer’s reckoning? He knew where he was, and he knew how to navigate home again. What more could any sailor ask?
Many high-tech worlds flourished in the galaxy, but none of them had ever developed interstellar travel through three-space. Why should they, when the mystery, the beauty and the vast expanse of two-space and its “hither shores” awaited them? Why would any planet expend the vast resources needed to develop and conduct interstellar travel? Any civilization could sail to a virtually infinite number of worlds with no more difficulty than the sailors of eighteenth-century Earth traveled to distant continents. If they learned the secrets of the Celebrimbor shipwrights, and if they were willing to play by the rules of the Elder King.