peculiar-ah, indications-from an area out over the ocean and they sent us
out to look. My wingman and I found something, but we couldn’t communicate
with our base. I sent him back and went on in for a closer look. There was
a little tussle and I came out on the short end.”
It was Karin’s turn to sigh. “That is more or less what happened to me. I
was out on single patrol, near the great fog bank where this World
connects to yours, when I was attacked from behind. I managed to avoid the
attacker and I even got a shot off at it, but in the maneuvering Stigi
sprained his wing.”
“Sprained it?”
“Our dragons seldom hurt themselves so, but this is a strange place and
things are not exactly as they are in our world.”
“They’re not as they are in our world, either,” Gilligan said, looking
over at Stigi. The dragon’s head was resting on the ground but one
unwinking yellow eye was fixed on Gilligan.
“What jumped you, another dragon?” he asked as he turned so he didn’t have
to look at the dragon looking at him.
Karin frowned. “Something strange. It was all gray and roared as it came.
I did not get a good look at it.”
Uh-oh, Gilligan thought. Gray and roaring and came at her from behind. Hoo
boy.
To cover himself he asked the first non-personal question that came to
mind. “You keep talking about different worlds. What do you mean?”
“There is our World, where magic holds sway. There is your World, where I
gather magic works poorly or not at all?” He nodded and she went on. “And
there is this World, where both the things of our world and the things of
your world work after a fashion. But this World is new. Some say it was
created by our enemies.”
“Your enemies?”
“Powerful wizards who command legions of non-living beings,” Karin
explained. “It is said they prepare war against both your world and ours.
But surely you know this?”
“All we know is that there’s something funny going on out over the ocean.
We thought maybe it was someone from our world. That’s why I was sent to
investigate.”
The dragon rider frowned. “If that is all your people know then surely you
must return to bear word to them.”
“That’s my plan.”
Karin sighed. “I wish I could contact my base, but my communications
crystal stopped working just before I was attacked. I am sure my squadron
commander would know what to do.”
“You seem to be doing all right,” Gilligan said, looking around the camp
site.
Karin smiled. She had a wonderful smile, Gilligan noticed. Then she
sobered. “Thank you, but I feel so inadequate. I have been a rider for
just two seasons. I have never been in combat before. In that time there
has been no one to fight.”
“I know the feeling,” Gilligan told her. “I’ve been in for ten years, I’ve
got about 1800 hours in F-15s and I’ve never been in combat either.” He
had missed Iraq because he’d been in the hospital with hepatitis, but he
didn’t tell her that.
Karin looked astonished. “Ten years and never a battle?”
“We’ve been at peace all that time,” Gilligan said. Well, more or less.
“Actually we’ve been at peace for almost twenty-five years and we haven’t
had a major war in nearly fifty.”
“Forgive me, but if that is so then why do you maintain fighting fliers?”
“Because for most of that time we’ve been close to war. My nation and
another great nation were ready to go to war at a moment’s notice.”
“Yet you did not? You must be remarkably peace-loving in spite of it.”
Gilligan grinned mirthlessly. “Not peace-loving. Scared. We got too good
at it. We developed weapons that would let us destroy cities in an
eyeblink. Weapons we had no defenses against. All of a sudden a major war
didn’t look real cost effective.”
Karin shivered. “I do not think I would like to see war in your world.”
“Neither would we,” Gilligan told her.
“But,” Karin said thoughtfully, “with such weapons you would be powerful