The Worlds of the Sheaf

Veglia - Part 5

     The Captain returned to the bridge to see that the felisian homeworld had swollen to a fat crescent in the scrying mirror. "It looks just like Tharia," he muttered. He turned to Haskar. "Do all inhabited worlds look the same from space?"

     "As a general rule," agreed the felisian. "Blue seas and white clouds. There was a desert world we came across once that was all brown, but that was the exception."

     "That'll make it easy to spot them from a distance," said Karog. "When we enter a new universe, all we need to do is look at each planet through a spyglass. Look for the blue ones."

     “Some don’t have living worlds,” said the felisian, though. “Only about one in five of the universes we’ve visited.”

     “How many universes have you explored?” asked the trog. “How many of the worlds of the sheaf?”

     “About a third, or thereabouts. When we found your world, we concentrated all our efforts there.”

     "How far away are we now?" asked Strong.

     "About half an hour from entering orbit," replied the trog. "Then we'll need to know where to land."

     "Our felisian friend will be helping us there," said Saturn, turning his eye upon him.

     Haskar nodded and drew a map from the chart cabinet, unrolling it on the table. It was a crudely drawn sketch he’d drawn before leaving Tharia, showing the major continents in outline and with the names of the major population centres written in the felisian's neat handwriting.

     "You all live in one corner of this one land mass?" the wizard asked, looking at it.

     Haskar nodded sadly. "We used to be spread across the whole planet. Wandering tribes that crossed each others path only every twenty to thirty years, but the Masters rounded us all up and took us there, to their landing site. Now we stay together so that every female has as many mates as possible, to maximise their chances of pregnancy. Once our numbers have grown, and if our fertility improves, maybe we will return to our old ways. That is what we all dream of."

     "If your lower fertility is a result of some disease or ailment, we may be able to help you," offered Timothy. "A sufficiently faithful follower of Caroli can cure almost anything."

     "That would be wonderful," said Haskar doubtfully.

     Saturn, meanwhile, was giving orders to the scrying mirror to bring up magnified images of the planet. "Every land mass looks the same," he muttered. "You're sure it's at thirty degrees north?"

     "Give or take a few degrees," replied Haskar. "Geography was never one of my strengths."

     "Even a few degrees equates to hundreds o' miles," said Karog, however. "If their communities are as small as he says they are, they'll be hard to spot until we're right on top o' them. We might spend months looking for them."

     "Now that we have their full co-operation, they'll set up some kind of beacon to guide us in," said Saturn. "Isn't that right, my friend?"

     The felisian nodded. "They will have a ship stationed over Place-of-Toil. It will guide you down."

     "Place-of-toil?" asked Timothy.

     "The place where the Masters made us work, and the place where they left their machines when they left. We named it that so that the cubs would never forget what happened to us there."