below to work on their inventions. Occasionally he heard
or felt bangs and crashes under his feet. Kitiara, fully and
fetchingly buried in her fox fur coat, had gone to the dining
room and stretched out on the table for a nap.
Sturm swung the telescope left, over the pointed prow.
Solinari shone between two deep ravines in the clouds, sil-
vering the airship with its rays. He scanned the strange
architecture of the clouds, seeing in them a face, a wagon, a
rearing horse. It was beautiful, but incredibly lonely. He felt
at that moment like the only man in the world.
The cold crept through his heavy clothes. Sturm clapped
his hands on his arms to stir his blood. It didn't help much.
Finally he abandoned his frosty post, and returned to the
dining room. He watched the sleeping Kitiara sway gently
with the motion of the ship. Then he smelled something.
Smoke. Something was burning.
Sturm coughed and wrinkled his nose. Kitiara stirred.
She sat up in time to see the entry of a bizarre apparition. It
looked like a scarecrow made of tin and rope, but this scare-
crow had a glass jar on its head and smoke coming out of its
back.
"Hello," said the apparition.
"Wingover?" asked Kitiara.
The little scarecrow reached up and twisted the jar off its
head, and the hawkish features of Wingover emerged.
"What do you think of ъoperig's invention?" he asked. "He
calls it the ъefined Personal Heating Apparatus, Mark III."
  "Mark III?" said Sturm.
  "Yes, the first two prototypes were not successful. Poor
Fitter has a burn on his... well, he'll be standing at dinner
for a while. That was Mark I. The Mark II took off most of
ъoperig's whiskers. I warned him not to use glue on the Per-
fect Observation Helmet."
Wingover held out his arms and spun in a circle. "Do you
see? ъoperig sewed a continuous coil of rope to a set of long

underwear, then varnished the whole suit to make it water-
tight and airtight. The heat comes from a tin stove, here." He
strained to point at a miniature potbelly stove mounted on
his back. "A fat tallow candle provides up to four hours of
heat, and these tin strips carry the warmth all over the suit."
Wingover finally dropped his arms.
"Very ingenious," said Kitiara flatly. "Has anything been
done about the engine?"
"Birdcall and Flash can't agree on the cause of the dam-
age. Birdcall insists the fault lies in Flash's lightning bottles,
while Flash says the engine is fused in the 'on' position."
Kitiara sighed. "By the time those two agree on what to
fix, we'll have run out of sky."
"Could anything fly as high as we are now?"
"There's no reason why another flying ship couldn't get
this high. It's largely a matter of aerodynamic efficiency." He
thumped a dial or two and added, "I suppose a dragon
might get this high. Assuming they still existed, that is."
"Dragons?" Sturm repeated.
"Dragons are a special case, of course. The really big
ones, ъeds or Golds, could achieve very high altitudes."
"How high?"
"They had wingspans of 150 feet or more, you know,"
said Wingover, enjoying his lecture. "I'm sure I could do a
calculation, based on a fifty-foot animal weighing forty-five
tons -- of course, they couldn't glide worth shucks --"
"It's freezing on the inside now," interrupted Kitiara,
scratching the frost off a small pane of glass. She breathed
on the cleared spot, and it instantly turned milky white.
Stutts started up the ladder from below, but his Personal
Heating Apparatus caught on the ladder and there were
some moments of struggle to free him.
"Everything sh-shipshape?" he inquired.
"The controls are fine," Wingover responded, "but we're
still going up. The height gauge has gone off the dial, so
Sighter will have to calculate how high we are."
Stutts clapped his rope-wound hands together. "P-
perfect! That will make him very happy." The gnomes' lead-
er whistled into the voice tube. "N-now hear this! Sighter
r-report to the wheelhouse!"

In seconds, the little astronomer came banging up the lad-
der, tripped on the top rung, and fell on his face. Kitiara
helped him stand and saw why he was so clumsy. He had
pulled his jar-helmet on in such a way as to cover his face
with his long beard. Stutts and Kitiara worked and twisted
to get the jar off. It came away with a loud pop!
"By ъeorx," Sighter gasped. "I was beginning to think my
own whiskers were trying to choke me!"
"Did you b-bring your astrolabe?" asked Stutts.
"When am I without it?"
"Then g-go up on the roof and shoot the stars. We need to
know our exact p-position."
Sighter snapped his fingers. "Not a problem!"
He went out of the deckhouse through the dining room.
They heard his feet stomping across the roof.
"Uh-oh," said Wingover, staring dead ahead.
Sturm said, "What is it?"
"The clouds are closing in. Look!"
They had flown into a box canyon of clouds. Even if
Wingover put the wheel hard about, they would still plow
into a cloud bank. "I'd better tell Sighter," Sturm said. He
went to the door, meaning to shout up at the gnome on the
roof. About the time he cracked the door open, the Cloud-
master bored into a wall of luminous white.
Frost formed quickly on Sturm's mustache. Snow swirled
around him as he cried, "Sighter! Sighter, come down!" The
frozen mist was so thick that he couldn't see a foot beyond
his nose. He would have to go get Sighter.
He slipped twice on his way up the ladder. The brass
rungs were encased in ice, but Sturm knocked it off with the
butt of his dagger. As he cleared the roof line, a blast of
frigid air stung his face. "Sighter!" he called. "Sighter!"
The rooftop was too treacherous to stand on, so Sturm
crept forward on his hands and knees. Flakes of snow col-
lected in the gap between his hood and coat collar, melted,
and ran down his neck. Sturm's hand slipped, and he almost
rolled right off the roof. Though there was four feet of deck
on either side, he had the horrible idea that he would tumble
right off the ship and fall, fall, fall. Cutwood would calcu-
late how big a hole he'd make.

His hand bumped a frost-rimed boot, and Sturm looked
up. Sighter was at his post, astrolabe stuck to one eye and
completely covered with half an inch of ice! Snow was
already drifting around his feet.
Sturm used his dagger to chip away the ice around Sight-
er's shoes. His Personal Heating Apparatus, Mark III must
have blown out, for the gnome was now stiff with cold.
Sturm grabbed the little man's feet and pulled --
"Sturm! Sturm, where are you?" Kitiara was calling.
"Up here!"
"What are you doing? You and Sighter get inside before
your faces freeze off!"
"It's too late for Sighter. I've almost got him loose -- wait,
here he is!" He passed the stiff gnome over the edge of the
roof to Kitiara's open arms. With commendable agility, he
then scooted down the ladder and hurried back inside.
"Brr! And I thought winters at Castle Brightblade were
cold!" He saw that ъainspot was on hand to doctor the fro-
zen Sighter. "How is he?" asked Sturm.
"Cold," said ъainspot. He pinched the tip of Sighter's
beard with a pair of wooden tweezers. A quick snap of the
wrist, and the lower half of Sighter's beard broke off.
"Dear, dear," ъainspot 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 ъainspot.
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 ъoperig --"
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 ъainspot 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?"
"ъescuing 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 ъainspot 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 could
improve 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 ъed Moon
The ship's complement assembled in the dining
room. ъeactions 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 ъoperig.
"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."
"ъot!" 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. ъoperig began to shake. "What does a ship
in distress do when it's driven toward the shoals?" asked
ъoperig 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
ъoperig, 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.
ъoperig 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. ъoperig and Fitter pooled the anchor and cable on
the deck by the ship's tail. Cutwood, Sighter, and ъainspot
boxed 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.
"You could throw out the anchor when we say."
"I can do something, too," Kitiara said.

"Why don't you go to the engine room and help Flash and
Birdcall? They can't tend the engine and cut the power cable
at the same time," said the gnome.
She raised her sword until the hilt was level with her chin.
"Cut it with this?" she said.
"Certainly."
"ъight." Kitiara slipped the sheath over the blade and
started down the abbreviated ladder. "When you want the
cable cut, hit that crazy horn," she said. "That will be my
signal."
"Kit," Sturm said quietly, making her pause. "May Pala-
dine guide your hand."
"I doubt that I'll need divine aid. I've chopped through
thicker things than cable!" She smiled crookedly.
There was nothing in view now but Lunitari. Though
Wingover didn't change course, the moon seemed to sink
from overhead to bows-on. As the minutes sped by, the red
landscape spread to every horizon. Soon the airship was fly-
ing with the purple sky above and the red soil below.
The altitude gauge was working again. "Seventy-two
hundred feet. Four minutes to contact," said Wingover.
A line of jagged peaks flashed by. Wingover spun the
wheel hard to port. The wings on the starboard side flicked
past the sharp spires with scant feet to spare. The Cloud-
master careened farther, almost onto its side. Soft thumps
and muffled yells came from the dining room.
"Whoa-oh-oh-oh!" Wingover cried. "More bumps com-
ing up!"
The prow smashed into a lofty pinnacle and carried it
away. A cloud of