The Cloud Hunters

The Cloud Hunters — page 7 — 2 Morning Sometimes I would see the Cloud Hunters leave port in the cool breath of early morning It was hard for me to make my steps continue on their way to school after that They were all I could see all I could think of And to me right there right then there could be no finer life no greater excitement than to be sailing aloft in search of the great soft cotton wool clouds But I was just a school student and my father and mother were administrators and office workers They wore fashionable clothes and suits and kept regular hours They could never have been Cloud Hunters in a million years For the Cloud Hunters were like gypsies and renegades with earrings and jewels hennaed hands and tattoos bracelets and bands of gold and with dark mysterious looks They were outcasts and adventurers and I longed to be one of them the way that a volunteer knowing noth ing of war might long to be a soldier The reality of war its pain and fear its terror and discomfort and depriva tion meant nothing All the naive onlooker and would be recruit could perceive was war’s romance 5

The Cloud Hunters — page 8 — THE CLOUD HUNTERS Yes I wanted to go with them wanted to fly away to chase the clouds to sail above the sun and into the far reaches of the upper air I knew I would never get to go never not in a week or a month or a year of Sundays or any days at all But then my chance came and I took it and just for a little while I became a Cloud Hunter too So that was what happened That was my good luck And this is my story 6

The Cloud Hunters — page 9 — 3 Traders My father worked for a merchant shipping com pany a sky-trader There are so many islands here and their produce so diverse that there is a constant shuffling of goods between one isle and another The trading boats are vast affairs huge flat contain er sky-ships hundreds of feet long Or sometimes the cargos are transported in great barges one tied to the next all pulled along in convoy by a tugboat at the front There are usually a few security outriders too who pa trol up and down along by the barges making sure that nobody tries to steal anything There’s always the danger of piracy on the high skies The great container ships and barges ride on the solar wind in a ponderous stately fashion making slow but sure progress lumbering along like pods of sky-whales As well as watching out for pirates and hijackers the patrols have to keep the hulls of the boats free from sky lice and sky-riders Sky-riders are small cat-sized whis kery creatures with squashed-looking faces and smooth coats parasites in their own way that travel by cling 7

The Cloud Hunters — page 10 — THE CLOUD HUNTERS ing onto the undersides of the boats They can fly under their own steam when they want to but mostly they don’t They prefer to travel under your steam instead of their own They’re basically bone idle and all they want in life is a free ride For the most part they’re harmless or at least they are when it’s only four or five of them But one follows another as they like to be sociable and soon if you’re not careful the whole hull of a boat can be covered in sky-riders all holding on tight with the suckers on their feet Soon you’ve got a colony of them and they’re weighing the boat down Even one of the great barges can start to sink in the sky if too many freeloaders latch onto it Then as it falls it will pull the other barges with it until they all lose buoyancy and suddenly plummet toward the fire of the sun beneath Then it’s too late Even if the sky riders abandon the hull to save themselves the boats go on plunging down under their gathered momentum Whole cargoes and many lives have been lost that way So the outriders constantly patrol the barges on small craft They keep the sky-riders moving with prods and kicks for they’re thick-skinned and it doesn’t do to be too gentle with them and they try not to let them settle It’s an interminable job at first you swat them they come back you swat them again they come back again But once you are out in the Main Drift and far from land the sky-riders are fewer and you’re safe until you approach the islands again 8

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