Orpheus rolled aside, clutching his lyre to his breast, as the huge fist of Hercules slammed into the bulkhead millimetres from his head. He scrambled off along the wall like a cockroach, with the powerful bow-legged giant in pursuit. Hercules was awkward and clumsy in weightlessness, and Orpheus had a chance to live if he could keep out of the reach of those long arms until the big guy regained his temper.
"Give me that thing," Hercules bellowed. "I'll make sure you never rhyme another couplet about me again."
Orpheus was ready to protect his lyre with anything short of his life, for without it he was no bard at all, and it was unlikely he could ever get his hands another one of the rare ancient instruments. He turned, his back against the bulkhead, and held it out toward Hercules. When the big man reached for it, Orpheus tapped a key on the keyboard and twisted the dial. Hercules roared and covered his eyes as a brilliant light flashed in his face. Orpheus darted out of the reach of the now-blinded giant.
Tiphys blundered into Orpheus' path. The bard spun the old man helplessly into Hercules' embrace and the two struggled for a moment in mutual blindness, allowing Orpheus to put a few more fathoms of distance behind him.
But his foot caught in the cargo netting, and he wasted precious seconds trying to extricate himself. Hercules tossed Tiphys aside and, his vision beginning to clear again, kicked off toward Orpheus. His huge fist closed on the bard's throat.
"I'm sick of you, Thracian. I'm sick of your songs and your pictures and your know-it-all ways. I'm going to shut you up for good." He drew back his ham of a fist. Orpheus' fingers scuttled over his keyboard and hesitated for an instant; would an assault on Hercules's eardrums loosen his grip or make him mad enough to kill?
"Hercules! Let him go!" The voice had the ring of command, perhaps for the first time. Jason hung in the hatchway, his foot anchored in the cargo-netting, his bow pulled back and the arrow aimed at Hercules' substantial backside. Even in zero gravity, where the bow was an awkward weapon, Hercules could not avoid a painful injury.
"No," said Atalanta. "He deserves a good thrashing, and I'm sick of that lyre as well." The lanky girl from Arcadia had her own bow drawn and it was aimed at Jason's shoulder. With her long legs, she was able to anchor herself in the doorway behind him and there was no doubt she could render him unable to use his weapon for some time.
Orpheus fumed but bit his tongue. He was sick too. He was sick of Atalanta's tales of her precious Arcadian parkland and its Sapphic marriage rites; her air of superiority and disdain for men had been getting under his nerves for some time and he was beginning to have the same contempt for her that she had had for him ever since his first clever flirtations. He wondered, now, how he had ever found her slim body and long legs attractive. He was even more sick of Hercules, however; the muscle-bound giant no longer seemed a jolly fellow, fond of food and drink and full of sailor's tales of riotous living; he was sullen and awkward in free-fall, and his booming voice made Orpheus cringe. Even old Tiphys was a source of irritation; he did nothing but doze in his hammock and muttered in his sleep besides. What good was a blind pilot anyway? He was using up food that the others needed; they could not even eat the old man if the food ran out, he was so scrawny.
What he wanted above all was never to hear the sing of guywires and the gurgle of ship's systems again, or see the depressing emptiness of the Black Sea outside, or listen to the voice of Athena pronouncing her cryptic comments in response to Jason's incessant questions. He wanted to feel good gravity beneath his feet, to dine on something besides ship's rations and drink un-recycled water and lie on the grass under a blue sky, with the landscape curving up and over him, by the side of a real woman with meat on her bones, who giggled at his jokes and swooned over his rhymes and...
"Are you ready to put down your weapons and talk reasonably now?" Athena's calm and mellifluous voice filled the ship. "Atalanta, do you really want to mutiny?"
The Arcadian girl lowered her weapon and blushed.
"Hercules, do you really want to beat Orpheus half to death? You know how guilty you always feel after these incidents."
The big man sighed and released his hold on the bard. Orpheus coughed and rubbed his throat, still clutching his lyre to his breast.
"Jason, you can lower your weapon now."
He relaxed his bow, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
"I want everyone to gather on the bridge," the Guardian said.
Dutifully, everyone obeyed. Orpheus found a feeling of calm returning as he looked out at the great, torn, silver sail that covered half the cosmos before them, and the countless stars ablaze in the Black Sea. No one, he told himself, has ever been here before, this far beyond the Wandering Rocks, and even if he returned without the Golden Fleece, Orphei would sing of him for generations to come. Unless, of course, he failed to return at all, with or without the fleece, in which case no one would ever speak of him again.
"You have had your squabbles on this voyage," Athena scolded, "but you have never been this violent. What is it to be? Do you want to abandon the voyage and turn back?"
The Argonauts fell silent. Each of them was, in fact, heartily sick of this voyage, but no one wanted to be the first to quit.
"All the ancient sources agree on what lies beyond the Wandering Rocks," Athena went on. "First there are sirens, then a monster and a great whirlpool, and finally the mouth of Hell, from which one returns with knowledge. The first to earn the names of Jason, Odysseus, Hercules, Theseus, and Orpheus all travelled this way, though the details of the journeys differ, and each returned with a different prize. Orpheus, I'm certain, has all these tales at his fingertips."
"I have them," Orpheus replied, "and I have studied them as thoroughly as anyone, and I have come to the conclusion that none of them are to be taken literally, as real journeys by real persons."
"I don't understand," Jason said.
"They're journeys of the soul. They warn of the distractions and dangers on the path to understanding and wisdom. So, it just might be that there are no sirens out there, no Scylla and Charybdis, no Hell, no Brazen Bulls or Sleepless Dragons or Earthborn Men. Earth itself may be a myth, for all I know."
The young hero was astonished. "If this is true..."
"If this is true," Orpheus finished the thought for him, "we are sailing into nothing for nothing, and we ought to tack about and sail home before we all die of starvation or murder each other in our hammocks." There: he said it.
"Orpheus may have stumbled upon the truth, despite himself," Atalanta said. "We were all raised on tales of golden fleece and golden apples, blessed isles and secret gardens. The stories encouraged explorers to set out across the Black Sea and return with slaves and booty. But I've often wondered myself if any of them were true."
"I've been told," Hercules added, "and by more than one old sailor, that our Belter ancestors made their living from mining the Wandering Rocks themselves, and the labours of the first Hercules were only the engineering feats that created our islands in the Sea. We are told that the isle of Tiryns itself was created to breed people of great strength to labour for Jupiter, and it's been suggested that Jupiter was only the powerful boss of a Belter colony."
Old Tiphys laughed scornfully. "Do you think you're the first Argonauts to have these doubts? I've piloted more than one Argosy, you know. Some ended in disaster, it's true, but many more returned with riches or wisdom, or both. Orpheus is prattling on about symbolism. What would you call this conversation? It's a siren-song, a distraction. Why do you think the pilot is usually old and sometimes even blind? Because the guidance you need is not the visible stars, it's the memory of past disasters and triumphs. Orpheus is right: it is a journey into the self, but it takes place in the real world. Am I right, Athena?"
"Yes, you are, Tiphys. Perhaps, my Argonauts, you ought to hear the sounds I have been listening to for some days now."
"Hear? How can you hear in space?"
"I hear radio waves, Jason, just as I see in bands of the light spectrum that you are blind to, and I feel magnetic currents in space as keenly as you feel the wind upon your face. But I can translate these waves into sounds that you can hear. Shall I do so?"
"Yes, please," said Jason.
Their ears were filled with a high-pitched wail, like the screams of the damned, rising and falling in waves. Mixed in with this sound was a blaring horn, endlessly repeating the same few notes, like an orchestra of madmen. The Argonauts clapped their hands over their ears and begged Athena to stop. Then there was blessed silence, broken only by the sing of guywires and the gurgle of ship's fluid in the bulkheads.
"What is that?" Jason demanded. "Where does it come from?"
"It comes from an island of some sort, and we are currently tacking to intercept its orbit," Athena said. "The sounds you hear are man-made signals. They are called sirens."
The Argonauts were stunned and began to whisper among themselves. "Can you show us this island?" Jason asked.
The image of the star-field outside shifted slightly and was replaced by another. An object, black on one side and sunlit on the other, appeared to drift across the cosmos.
"We are approaching rapidly," Athena said, "and you will soon be seeing it in greater detail. It is surrounded by dangerous currents."
"How do you know that?" Jason asked.
"Every object," Athena told him, "creates eddies in the wind from the sun. As we are tacking sunward, our sail is affected by every object upwind from us, and I can feel them as keenly as you might feel a change in air currents as someone passes you in the companionway. There are two separate disturbances, one at each end of the island. Judging by the types of particles affected, and the type of contamination involved, I would say that one end of the island is radioactive, and the other has been affected by a powerful magnetic charge."
"Scylla and Charybdis?" Orpheus wondered aloud. "The association between radioactivity and monsters is well known. Many of us have seen the two-headed rats that come from the old reactor chambers on our islands. Perhaps the monster Scylla dwells inside that radioactivity. And Charybdis is described as a whirlpool that can suck ships to their doom. I'd say a powerful magnetic source could do that."
"Then we must steer a course between them," Jason said, "to land in the centre and avoid the dangers at either end. But is this Colchis or the mouth of Hell?"
"I cannot tell you this," said Athena. "But I have deciphered the call of the sirens. There are two distinct messages being broadcast simultaneously, continuously repeated."
"What are they?"
"One is a plea for help, and the other is a warning to stay away."
This did not relieve the Argonaut's tension as they approached the island, and a closer look did not clear up any of the mystery. The island was unlike anything they had seen before; it was cylindrical and extremely long, with a huge funnel-shaped basket at one end and a collection of blackened ports and plates at the other. The former, Athena pointed out, was magnetic, and the latter was highly radioactive. The thing had solar panels, a few dishes, and some observation ports, but it lacked the most important features of any island--mirrors and window-panels. There was a revolving central part with a Y-shaped cross-section, which they assumed to be revolving to provide gravity to a residential area, but the Argonauts could see no way the inhabitants might grow crops.
"Perhaps it's a factory town," Hercules suggested.
"Even a factory town must have an agricultural torus, or some way to grow food."
"It's a mining town," Hercules laughed. "They extract gold from the Black Sea with that funnel and smelt it at the other end. Inside, the streets are paved with gold and the citizens wear golden fleece. Everything shines so bright they don’t need the sun."
"Look there," said Jason. "Writing and a picture of some sort, bathed in light. Can you read it, Athena?"
"Yes, I can. I will magnify it for you."
A portion of the island appeared, much magnified on the screen. The great letters and the accompanying picture were blackened and pitted from long exposure to space, but they could read the words.
"What is it?" Tiphys demanded, squinting.
"It’s a picture of a ram’s head," said Orpheus, "and the word 'Aries' in large letters."
"The sign of the Ram," said Tiphys. "This is Colchis, without a doubt."
"It would seem to be so," Athena said. "The data which Circe gave me, however reluctantly, seems to be accurate."
"Wait, there’s more," Jason said. "Something printed in smaller letters. 'Interstellar Ram Jet. Deimos Yards. Mars.' And a string of numbers. Does that make sense to anyone?"
"The Golden Fleece," Orpheus suggested, "is said to be located on the Plain of Mars, near Colchis. The word Deimos means terror, which I guess is a warning. The Colchians are not supposed to be very friendly. Interstellar Ram must refer to the constellation of Aries, but Jet means black, not gold."
"Face it, Bard," Hercules scoffed. "This is an ancient dialect, of which you know nothing. We're looking for the Golden Ram, and here is not only the word ram, but a picture of it as well. What more do you want?"
"A few minutes ago, Herk, you were doubting even Jupiter. Now you’re willing to rush in, despite all the warnings..."
"You see that centre section of the island, Thracian? It spins. That means gravity, and at this point I'd rush into Hell itself to feel weight on my feet again."
***
The island stretched out before them as the Argo's launch separated from the gondola and fell toward it. Portions of the interior still had power, for there were lights ablaze behind some ports, and other lights were blinking in different colours for unknown purposes at various points upon the superstructure. The central section revolved soundlessly. For a moment, Jason felt as if he had slipped into a dream. This long island like a titan’s battle-axe, and the vast sail of the Argo, like a gleaming shield, drifted together silently in the Black Sea, dwarfing the tiny ship's launch as it crossed the space between them.
"Look there," said Jason, who was at the helm. "A cave."
The launch drifted into the black opening and in a moment, they could make out shadowy forms frozen in silence about them--monsters of great size, turned to stone in the very process of crawling out of the walls, as if some mad Gorgon had loosed her magic upon them while they prepared to battle for possession of the cave.
Gradually, however, the Argonauts understood what they were seeing. The huge dragonfly with iridescent wings was really a ship with great solar panels; its legs were for gripping cargo, and the bulbous eyes were ports behind which a pilot and a crane operator could sit. And so, they reasoned, the giant ants and spiders must be loaders of some sort, and the great bird with the swept-back wings and capacious mouth must be a cargo vessel with an open loading hatch at its forward end.
They felt no relief at this realization. These objects may not have been the monsters they seemed at first, but they were the artefacts of an ancient and powerful race. If they had happened upon the forge of Hephaestus and glimpsed its bronze automatons at work hammering out the arms of Achilles, they could not have been more awed. The launch slipped into a mooring and mated with a lock; the clanging seemed to echo in vast spaces and the air hissed with menace. The hatch opened and the scent of decay and ancient must washed over them. They peered down a black corridor that curved away into invisibility as if peering into an open grave.
"Tiphys will remain behind to guard the launch," said Jason. "The others will follow me."
He kicked off through the hatch and darted down the corridor with the fearlessness of youth; Orpheus, Atalanta, and Hercules were ashamed not to follow, though Orpheus did turn to whisper in the old pilot’s ear: "Listen well for our return, Old Man. We may come back in a hurry, pursued by ghosts and monsters. You’ll hear me screaming for some distance, I think." Then he kicked off in hasty pursuit of the others.
***
Something more than the scent of decay or the thick layer of dust clinging to the bulkheads told them they were exploring corridors of extreme antiquity. Every time they touched the wall to propel themselves forward, they seemed to feel the presence of ghosts--of beings who had abandoned these passageways long before even Old Tiphys was born, humans of such technological power and sophistication that they were like another race. How had darkness come upon them?
They entered a chamber that revolved, from which three branches led off to vanish around curving walls--ramps, obviously, that led to the three residential zones they had seen revolving in the centre of the ship. Beside each corridor was the stylized bust of a woman in bas-relief.
"That's Artemis, my patron," Atalanta said, indicating the young huntress with one bare breast. "The middle-aged woman with the basket is Selene, and the old woman with the spinning-wheel is Hecate. They're really aspects of the same goddess."
"I believe we should take the way guarded by Hecate," said Orpheus. "According to the oracle, Jason is guided by a girl named Medea, a priestess of Hecate. This may lead to her temple."
It seemed reasonable. The Argonauts plunged into darkness around the next turn of the corridor and had to feel their way blindly along the walls. They began to sense a slight gravitational pull as they descended outward within the rotating section, and they had to tiptoe in giant steps along the corridor, bobbing and weaving to remain upright. There were tiny reddish lights at odd intervals, almost dispelling the gloom. In one such pool of half-light, Jason glanced back to see how his companions were faring. He chuckled to see the top-heavy Hercules tiptoeing so ridiculously. He faced forward again and collided with a human skeleton.
An army of the dead rose up from beneath their feet and attacked the Argonauts. Skeletons flew at them from all directions, clutching at their throats with bony fingers, beating them about their heads with long bones, thrusting grinning death's heads into their faces. Hercules roared with rage and waded into the midst of them, swinging his sword left and right about him. The others scattered as splintered bones flew in all directions, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, washing over them in a tide.
"Stop it!" Jason shouted. "Stop fighting!"
The Argonauts ceased to struggle and, in a moment, there was only a ripple of bones and fragments washing over their feet.
"We disturbed them with our movements," Jason said. He kicked and a wave of nearly weightless bone-splinters rose before him, spreading out across the corridor like ripples on a pond.
"By Jupiter!" Hercules exclaimed. "I thought they were alive."
"They must have been here for a long time," said Orpheus. "They've been picked clean by rats ages ago. Why so many dead in one corridor?"
"Not a battle," said Atalanta. "There are no weapons. It looks like they died in a gathering together. Leaking gasses, perhaps?"
Jason moved on into the darkness and came up against a barrier with a clang. It was a safety door, not unlike those found in any island. Hercules attempted to open it by strength, but his feet could find no purchase in the slight gravity. Orpheus and Atalanta searched for an opening mechanism, but there was none.
Jason felt the steel, but though it was cold to the touch, it was not space-cold, and the other side was probably not open to vacuum. What had activated this barrier, and why?
"The dead were not sealed in," Orpheus said. "The way behind us is open."
"Perhaps they were sealed out, unable to get food," Hercules said. “The other corridors may be blocked as well."
"I hope not," Jason said. "We have to try them anyway, because we certainly can't go farther in this one."
Atalanta had her ear to the barrier. "Perhaps this was not to lock the people out, but to lock something in. I think I can hear breathing."
The others put their ears to the steel. They looked at each other and suddenly bolted, ploughing through the drifting bones and racing up the corridor as swiftly as they could in the slight gravity. By the time they had reached the triple goddess at the parting of the ways, Jason had convinced himself that it was only the rumble of machinery and not the breathing of dragons he had heard, but as the others seemed disinclined to discuss the matter, he kept silent. In any event, he was gasping for breath and could not find the words.
"Now we can try the way of Artemis," said Atalanta, when her breath had returned.
"I disagree," Orpheus coughed. "Selene is connected with agriculture. I believe the way of Artemis will lead us to wild places, the way of Selene to the gardens."
"Perhaps the way of Hecate is the way of death," Jason mused. "Perhaps the natives expose their dead there to rats."
"Strange burial custom," Hercules sniffed.
"No stranger than being fed to trees," said Atalanta.
They set off down the second corridor, which was somewhat more brightly lit, though littered with ancient trash and mottled with moss and fungus. The latter was a good sign, of course, for it meant the corridor was connected to an area of some humidity. It might lead them to gardens, after all.
Suddenly Jason held up his hand and the column stopped. They clung to the wall and listened until they could clearly hear the sounds that had attracted Jason's attention: the hum of machinery, reverberating down long corridors and through the walls, the hush of air-conditioning in metal vents and pipes, and the unmistakeable sound of children's voices.