11.

Aboard the Zeppelin Rheingold

Joseph Sheridan sat at the small table in his luxurious suite aboard the Rheingold. He was busily scribbling in his notebook in his self-designed code.

A sharp knock at the door stopped Sheridan’s pen in mid-word, and an inkblot immediately began spreading through the slightly damp paper.

“Yes?” he called as he blotted it with his stained handkerchief.

“Herr Sheridan, Herr Oberst Kurt’s compliments and he requests you attend him on the bridge,” said a voice.

“I’ll be there shortly,” Sheridan said as he tucked his notebook into its special pocket in his briefcase.

“Your pardon, sir, he is most insistent that you come now,” said the voice apologetically.

“Coming, coming.” Sheridan opened the door and nodded at the young steward.

The man—not much more than a boy, actually—looked relieved. “Danke schön! Danke! I will take you to the Herr Oberst!”

“No need,” said Sheridan, patting the thin boy on the arm. “I know how to get there.”

The boy shook his head, his pale, slightly protruding eyes wide. “Oh, no, Herr Sheridan. The Oberst said I was to accompany you. Come, bitte, follow me, if you please.”

Sheridan fell in behind the boy, who was literally trembling with something. Excitement? Fear? Distress? He couldn’t tell, but he was leaning more towards fear.

Herr Oberst Hans Kurt was an intimidating man. Even he had felt the threat emanating from the man. But he was here to do a job, and Sheridan always accomplished what he set out to do.

He followed the boy, who was dressed in snowy white shirt and shorts, up ladder ways and down corridors until they emerged into the shaded light of Venus on the top deck. Up another short ladder and they were outside the bridge.

Above them, the massive cigar-shaped hydrogen-filled balloon reached out in glorious curves, its enormous shadow keeping the entire gondola in the shade. The lines and ropes that attached the gondola to the balloon stretched and swooped and intertwined like giant spider webs. On the deck, everything that could be polished was.

Sheridan stood behind the steward as the boy stepped onto the bridge and announced, “Herr Sheridan, as you requested, Herr Oberst!”

Then the boy, well, all Sheridan could call it was “scuttled.” He dashed away as if all the hounds of hell were after him.

Or at least, one hound, though the location it had grown in was not in doubt.

Herr Oberst Hans Kurt turned away from the wide curving window that wrapped around three sides of the bridge. He nodded at the new arrival and beckoned him forward.

Sheridan walked slowly towards Kurt, eyeing everything he passed while trying not to look as if he were doing so.

“Good morning, Mister Sheridan.” Kurt snapped his heels together shortly.

Sheridan took in the man’s crisp uniform and gleaming boots and felt both grubby and badly dressed. Of course, he’d already realised that was precisely how Kurt wanted him to feel, so he dismissed it and took a place beside his host.

Below stretched endless miles of green, broken here and there with a silvery lake or thread of azure river. Just coming up even with the shadow of the zeppelin, in a grassy clearing, Sheridan could see a tiny village, no more than a double ring of a dozen huts each. Directly in the centre of the innermost circle of huts was an odd pile of glittering rocks heaped as high as a tall man’s head. Beyond the village, perhaps half a mile away, was an outcropping of bare tumbled rock, all of it a dark bronze colour and most unusual; Sheridan had seen nothing to compare with it in all his journeying about Venus, neither on the English plateau settlements, the Italian pole settlements, nor any of the German forts.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the rock outcropping.

“You might better ask, sir, what is that?” replied Kurt, motioning towards the glittering rock pile in the centre of the small village.

The captain of the zeppelin said quietly into a speaking horn, “Reduce engines.”

Sheridan looked at the tiny village, now almost directly below the vast balloon. He could not recall ever seeing a lizard-man town set up in concentric circles. Generally, they were more along the lines of a haphazard cluster of homes surrounded, often enough, by herds of the sluggish lizards the inhabitants bred for food.

“I see the village,” Sheridan said. “Rather unusual set up, is it not?” Something extraordinary was happening. He felt it with all the senses he’d honed over the years as a secret agent. He would like to have had his notebook, though he knew his memory was good enough to reproduce anything he saw or heard. What he really wished for at this minute, desperately, was his Kodak camera. It was a brilliant new invention by his countryman, George Eastman; the Kodak had just come on the market right before he’d left Earth on this expedition, and he had insisted to his superiors that he must have one.

But his Kodak was down below in his cabin. He was quite sure that Kurt was not going to allow him to fetch it.

“It is not a village proper, Mister Sheridan,” said Kurt smoothly. “It is instead a living place for the miners of varenien. That outcropping you see in the distance? It is the largest varenien deposit we have found on Venus thus far.”

Sheridan tried to keep his expression neutral, even bored, as he stepped closer to the window and gazed below. Inside, however, he was boiling in excitement.

Varenien! The most valuable substance in the System thus far found, used in the construction of the most powerful explosives! Now Sheridan was interested. If the Germans controlled such a huge amount of varenien, they would be able to manufacture bombs and explosives which could, conceivably, give them the power to win any war, any place, any time. Even the pile below in the village centre—if it was indeed varenien ore—would be enough to make a hundred bombs of incredible power.

Now he was curious, intensely curious. Why was Kurt showing him something so important, so potentially shattering?

“Varenien?” Sheridan hoped he sounded casual, uninterested, uninformed, but he was afraid—suddenly, he was very much afraid—that Kurt saw right through his act. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Something…scientific, I seem to recall? But you must remember, sir; I’m merely a simple newspaper man.”

Kurt joined him at the window. “Varenien is an elemental substance used by scientists, yes; we Germans have found a substantial supply here on Venus. It occurs in minute amounts on the other planets, I understand, but appears to be rather common on this one. At least, it is common in the swamplands. I do not believe it can be found at the poles or on the various plateaus. I am, as you say, no scientist, but that is what I have been told.”

“Is it valuable?”

“Immensely valuable, Mister Sheridan. And naturally, the…other Powers on Venus are interested in acquiring their own supplies.”

Naturally, thought Sheridan, raising an eyebrow; so would any country, any colony in the System.

Sheridan yawned. “Fascinating. I must remember to study up on it before I send my reports back to the paper. The Tribune will be most interested, as they always are in any new exports from Venus or the other colonies. I suppose your people set up the mining village below, and that’s why it’s so different from the common native village?”

Kurt shrugged. “Sadly, we have discovered that the mining of the raw ore must be done by the lizard-men. They seem to have some sort of inborn immunity to the dangerous dust raised by the mining process. Our own people become quite ill after only a short exposure to this dust—a serious respiratory reaction which can result in death after only a few days.”

Sheridan didn’t want to know how this was discovered. He could just picture poor German colonists coughing their lungs out in the heavy, dense air of Venus. He shuddered.

“Yes, it is tragic,” Kurt said, noting his reaction. “But the lizard-men, as I have said, have immunity. We are taking advantage of that fact.”

I’ll just bet you are. Sheridan turned away from the window. “Well, that’s interesting, Herr Oberst, really interesting,” he said in a voice he tried to make sound as bored as possible. “I’m sure my bosses will be glad to know these things.” Oh, how glad they’d be! “Might we visit the mining camp, or would it be dangerous? I have no wish,” he laughed softly, “to get sick myself. The Tribune doesn’t pay me that well. But it would be interesting to see, I’m sure.”

“Of course, Mister Sheridan. I thought you might be curious, and I have already checked with several of our scientists before we left on our little voyage. A brief visit, not more than a couple of hours, will have no effect on us whatever.”

“May I take my Kodak?” Sheridan asked, holding his breath, for he never suspected Kurt to allow any such thing.

Kurt surprised him.

“Naturally. You have perfect freedom to report anything and everything you see, sir; such were my orders from my superiors.” Kurt pulled an immense gold pocket watch from his jacket. “It is nearly luncheon time, and the days are short here so near the equator. The captain has told me you’ve requested to send a heliogram this afternoon, and he shall have to take his ship quite high into the atmosphere for that purpose, I understand. Shall we plan a visit to the Kaiser Mining Works tomorrow morning after breakfast?”