Chapter Twenty-Four

“New Horrors”

1.

The viewport in Sunward Observation, despite its description, looked out into the aether. It was named such because the station was angled at thirty-two degrees, with Sunward being the side pointing slightly toward the system’s centre; vestiges of the sun’s corona could just be seen from the corner. Here, the lighting was better than other parts of the station. A worker could see the man next to him and could discern his facial features without straining eyes to do so. A minimum number of oil lamps were employed, for workers could perform most of their duties without them.

A great brass telescope, twice the height of an average man, and with a twelve-foot base, crowded the view, much as the similar one did in Starward Observation. One day, it would train its eye on either Earth or Mars, where it would receive communications from one of the orbiting heliograph stations, only to relay that information to the other. For now, it was fixed to a point into the inky blackness of the aether, peering hard at what was out there.

Nathanial stood beneath the telescope, staring out the port, the cup of hot tea all but forgotten in his hand. One no longer needed a telescope to see the aether vortex. One had but to wait for some kind of matter, a small piece of an errant asteroid, airlock refuse from Peregrine, or whatever else might be in the vicinity to pass its outer edge, and the vortex destroyed whatever matter passed too close. Larger pieces were torn apart with such violence that energy was actually released, energy which looked like purplish flashes of lightning. In these flashes one could catch a glimpse of the vortex, wavering before the eyes like a mirage.

“Bloody hell,” Fullbright said. He stood at station on the telescope, hunched over slightly, one eye squinted as he stared at the vortex through the lens. He cranked the x-axis wheel, and the telescope swivelled on its base, turning to the right, smoothly and quietly. “What a monster, eh? Really my first glimpse of the bastard,” he said. “Doctor van den Bosch forbade everyone from looking at it once it was found. The logic of this, I’m sure, was to quell panic. I can’t say I disagree with him. Damn thing covers the horizon.”

“Have you ever seen one so large?” Nathanial asked.

“Well, I’m hardly a connoisseur of aetheric anomalies, but I’ve also talked at length with men who have seen their share. I don’t recall any of them mentioning one of this size.” Then, Fullbright added grimly. “Or this bloody violent.”

“It does take one aback,” Nathanial said. The words were coming out of his mouth with hardly any thought to them. He was making conversation only, purely out of habit. His father would be proud, after all, to see him master polite conversation to the degree that he no longer had to think to say the words that his party expected to hear. Such a skill would have made him a fine clergyman.

Fullbright hopped down from his perch. “Tell me you have some sort of idea,” he said. “We need a solution, or we’re in the same boat as before: too many people, not enough room on the cutters.”

“We’ve slightly less now than we had, thanks to Hague.”

Fullbright made an alarmed gesture. “Enough of that,” he hissed. “Have you heard the grumblings? There are some particularly loud voices that would have the little scoundrel tossed out an airlock for ordering those shootings, and the men who fired those carbines following at his boot heels.”

“I understand, and I only speak in jest.” Nathanial remembered the cup and took a drink of lukewarm tea. It was weak and overly sweet. “At any rate, I haven’t any solutions to the stabiliser problem.”

“Come now!” Fullbright whispered. “You’ve got to put your full energies behind it, Stone. We’re at the edge of a disaster here, I don’t have to tell you. Right now, each man believes he’s one of the Chosen who will get a berth off this station. Soon, each will start to see himself dying in this place, his world engulfed in hellfire, and when that happens, we’re likely to see another coup, only this time, you and I will find ourselves being deposed, and who knows whether they’ll decide to do it with or without bloodshed.”

“I cannot create something out of nothing,” Nathanial said. “I have ruled out every possibility within this station, and all attempts at coaxing an answer out of Doctor van den Bosch have failed.”

“What about Hague?”

“I’ve not consulted with him. Do you think he would be amenable?”

“If we let him know the men are lusting after his blood, he might be willing to let slip some secret to which he’s privy in exchange for our continued protection.”

Nathanial was appalled. “What a monstrous idea,” he said. “No, I won’t be any party to that sort of heavy-handed thuggery. More than enough of that has been visited on this staff already, by both Hague and van den Bosch. If we’re to have any sort of moral high ground, we mustn’t stoop to their level of discourse.”

“Stoop?” Fullbright laughed so loud the men at their stations stopped to look. “We don’t have the luxury of the moral high ground, Stone. If we fail to save this station, men will die, and millions of British pounds will have been spent for nothing. When we return to England, our very careers will be in tatters. Think of that!”

Nathanial sighed. “I have, but my decision remains. I’ll speak to him if you think it will do any good, but I will not resort to your proposed methods.”

Just then, Dolan entered. He stood at the entrance, looking about, until Nathanial waved him over. Fullbright rolled his eyes in disgust when he saw the man and decided he had more pressing matters elsewhere.

“Any news, then?” Nathanial asked.

Dolan gave a rueful shaking of the head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “We’ve completed a search of Hell, as a matter of fact, and we’ve found no trace of Annabelle. We even had our men search the cutters.” The Irishman gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, Stone. She’s simply not here.”

“There is one other option.”

Dolan’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. “I’d be interested to hear it.”

“The air ducts. I deduced from the questions she asked of me recently that she was looking for evidence of our bomber. She wanted to know if the station had any secret rooms, and I―” Nathanial stopped.

Dolan cocked his head to the side, blond hair obscuring one side of his face. “Is something the matter?”

“No! No. Check the air ducts.”

Dolan stared for a moment. “You really can’t be serious. Stone, I can’t have my men crawling between the walls like a pack of blessed rats. They’re stretched thin as is. Now, I myself enjoyed Annabelle’s company, but we must let this go.”

“Just Heaven, Dolan. Please.”

The Irishman sighed. “I’ll have a few men give search, but if we uncover nothing, this is the end, do you hear?”

Nathanial nodded, and looked back out the window. Something large crashed into the vortex. A semi-brilliant burst of purplish lightning arced across its horizon. Nathanial caught for a moment what appeared to be a smiling motion within the storm, rather like watching a water spout or a whirlpool in the ocean.

Dolan returned to the previous matter, and his voice was full of sympathy. “The time is coming, you know,” he said. “They’ll want to finalise the names for the memorial.”

“Fullbright’s already mentioned it.”

“There’s something else he may not have told you. We’re to give you another cycle-and-a-half, and then we declare a time for the evacuation.”

“Why? Why not do as originally planned, and call for the evacuation at the memorial’s end?”

“Haven’t you heard? We’re not just memorialising the dead anymore. Oh, no. It’s gone much further than that. We’re memorialising the living, too. The ones who are to stay behind. Once the call for evacuation is made, we’ll have the reckoning. The men who are to stay will be known by the memorial service and given a place of honour. Imagine that,” he said with a bleak smile, “being able to give a eulogy at your own funeral.” He shook his head. “It’s a horror.”