Chapter One

1.

It’s hard to sleep, listening to a friend being sick. Nathanial had tried to ignore the gargling sound of Arnaud’s fluid-filled lungs, but stuffing cotton into his ears did little for sleep. While Arnaud would have been the first to protest that he was far from leaving calling cards on death’s doorstep, Nathanial knew the Frenchman was suffering. So he’d fled to the engine room to find peace in smoothly operating machinery and technical discussions with Jack Fenn.

Would that the world outside that microcosm were so easily understood, or as readily dealt with provided one had the proper tools and schematics. A good hour after Fenn had apologised and headed off to sleep, Nathanial found he’d run out of things to adjust. He sat there, watching the Heaviside radiation pulse rhythmically across the main aether manifold that led to the propeller. Twelve seconds for each cycle, repeating.

Near hypnotised, Nathanial imagined he could sense the universe around the propeller, each pulse rippling its way through the aether, like the dots and dashes of a telegraph, singing its existence to eternity. But was eternity listening?

Nathanial stood up, wondering where that foolish notion had burbled up from. Born of fatigue, of course. Time to brave sleep again.

Inside the lab, a single Edison bulb threw crazed shadows across the chaos; in many ways it was really Arnaud’s lab these days. The fellow had a way of moving in and putting his mark on things. Despite the necessity of securing everything in zero-gravity, the geologist had managed to attain what was no doubt to him a comfortable state of clutter. It was as if when they’d left dock, he’d simply thrown restraint nets over assorted piles of notes and apparatus.

Perhaps he had done just that, come to think of it. Despite himself, Nathanial smiled. As for the man himself, Arnaud was wearing nothing but pants, his well-fed frame damp with sweat from the inexplicable heat of the cabin. Had he snuck a stove aboard? But there was no scent of fire, just a sharp metallic tang to the air.

Arnaud cleared his throat, discretely spitting the mess into a spittoon on his workbench. “So hard to take a quiet midnight stroll with shoe magnets clicking away on the floor, n’est ce pas? But I am not thinking that you are out and about simply to stretch your legs.”

“No,” Nathanial said. “I suppose, well, I am concerned about your health.”

Arnaud shrugged elegantly. “This is two of us, then.”

“That, and your damnable coughing was keeping me awake.”

Arnaud chuckled. “Ah, the truth, it hurts. And here I thought you had come to pay your respects to an old comrade in arms in his final hours. But mother always told me to prize honesty in all things. Save love, of course.”

“Love?”

“The mystery is important en l’amour, she would say to me. Makes a child wonder about his parentage, I must admit. Quels que soit. I have something for you to see and congratulate me on.”

“A perfumed letter from a young lady waylaid by your deceptive wiles?”

Arnaud looked amused. “Certainly not. No, someone must tend to my health, given the indifference of my travelling companions.”

“Here now, I was simply being—”

“Humorous, I know.” Arnaud winked. “Stay the course, as les anglais say. Don’t apologise for your wit. I never do.”

“I’ve noticed this, yes.”

Arnaud floated over to a massive armoire and opened it. Inside there were assorted flasks and a wild mass of tubing, all leading from a central alembic. A large Bunsen burner was opened to full bore beneath it, the heat from its flame noticeable even from where Nathanial stood.

“Rather thought I smelled something burning. Can’t be good for your cough, though.”

“Ah, but it will be. Regard!” Arnaud pulled a flask off the top rack. Inside, a floating mass of what looked like quicksilver flattened and expanded with clockwork rhythm.

“Mercury treatment?” Nathanial flushed. “I thought it was good for, well, other illnesses.”

“No worries in that sense, mon ami. You are correct, my malady is more akin to consumption—without the fashionable paleness, alas. But you are in error about what I hold in my hands. This is made from my smelting of some ore I brought back from Hygeia.”

“You’ve been smelting onboard?” Nathanial sniffed the air again. Definitely a metallic scent, but oddly enervating.

“Our illustrious captain doesn’t know, so it is no matter.” Arnaud waved a dismissive hand. “But tell me what you notice about it.”

Nathanial watched the metal as it floated in the middle of its flask. It flattened itself into a lozenge, first lengthwise, then sidewise. The orientation of the pulsation was constant, even when Arnaud rotated the flask.

“It’s responding to something,” Nathanial said.

“Vraiment. Four deformations along as many axes per cycle, with each cycle measuring twelve seconds.”

“The propeller!”

Arnaud nodded happily. “Indeed. Much as iron responding to the magnetism, it is responding to the fluctuations in the luminous aether that cunning device is creating.”

Arnaud was still talking, but Nathanial couldn’t hear him for all the thoughts running through his mind. The implications for future propeller research were astounding, to say the least. Or for general aetheric observation. It wouldn’t take much to sense an aether storm arriving. Lives could be saved. Lives like all those lost on the Peregrine.

That thought brought a pang of guilt that returned him to Arnaud’s words.

“…just as electrical fluid can stimulate the dead leg of a frog, I think.”

“I’m sorry?” Nathanial said. “You have frog legs here?”

Arnaud shook his head sadly. “You were not attending at all, were you? I am not speaking of déjeuner. The vapours of the metal, they have healed my lungs. What isn’t permanently damaged, of course.” He shrugged. “But the coughing is less now, for all that it interrupted your dreams. So I should imagine I have at least half a lung left. Enough for the day to day use, eh?”

“What has this to do with frogs?”

“Frog’s legs. You do remember those experiments? Apply a touch of electricity to them, and they regain the liveliness they had in life, jerking about as if a starved crane were nipping away at their tasty heels. But too much electrical fluid and poom! One very burnt recipient of a lightning bolt. One must have moderation in all things. Or so I am told.”

“And you were burnt on Ceres.”

“Exactement. I flew too close to that sun, and nearly drowned for my efforts. As with magnets and electricity, so is this and…something else. The life force, perhaps?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Invent a less dramatic name if it suits better. But how else to explain its healing? Enough, and perhaps even what I believe to be dead tissue might heal. For that matter, how to explain the prolific life we saw on Ceres, by all account what should be a near lifeless rock?”

“People said that about Luna.” Nathanial considered this. “But perhaps Luna has such ore in it as well. Iron can be found across the Solar System, after all. Why not this?”

“Mais oui. But so far, only on Hygeia. A pity, as I think our reunion with the Bubalus would be less than joyful, should we return. Would have liked to have that other lung of mine back. I am certain I could find use for it. But la. Allow me to take some more vapours. I would like to cough less tonight, and to judge by those circles underneath your eyes, I suspect you desire more sleep.”

With that, Arnaud turned a petcock on the distillation apparatus. It fed a long tube that resembled nothing so much as the end of a hookah. Curling his legs underneath him as he floated in zero gravity, he looked rather like a patron of an opium den. Or perhaps the Caterpillar from that Alice book that the captain liked to read so much, Nathanial decided. It wouldn’t surprise Nathanial at all if Arnaud were to metamorphose into a butterfly, given enough of those vapours. Things had been that odd of late. If anything, their current circumstances were more fantastical than any mythic Wonderland.

Once fastened in the cot, a rare occurrence since he more oft slept on the floor while Arnaud made use of the cot to help his ailment, Nathanial’s thoughts wandered as he began to nod off. He wondered if Arnaud was right about tissue regeneration. It was hardly out of the question, after all. Arnaud had brought up the subject of frogs, and it was well known that tadpoles could regenerate tissue. While no biologist, Nathanial had a vague memory of a monograph on leg regeneration in salamanders. Given the proper stimulation, no doubt it could be induced in other animals, even higher level ones such as humans.

Leg regeneration.