Chapter Four

1.

It had all been Annabelle’s idea, and Nathanial was delighted by that. For one, that fact would give him a certain level of plausible deniability should Folkard find out about their skulking around the station in the middle of the night, or rather, the middle of the station’s passage through the planet’s shadow. The captain had been clear about the need to stay in their quarters until departure. Their aliases seemed thin enough as it was; as civilians, they were already making an impression on the station’s personnel. They were probably the most exciting thing to arrive here since the last shipment of potentially fermentable sugar. While a surreptitious visit was now out of the question, there was still no need to stroll about and attach faces to the already rampant gossip.

Or so they were told. Annabelle was less than convinced, or at least stir-crazed enough to produce objections, albeit rather flimsy objections.

“No one has ever won a battle without a knowledge of the lay of the land,” she said, glaring at the confines of her stateroom.

“I had no idea that we were in for a battle,” Nathanial said. “I’d simply popped by to wish you a good night.”

“I’m finding sleep difficult. Too much is unknown!”

“Shall I lend you a book?”

Annabelle sighed. “I’d almost say you were patronising me.”

“I know better. Trust me, I’ve far too much concern for my continued existence.”

“You think me so dangerous?” She patted his hand. “Thank you. But seriously, I don’t trust the commander, or anyone else here. I think we need to conduct a bit of reconnaissance.”

“We?”

“Come now, Nathanial. An unescorted young lady in the middle of the night?” She fluttered her eyes. “People would talk.”

“I thought we were to go spying.”

“Doesn’t mean that we need throw propriety out the window.”

“Shall I run back to my stateroom to fetch my calling cards?”

Annabelle seized the crook of his arm. “It’s still the frontier. We’ll make do. Come on!”

Truthfully, he was just delighted to see her spirits up so after her previous moodiness. Besides, what harm could befall them onboard a military station? Surely, they’d exhausted the Solar System’s supply of anarchist saboteurs by now. If wandering the darkened corridors would restore her adventurous soul, he was all for it.

Still, he found himself wishing for a gun. If they ran into serious trouble, he could always hand it over to Annabelle. He remembered well how coldly she had dispatched Blayney on Ceres.

The station might have had the ambience of a seedy port town, but so far as they could see, it had none of its nightlife. There were a few bored patrols, but none so awake or dutiful as to discover the wandering couple. That said, there was also precious little interesting about the station: just crew quarters, cargo storage and the engine rooms.

“No grand conspiracies here,” Nathanial said. “Quiet as a slumbering church mouse. Why, they’ve even shut the solar boiler down for the night. No doubt due to lack of sun. Merely a hypothesis.”

“We haven’t seen the balloon shuttles,” Annabelle said, once again tugging at his arm. “Aren’t you curious about them?”

“We’ll see them tomorrow. My powers of observation are stronger when there’s light to see by. They are even further enhanced by the additional salutary effects of sleep.”

“Now you’re just being difficult. If someone were trying to stop our expedition, our shuttle would be the first thing they’d think of sabotaging.”

Nathanial almost pointed out that there was no indication that anyone was trying to stop them. Then it occurred to him that there wasn’t any indication that anyone wasn’t. He’d been shot at often enough to develop a healthy sense of paranoia. Better to look a bit foolish than perish.

Of course, it was entirely possible to do both.

The two wandered down to the station’s observation deck, where by the external Edison lights of the station they could view the balloon shuttles attached to the outside of the terminal passageway like sparsely settled barnacles on a driftwood log.

The shuttles were less than impressive. Unlike the conscious aestheticism of an aether liner or the imposing military functionality found in ships of the line, the shuttles had all the beauty of a washtub. They resembled washtubs as well, squat and slightly tapered cylinders thirty paces across with no discerning features, not even portholes.

“How do they fly at all?” Annabelle said. “No navigational bridge? Surely they’d hit something.”

“I don’t think they fly so much as drop. Slowed by the balloon, of course, but still straight down. Hard to miss the planet.”

“And we’re sailing off in one of these tomorrow?”

Nathanial risked a wink. “I thought you wanted an adventure.”

“Adventure is when you have control of your risks.”

Nathanial wiped the glass with his sleeve. It didn’t improve the view much. “You have control. You could stay here on the Esmeralda.”

“And tend to my knitting?”

Nathanial shook his head. “Far too warm on Venus to need a scarf. But I’ve some socks that want darning.”

“Oh? I’ve a sharp needle that wants—wait, look at the far shuttle!” She tugged at his arm.

Outside in the vacuum, a man in a bulky suit was working his way towards the rear of the shuttle’s gondola. They could see sparks flying from a large tool he was carrying.

“Is that our shuttle, I wonder?” Nathanial said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Annabelle said, heading down the passageway. She ran with quick hopping steps, touching the floor with her shoes just often enough to propel her forward. Nathanial wondered where she had learned the trick. Perhaps she’d been practicing onboard the Esmeralda. Odd that she hadn’t mentioned that, much less taught him the technique. In the meantime, she was getting far too ahead of him. So much for his chivalric escorting service.

Annabelle was still close enough for him to see that she now had a pistol in hand. It had to be that revolver she’d taken from Blayney. She was far too frugal, and perhaps all too bloodthirsty to discard it. Wouldn’t bring a dinosaur down, of course. But it was easy enough to conceal in one’s skirts.

As she disappeared around the curve of the passageway, Nathanial felt ill. Common sense was telling him that it was no doubt just a workman, but it also occurred to him that there wasn’t anyone else around. Solo repairs just weren’t done in space—far too many things that could go wrong, far too many little things that needed tending to. Little things such as the oxygen supply. He tried to hurry up, but just ended up bouncing off the ceiling.

He forced himself to maintain what felt like an impossibly languid stroll as he heard Annabelle shouting up ahead. He tried to quiet the sick feeling in his stomach by noting that she didn’t sound as if she was concerned, at least not yet. He couldn’t make out the words, but they carried the air of barked orders more than the yelp of fear.

Finally making his way to the shuttle terminal, he found the entry hatch undogged. Swinging it open with a metallic bang that echoed down the passageway, he saw Annabelle holding a man in a vacuum suit at gunpoint. She held the Colt with a rock steady hand. That much about the girl hadn’t changed, at least. Her other hand was on what appeared to be an air compressor, at least judging by the hose that lead to the suit. Like most vacuum suits, it resembled nothing so much as a deep sea diving suit, awkward and heavy with a spherical brass helmet whose thick glass view-plate revealed nothing about its owner’s identity.

The man had his hands above his head, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Despite the imposing appearance of the suit, Nathanial couldn’t bring himself to feel worried, at least not for Annabelle and himself. He could summon some worry for the man in the suit. He doubted that Annabelle would deliberately shoot the fellow, but she hadn’t been in the best of moods of late.

“My dear girl,” Nathanial said. “I think you’ve got him dead to rights, as you Americans say.”

“Do we now?” She could arch her eyebrow rather adroitly when circumstances demanded.

“Yes. But I suspect we could actually learn something should we let him take the helmet off.”

The man nodded vigorously. He was clearly shouting inside the helmet, but it only came out as muffled whimpers.

“He might try something,” Annabelle said, absently running a finger over the gun barrel. Nathanial noticed that she was holding back a smile.

Judging by the way the man was shaking his head and holding his palms out, any smirking of Annabelle was unseen by him, or at least misinterpreted.

“Ann-Marie…” Nathanial said with as much authority as he could muster. At least he’d remembered to use her assumed name.

“Well, fine.” She waved the gun at her captive. “Take the helmet off, sir.”

One unlatched helmet later, a decidedly unnerved Geoffrey Forbes-Hamilton, Esquire was goggling at them.

“Good Lord, woman!” he said. “I was simply out performing some repairs when my air compressor’s operation went agly on me.”

“Agly, you say,” said Annabelle, dropping her hand from the air valve.

“Hardly a reason to point a—wait a half, aren’t you Miss Somerset?” He pulled a monocle from a pouch and peered. “Why, you are indeed!”

“I appreciate you clearing that matter up, sir, as I was wondering myself,” she replied. “But may I ask what you were doing outside? I have to admit, I thought you a saboteur.”

“Can’t leave the proper maintenance of my balloon shuttles to the fools that pass for technicians out here. Why, just look at the state of this station.” He waved an indignant arm at their surrounds.

“You have a point,” Nathanial admitted. He felt himself flush. They had jumped to conclusions with an excess of vigour, hadn’t they? Well, water under the proverbial bridge. It was pleasant enough to see a familiar face here, even if it was Forbes-Hamilton. On the other hand, it did rather blow their cover. Folkard would not be best pleased.

“I suppose I must apologise, Mister Forbes-Hamilton,” said Annabelle.

“I should say so!” Forbes-Hamilton said, his voice bordering on yelping. “I mean to say, what? It’s bad enough that I find myself here shanghaied into balloonautics, without needing to find myself waylaid by a half-civilized colonial someone was fool enough to allow a gun.”

“Consider the apology rescinded,” said Annabelle.

Nathanial raised a finger. Amazingly enough, this stopped the ongoing dialogue long enough for him to interject a suggestion of tea back at the Esmeralda.

“Or brandy,” added Forbes-Hamilton.

Nathanial looked at him sideways. “I see you’ve learned to fit in around here.”

2.

“I ought to have you keel hauled for this, Professor,” Folkard said, not sounding particularly upset. “Sadly, as I’ve said before, I can’t even have anyone flogged these days. Damnable Liberals.”

Nathanial tried to decide if there was any seriousness beneath the captain’s nonchalant façade. It reminded him of the ease a fencing master exuded before driving home the final thrust.

“Simply for finding Mister Forbes-Hamilton?” Nathanial asked.

“For giving away our admittedly tenuous cover story and for taking Annabelle on a foolish gallivant about the docks in the middle of the night. Speaking of said girl, damn near letting her blow out poor Forbes-Hamilton’s brains.” Folkard poked him rhythmically in the chest as he recited this litany of errors.

Nathanial stepped back. “You know as well as I do that Annabelle is her own woman. It’s all I can do just to keep her from shooting things. I think it’s a biological need of hers.”

Looking slightly mollified, Folkard nodded. “Point taken, but I’d hoped you’d rise to the challenge. No matter. Now I’ve got our mad Scotsman onboard in a literal and figurative sense, I’ve impressed on him the necessity of secrecy. And speaking of his brains, it seems he’s been using them to some good effect of late. Effects that will be deucedly useful once you find yourself out and about on that soggy surface down there.”

Nathanial felt slightly dizzy. “Once I? Aren’t you coming? And what effects? We aren’t enlisting Forbes-Hamilton, are we?”

“Academics. Always with the questions.” Folkard looked oddly uncomfortable for a moment. “Fair enough, though. I’m staying up here with the Esmeralda. Don’t exactly trust the station personnel to keep her intact. Never know when some enterprising airman might spot a brass fitting or two that might help him pay off his obligations to the local bookie. The boys can shoot that sort of ruffian all by themselves, of course. But I’d rather be up here to defend them from any…unpleasantness that might result should they do the necessary.”

“I see.”

No doubt it meant that there was something else on the captain’s mind besides the possibility of casual thievery. In the past he’d always seemed loath to send civilians out without military escort. But Nathanial knew with equal certainty it would be fruitless asking what that something was. Folkard dispensed information like a sniper fired rounds, only as needed to achieve the necessary effect.

Besides, it would just be a simple scientific expedition, not a pitched battle through enemy territory. This wouldn’t be like Luna. Or Ceres. Or even Mars.

Nathanial found himself pacing. “You should send Arnaud, of course. He’s the geologist.”

“Indeed. But I still need you with him. His health isn’t good, and besides, I find that you keep him focused.”

“I do?”

“He respects you. Fellow student of the universe, or some such. Me? I’m a simple sailor.” Folkard held up a hand as Nathanial opened his mouth in protest. “No need to say anything, Professor. I know you know better.” He frowned briefly. “And Annabelle. Best take her, too.”

“What? You—”

“Can’t be serious? After scolding you for letting her loose upon the station? Well, for one, it will keep her more supervised than I have time for. And she can handle herself well enough down there. We’ve seen that.”

“Yes, but after all that business on Messor Base…”

Folkard stood up and faced the view. A hundred miles below, the clouds of Venus were as featureless as they always were. “I know. In a sense, I think a trip to her old hunting grounds might be just the thing for her. Especially without Papa Jacob at her elbow, hovering over her like a mother hen.”

Nathanial stared at him. There was no emotion at all in that face. “I think I know what you mean, sir. But surely, there’s been enough danger in her life. And the lowland swamp is filled with danger.”

“Of course. That’s why you’ll need her along.” He turned to face Nathanial. “Do take care of her, Professor.”

“I shall.”

“Good. Of course, should you fail to, you’d be best off not returning.”

Nathanial looked for a smile, but saw none. When did Folkard assign himself as her protector, Nathanial wondered?