1.
“Could you have made that balloon’s cabin at least a touch larger?” Nathanial asked, massaging his back as he stepped off the balloon shuttle onto the airship’s boarding ramp. This airship was half as large as the one Forbes-Hamilton had taken them up in the last time they were on Venus, but it had lost none of his penchant for the chaotic and baroque. From the mad tangle of gasbags held together by various nets to the sprawling gondola with its various cabins linked by stairwells, the airship looked less like a vehicle than something hobbled together by some aeronautical Swiss Family Robinson.
Forbes-Hamilton had kept the Viking style dragonhead prow, Nathanial saw.
“You could try being shorter, mon ami. I feel refreshed from the cosiness of our chamber,” Arnaud said. He prodded Nathanial behind the shoulder blades. “La. There is the problem. Allow me.” He pounded at the offending muscles for a minute. “How is that?”
Nathanial stood up straight. “Better. I’ll take a few bruises from you over being forced to stare at the floor for the rest of the trip.”
Forbes-Hamilton looked annoyed. “Did you want a ballroom to lounge about in? Have you any idea how large the gasbag would have needed to be? My designs are exactly as they need to be.”
Nathanial stared up at the zeppelin looming above them. “Oh? What was the name of this ship again?”
“The Aeronaut VI. Why?”
“I find myself wondering about its five predecessors. Were their designs exactly as they needed to be?”
Forbes-Hamilton stopped at the end of the gangway. “Oh, we are so very humorous. I have simply been making improvements.”
“Such as reductions in the tendency to crash?” Arnaud asked. “Pardon. I imagine that is a rumour, nothing more.”
“I am underfunded and underappreciated, I’ll have you know,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “Is it any wonder that up until now I’ve had to make do with faulty materials? The best designed bridge in the world will collapse if one is forced to make it out of sandstone.”
“Or one finds the discretion to not make it,” murmured Nathanial, looking down. The wickerwork gantry had the twin failings of being far too lightweight for Nathanial’s taste, and far too easy to see through. For better or worse, the lack of features on the cloud blanket below made it hard to discern exactly how high up they were. Thankfully there was no wind. Forbes-Hamilton had explained this was due to the fact that both airship and shuttle were drifting freely with the air currents. Nathanial wasn’t sure of his feelings about leaving the steering to the weather, but he would have felt more uneasy if the bridge had been swaying in a gale.
“It’s a beautiful ship,” Annabelle said as she stepped onboard. Her steps were faltering in the near Earth gravity, but she had shrugged off Arnaud’s offer of an arm.
“Mais oui,” Arnaud said, glancing down the polished wickerwork passageway. “Gauguin would be proud. Woven by genuine Tahitians, I imagine.”
“Genuine lizard-men, in fact,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “They’re a far more talented race than we give them credit for. I’ll admit, I was sceptical at first about the strength of this stuff,” he said, rapping a lacquered door. “But truthfully, it’s far lighter than traditional wood and metal construction. And it’s almost as strong.”
“Almost?” said Nathanial.
“It’s tensile strength is well within design parameters,” Forbes-Hamilton said with an easy wave of his hand. His previous irritation seemed gone, replaced by a school boy’s enthusiasm for his favourite toy. “And best of all, it’s completely non-conductive. Just the thing for all those nasty electrical storms we get around here.”
“Lovely,” Nathanial breathed. He made the mistake of watching the shuttle crewmen disengage the gangway. It reminded him far too much of the air to air transfer he’d made in the skies of Earth when he’d just met Folkard. The captain had clearly been watching him to see how he’d react under stress. At the time, Nathanial hadn’t appreciated being manipulated and tested like some sort of lab animal.
Over the last months he’d become used to the captain’s ways, but he hadn’t grown used to heights. Nathanial’s feelings of vertigo were just as strong as on that first day, and it was all he could do to walk down the breezy corridor without being overwhelmed by the thought that he was being held back from the void by nothing more than wickerwork flooring. But he wasn’t about to collapse today, for all that the judgmental Folkard was a hundred miles above him at the moment.
Nathanial was perfectly capable of judging himself.
2.
“Ah, here we are,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “Just what the captain ordered.”
He opened a set of double doors onto a large room with five fabric and wood winged contraptions hanging from the ceiling. Each had a rudimentary seat, more of a trapeze than anything else. A solitary catwalk ran next to them, a good ten feet above the curved floor below. Nathanial noted the flooring looked as if it could be hinged open like an oversized trapdoor. Almost certainly would, in fact, given the pulley arrangements leading away. He decided to stick to the doorway.
Forbes-Hamilton didn’t seem as if he was going to lead the tour through the room, however. Standing at the edge, he waved diffidently at the contraptions.
“Heavier than air gliders. Not my idea, the Navy’s.” He snorted. “Some Kraut defector named Lilienthal designed them. I’m told that the Germans quite sensibly sent him packing when he asked for funding.” He shook his head. “Wings, indeed.”
“Birds have wings. It seems to work for them,” Annabelle pointed out.
“Birds breakfast on worms and defecate on statues. Can’t say I’m inclined to do either,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “Now then, we humans, we have this thing called intellect—well, a few of us do, in any event. We are the tool users, and there is no more reason for us to rely on antiquated methods of aviation than there is for us to stay put on the ground. Balloons and airships are the future, not this foolishness.” He had the look of a man who wanted to spit but was being forcibly restrained by an unwanted sense of etiquette. “Those are the things that took us into space, not flapping about like a brainless butterfly.”
“Don’t forget liftwood flyers,” said Nathanial.
“Another crutch dependent on nature!” Forbes-Hamilton was developing a decidedly pink cast to his face. “I hear just that from the unimaginative fools back in the naval yards. Tell me, should we sail the seas grasping at logs like Polynesian savages? Why then do we take our cues from the savages of Mars?”
“We can learn many things from savages, as you call them,” said Annabelle with an excess of sweetness in her voice. Nathanial knew that meant trouble.
“Given your feelings, sir,” Nathanial interjected, “one has to wonder what on Earth—or Venus—these are doing aboard your inestimable airship.”
Forbes-Hamilton gave him a suspicious look, then relaxed. “Ah, well, I rely on funding from those fools I mentioned, and they feel that these are an effective method of descent from the airship. They claim my descender balloons are all too visible for covert operations such as yours.”
“Might I suggest the possibility of a ladder?” asked Arnaud. “It is a more proven device, in my opinion.”
“Well, under normal circumstances, but not on covert missions,” said Forbes-Hamilton. “I’m going to take this ship down into the clouds, you see. We’ll be well hidden there. Can’t get too close to the ground, one might get spotted.”
“Or crash into a plateau!” protested Nathanial. “You’re really planning on relying on aught but dead reckoning for navigation?”
“Emphasising the word ‘dead’, I think,” said Arnaud. “I am in agreement with my friend on this. There is the danger of Germans finding us, but I dislike the danger of not knowing where one is even more. Especially when one considers the part of the plan that involves us playing at being birds.”
“Do you think I haven’t thought all these things out?” Forbes-Hamilton said. “Since we wouldn’t be able to use visual reference, I devised what I call an inertial navigation system. It relies upon nothing more than measuring acceleration and rotation, then uses those inputs to ascertain the spatial displacement of the reference system. Buggers me why I didn’t figure out something so obvious sooner. Was the work of nothing to make the prototype. I’ve already tested and used it out on those shuttle balloons, in fact.”
“Lose anyone in the process of testing?” Nathanial asked. To his chagrin, he realised he’d never asked about how a windowless balloon had managed to find the Aeronaut. He’d been too preoccupied with his queasy stomach. Among other things.
But Forbes-Hamilton wasn’t listening. “Of course, once again Her Majesty’s finest failed to trust me completely and insisted on a backup system. So I had to install a single man balloon I can send up to take a sextant shot should my lovely INS fail me.”
“Surely a balloon doesn’t weigh that much,” Arnaud said. “Less than nothing, I suppose one might say. Is that not a feature of their design?”
“It’s their lack of faith that disturbs me,” Forbes-Hamilton said.
“Oh, stop bickering,” Annabelle said, walking haltingly along a catwalk to the nearest glider. She ran her hand over a lacquered wing. “Whatever you say, I think these are amazing devices. Will they really allow us to fly like birds?”
“Not precisely,” said Forbes-Hamilton. “Glide like the soaring birds, yes. But Lilienthal wasn’t clever enough to actually get the wings to flap. Would have required actual mechanical ingenuity, I suppose. Haven’t met him myself, but I get the impression he’s rather more of the broody Goethe sort of German, not the proper Nietzsche sort who might actually get things done. More prone towards pining over a flower than invading a country, one might say.”
Annabelle studied the craft. The fabric was stretched tightly over delicately carved spruce ribs that splayed out like a fan. Resting her palm on the wing, she could feel it vibrate as Forbes-Hamilton talked. With each stray breeze in the hangar, it pressed itself against her like a dog straining at his lead.
“Poet or not, I think he’s an artist,” Annabelle said. “It seems almost alive.”
“Cooling corpses are almost alive,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “But their aerodynamic attributes are less than satisfactory.”
“You’re impossible,” Annabelle said, turning back to examine the glider. She could see control cables that led to a bar hanging in front of the seat, but she couldn’t quite decipher how it worked. Presumably, one moved the bar back and forth like the tiller of a flyer, but she wasn’t about to assume anything. Forbes-Hamilton seemed just the sort to reverse the linkages in the name of improvement.
“Besides impossible,” Nathanial said, “you’re being altogether too reticent. I rather get the impression that you know more about this mission than we do.”
“D’accord,” said Arnaud. “You have this plan already for us to go flying in these? I am wondering when we begin to plan for ourselves. And I am wondering also why all this was prepared for us when in truth we have just arrived here.” He leaned against the gantry rail next to Forbes-Hamilton. “I think you need to be more…forthcoming? Is that the word, mon ami?”
“Exactament,” Nathanial said. He attempted to cast an intimidating frown in Forbes-Hamilton’s direction.
“Oh, fine,” said Forbes-Hamilton. “I received my orders to go forth to this benighted location over a month ago. Apparently, Whitehall’s been sniffing around this area you’re all hot and bothered about. It really has naught to do with you or any of your mineral snagging ways.”
“What, then?” Nathanial asked.
“Damn me if I know. I pressed old Jericho on the matter after he relayed the Admiralty’s marching orders to me. Told me he hadn’t a blessed clue. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the powers that be don’t, either. The Krauts are pushing into the middle of blessed nowhere, and no doubt they’ve their reasons. But they couldn’t just send in the usual members of the Thin Red Line to find out what was what. International incidents in the making, don’t you know.”
“I would have liked to have Jericho along, actually,” Nathanial said. “Good fellow, and truthfully, I’ve been thinking we could use a military man.” He looked embarrassed. “We seem to find ourselves in scraps with distressing regularity.”
Forbes-Hamilton nodded. “So I remember. But again, that’s exactly what the Admiralty wanted to avoid. They wanted this to be a civilian only operation.” He sighed. “Do miss Giles. Bit rough out here on my own.”
“You’ve your lizard-man friend, don’t you?” Annabelle asked. “I mean to say, at least you’ve someone to talk to, however odd.”
“Thymon? Oh, yes, he’s still running about with me. You’re right, miss, he is a fair good listener. Far more intelligent than you might guess, once you get past his appearance and what passes for his speech. Helped with some of the cabin designs, in fact.”
“Erm, yes,” Nathanial said, trying not to let his horror show. He hadn’t fallen through the flooring yet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a future possibility. “Haven’t seen him yet.”
“You will, soon enough. He’s the one you’ll be meeting on the ground. Once he finds a suitable enough landing zone, he’ll be firing off a signal flare for us. He’s rather good at the reconnoitring business. For one, it’s easy enough for a lizard-man to stroll about in German territory. It’s not as if they can tell one tribe from another. I barely can, myself, and I’ve been working with the fellows for a year now.”
“That’s it?” Nathanial asked. “The only help we’re getting is a ride in these…devices? That and an admittedly intelligent lizard-man for a guide?”
“Afraid so. Again, they don’t want any military men on this mission.”
So that was it, Nathanial realised. That was the real reason Folkard wasn’t here. His teeth clenched with irritation. He should have been told what was going on. But then it wouldn’t have seemed as if the captain trusted Nathanial enough to be on his own, instead of being forced to stay behind due to a direct order. And that would have undercut Nathanial’s confidence. Confidence that a leader of an expedition needed.
And perhaps, confidence that Folkard wasn’t sure Nathanial had. Things hadn’t changed that much from the day they’d met, after all. Folkard was still happy to manipulate and test Nathanial. Perhaps the captain thought it necessary. After what had occurred in London, who could blame him? Or perhaps it simply amused him.
Probably both, Nathanial decided. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t surprise Nathanial if Folkard had known about the need to fly these gliders. It was just the sort of “test” that Folkard seemed altogether too fond of.
“Fine,” said Nathanial. “Just fine. We’ll do our level best not to look like an invading force. Hard not to be taken for a spy, even so.”
“I’d avoid being seen,” Forbes-Hamilton said helpfully. “The Krauts might just decide that they’d need to bundle you off for a bit of a chat.”
“I hope that’s not what happened to Collins.”
“Eh? No, they knew he was around, of that I’m certain. He’s hard to miss. Rather like the loud fellow at a conference who corners you with his latest theories on mushrooms. He just had the advantage of being enough of a certified fruit bat that no one would have supposed him to be a spy.”
“But he still disappeared.”
“Quite,” said Forbes-Hamilton, absently adjusting a tensioning cable. “There. Didn’t feel up to having the catwalk collapse on us. I’ve no desire to join you in the swamp, and I suppose you’d prefer a more controlled descent, eh?”
“So, these flying things…” Arnaud said.
“Gliding. Please be precise.” Forbes-Hamilton stared at the gliders with the look of a cat owner discovering his beloved moggy had left a gift on the bedroom floor. “As I said, an idea foisted on me by my backers. In this case, the agents of our dear queen who were more than concerned about darling Neddie. I was told I’d be meeting a special task group that was trained to fly these things, infiltrate once on the ground, impersonate German workers and shoot things should the impersonation fall through.”
“That’s certainly not us,” Nathanial said.
Forbes-Hamilton waved an indifferent hand. “Quite obviously. Please don’t bother asking me the details of my communication, but I’m told you’ll be taking that esteemed group’s place. So, you’ll have a contact on the ground and all that. This little mission is a good month in the planning, you see.”
“Now, see here,” said Nathanial, “we had no idea we were traipsing into a war zone. We’re scientists!”
“And Annabelle,” pointed out Arnaud. “But how will we keep her from this fray? I’ve heard the tales of her previous assaults upon the local fauna with her little bow and arrow. She will be putting on the war paint and screaming battle cries before we can so much as say Guten Tag.”
“I’m right over here, monsieur,” Annabelle said. “Your teasing to the contrary, I’ve no desire to be shot at.”
“Oh, do calm down,” Forbes-Hamilton said. “There is no war zone. But there was concern that, infiltration skills notwithstanding, there was still the possibility of discovery and subsequent derring-do. Unlike our young lady over there, the special operations lads haven’t always the common sense to restrain themselves. Always hoping some latter day Tennyson might immortalise them in verse, I imagine.”
“True. As you say, we’re less likely to be problematic,” Nathanial said with a significant glance at Annabelle.
“And should you be captured, you’ve a perfect cover story. You were simply looking for your precious minerals.”
“Story?” said Arnaud. “That is the reason for why we are here.”
“The truth doesn’t hurt, I suppose,” said Forbes-Hamilton.
“Not always,” said Nathanial.