Skybreaker

by Kenneth Oppel

  “Empty,” I said.

  “It’s all bunged up, I reckon,” Hal commented. “The pneumatics and so forth.”

  I nodded. “Probably shooting things around all over the ship.”

  “Back to work.”

  I wondered if Hal was as unshaken as he seemed, but if he could work, so could I. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard his whoop of glee from the dressing room. Inside one of the closets, behind a false wall, he’d discovered a safe. It was the size of a pot-bellied stove, a solid cube of metal, resting on four squat legs. The door looked to be a good inch thick.

  “Suddenly I feel quite fond of old Grunel,” said Hal with a grin.

  “Can you open it?”

  “Didn’t know I was a lock picker, did you?” Hal gave me a wink.

  “You’re a man of many talents,” I replied.

  “It’s all a question of having the right tools,” said Hal, and from his pack he took not a clever set of picks but a big brick of some kind of gray putty and a fat nest of wire.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, pinching off a bit of the putty, “you can mess about with files and picks, but in the end, the important thing is to get at what you want.”

  He rolled a bit of the putty into a cigarette shape, jabbed two wires into it, then shoved the whole lot into the safe’s lock.

  “Let’s move off a ways.” Hal fed out the wires as we retreated from the dressing room. We crouched behind the ottoman sofa in the bedroom. From his rucksack he produced a small box with a plunger and attached the ends of the wires to the terminals.

  “You won’t blow up the ship?” I asked.

  “No, it’s quite precise. Go ahead,” he said, gesturing to the handle. “Give it a push.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. It’s quite a thrill.”

  His enthusiasm was contagious, and I grasped the plunger and pushed down hard. There was a flash of light and a surprisingly muffled bang. A wave of chemical vapors washed through the room.

  “Good, wasn’t it?” said Hal.

  “I can’t lie,” I replied with a smile.

  Then we were up and hurrying into the dressing room.

  The door of the safe was still perfectly intact; the only difference was that it was now slightly ajar, as if it had just been opened by the owner.

  “Almost too easy, ain’t it?” said Hal. “Let’s get the goodies, shall we?”

  I noticed when it was just the two of us alone, most of his gentlemanly speech and niceties disappeared and he became what he really was: a street-smart entrepreneur, a self-made man. I liked him better this way than when he was sweet talking Kate, Miss Simpkins, and Nadira, or holding forth in the lounge like an elder statesman.

  Hal threw wide the door of the safe.

  Nestled inside was another metal door.

  “He’s a cautious man, our Mr. Grunel,” I said.

  “Hats off to him,” said Hal, already preparing more explosive putty. “You can never be too cautious. You and I, Cruse, are about to be very rich, very soon.”

  “What’ll you do with your share?” I asked, giddy with excitement.

  “Well, I reckon a man in my position should take a wife.”

  “Is that right?” I said, my smile fading.

  Hal inserted the putty in the lock. “I rather fancy an intelligent, spirited young woman who enjoys travel and adventure.”

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “Rich is also no bad thing.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were rich enough already.”

  He faltered a mere second. “Well, more never goes amiss, does it? And what about you?” He was backing away from the vault now, feeding out wire. “Your thoughts ever turn to marriage?”

  “I’m only sixteen years old.”

  “At your age, would’ve been the last thing on my mind too. The young don’t need that kind of responsibility.”

  “Well, I was actually thinking of proposing,” I lied.

  “That right?” Hal said, hooking the wires to the plunger.

  “Why not? An engagement can go on for years.”

  “True, but usually before you propose to a lady, it’s customary to have some wealth or form of livelihood.”

  “Just hurry up and push that plunger,” I said. “I’m going to be very rich, very soon.”

  Hal grinned. “But not as rich as me.”

  He pushed the plunger, and the explosion blew the second door right off.

  I walked over to the safe with Hal. I did not feel very buoyant anymore.

  “Icy old fart,” Hal muttered, for there, behind the second door, was a third.

  “Harder to crack than you thought,” I said.

  After the third door was blasted off there was a fourth. By this time, Hal had stopped speaking altogether, except to have a little cursing spree when his cold fingers had trouble squeezing his brimstone putty into the ever tinier locks.

  “There’s not going to be much room left for anything,” I remarked, after we blew the fifth door off and saw there was a sixth.

  “There’s barely room in there for a pair of slippers,” Hal said darkly.

  “A child’s slippers,” I added.

  “I’ll have it open,” said Hal doggedly.

  He blew the door open.

  “What’s inside?” I asked, my eyes smarting from the fumes.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “A key. Looks the same as Nadira’s. And this.” He tossed me a small notebook, slightly singed. “You’re the bookish type, Cruse. What is it?”

  I opened the book at random. The page was filled with close lines of small, meticulous handwriting.

  “Looks to be some kind of journal.”

  “He puts his diary in the safe.” Hal cursed and gave the wrecked safe a kick. There was no more joviality in him. I put the journal into my rucksack.

  A dreadful hissing sound once more filled Grunel’s stateroom, and even though I knew what it was, it still raised a rash of gooseflesh across my back and belly. The green flag sprang up from the message tube. I took out the capsule, unscrewed it. This time there was something inside, tightly furled. Carefully I pulled out several sheets. They were blueprints, filled with complicated lines and notations. I caught sight of a large cylindrical shape, which looked like the telescope from Grunel’s workshop. But before I could make sense of it, Hal snatched the blueprints from my hands.

  “More of his bloody silly inventions.”

  He rolled the sheets up roughly and jammed them back into the capsule.

  “Maybe a beard puller or an automatic nose picker, eh?”

  “Hal, wait—”

  He shoved it into the outgoing pneumatic tube and yanked the tasseled cord. The canister was sucked back into the system.

  “That might’ve been useful!” I protested.

  “If it doesn’t glitter, it’s not gold,” said Hal savagely. “Where’d you hide the goodies, eh?” he said to the blanketed form of Grunel. “No good hoarding it now, you old miser. Your best days are behind you.”

  We heard footsteps and swung our lights to the doorway.

  Dorje entered. “The girls are tired.”

  “We’re not done here,” Hal said.

  “We can continue tomorrow,” said Dorje. “We all need rest.”

  Hal was about to say something, but then he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s head back to the Saga.”

  TWO JOURNALS

  It was good to be back aboard the Sagarmatha. After the unearthly cold of the Hyperion, the dining room and lounge seemed almost tropically warm. At dinner we scarcely touched our food. We all looked haggard, and our appetites had shriveled. My pants were already looser around my waist. And yet, I did not feel unwell. I dared not mention it, for fear Hal would think I was suffering from high-altitude delusions, but I felt restless and filled with energy. I wanted to get back to work aboard the Hyperion. I wanted my gold.

  As a little treat afte
r dinner, Hal released some tanked oxygen into the lounge. Slumped in a wing-back chair, I stretched my feet toward the electric hearth. Any closer and they’d be set alight. Even the snow leopard’s fur had not prevented my toes and fingers from burning with cold by the end of our three hours aboard Grunel’s ship.

  Just before we’d left, I’d convinced Hal to let me enter the captain’s cabin. On his roll-top desk I’d found the ship’s log, locked at the base of a small frozen waterfall. I’d managed to hack the journal free from the ice, and right now it was thawing in a roasting pan near the fire. That was Nadira’s idea. I just hoped the paper would not dissolve into an unreadable inky mess.

  The evening was calm, and the two ships, tethered together, moved gently against the wind, steadied by the Saga’s engines. We couldn’t have had more ideal conditions for the salvage. But my heart was not calm. I could not stop thinking of what Hal had said about taking a wife. Surely he had his sights set on Kate de Vries. Now, every time he opened his mouth, I half expected him to fall on one knee and propose to her. I don’t know what terrified me more, the idea of Hal marrying her, or me marrying her.

  Miss Simpkins sewed. By now I’d have thought she’d sewed enough clothing for all of the Russian army. Nadira was watching the ship’s log, turning it every once in a while so it thawed evenly and did not get singed. Near the bar Hal and Dorje conferred softly, looking over the map that Dorje had diligently made during the exploration. Kate was busy taking pictures of her aerozoan egg, jotting notes. With every flash of her camera, a faint chemical haze drifted across the room. The quagga and dodo and yeti bones had been hauled up inside the Sagarmatha and were now safely stored in the ship’s hold. But it was the aerozoan that had all Kate’s attention at the moment.

  In my lap was Grunel’s diary, my one bit of treasure to show for the day. I was amazed that Hal had not snatched it from me to read himself. Instead he told me to have a peek and let him know if there was anything useful. He hadn’t sounded very optimistic. He seemed to have a low opinion of Grunel, and of writing in general.

  Glancing at the diary’s first few pages, I almost agreed with him. It was not much like a diary, for there were no dates, and what few words there were he didn’t even bother to write on the lines. They were scattered all around the page, among diagrams that made no sense to me. Quick stabs of ink, a flurry of odd symbols, and numbers everywhere. It was like trying to make sense of snowflakes in a storm.

  “Haven’t you taken enough photos of that little oddity?” complained Miss Simpkins, waving away the vapors from Kate’s flashbulbs.

  “It’s no more an oddity than you, Marjorie,” Kate replied, taking another photograph. “I want a record of what it looked like in its egg before I dissect it.”

  “You’re going to cut it up?” Miss Simpkins asked.

  “Into little pieces, yes. I can learn much more about it that way. Though, really, I’m better with mammals. There’s something much more primitive about this one.”

  “You must be happy with all your new specimens,” I said to Kate, hoping to strike up a genial conversation.

  “I could’ve had them all, if the Sagarmatha hadn’t been damaged.” She gave me a look, as though it were all my doing. She was getting as bad as Hal. Really, they were perfect for each other.

  “At least you got something,” I told her. “I haven’t found so much as a penny.”

  “There’s the old man’s watch,” Hal said, without looking up from his map.

  “There was a picture inside it,” I said, remembering. I took it from my pocket and showed it to Kate. “Any idea who that is?”

  She glanced at it. “His daughter.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. They have the same foreheads and noses. Anyway, I saw a photograph of her in a newspaper once.”

  “This is the one he cut off without a penny?” I asked. “The one he wouldn’t talk to?”

  She nodded.

  I wondered if Grunel had made things right with her before he embarked on his final journey. She had clearly never left his thoughts.

  “You know,” said Kate, “I think it’s rather low of you to sneak his personal belongings.”

  “Isn’t that exactly why we all came?” said Nadira from the hearth. “To swipe his things?”

  This stumped Kate for a moment. “Well, perhaps, but we don’t have to be grave robbers. I mean, honestly, the man’s pocket watch?”

  For a moment I was speechless with indignation. Taking the watch wasn’t even my idea, but I wasn’t going to tattle on Hal.

  “Grave robbing?” I said. “You’re the only one digging up bones.”

  “That’s different,” Kate replied, with an imperious tilt of her chin. “That’s the pursuit of knowledge.”

  I said nothing more. A fine, testy crew we were this evening. No doubt some of it was exhaustion, and the thin air of twenty thousand feet. But it seemed all too easy to irritate Kate these days.

  “Even if I can’t salvage Grunel’s whole collection,” she said to Hal, “I can try to catalogue it at least. Can I bring my small camera tomorrow?”

  “By all means,” Hal replied distractedly.

  “I think this is properly cooked now,” Nadira said from the electric hearth. She picked up the ship’s log. Its pages were warped and stiff and the entire book had swollen to twice its original size.

  “Can you read it?” I asked.

  She settled herself in a chair and turned back the cover to the first page. “It’s dated Edinburgh, 25th March. There’s some kind of loading register. Should I skip ahead?”

  She was already turning the page.

  “Wait,” I said. “Go back. What does it say for Aruba fuel?”

  Nadira looked down the loading register, and read the weight aloud. The Hyperion had left harbor carrying over two hundred thousand kilograms of Aruba fuel.

  “And what about water?” I asked.

  “Which do you want? Radiator water? Trim ballast? Fresh water?”

  “Fresh.”

  “Thirty-five thousand kilos.”

  I looked over at Hal and Dorje. They’d both been listening.

  “He wasn’t moving to New Amsterdaam,” I said. “That’s obvious from the Hyperion’s chart. He was on some much longer journey.”

  “Where?” Hal said. “You could sail five times around the world with all that fuel.”

  “Maybe he planned to live aboard her.”

  Hal sniffed, thinking the idea ludicrous.

  “Look at the museum he made for himself,” I said, “and the workshop. Not even the Aurora had staterooms that luxurious. She’s no simple freighter. She’s a home.”

  Hal shrugged, as if this wasn’t a very interesting or useful piece of information.

  “Listen to this,” said Nadira.

  I asked Mr. Grunel where he meant me to sail, and he said he had no destination in mind. I inquired as to whether he would care to choose one, and he replied that I could choose, so long as it was somewhere out of the way. “It does not matter in any event,” he told me, “since we will not be arriving.” When I said I was not sure I understood, he retorted, rather impatiently, “Just keep us sailing, captain, that’s all I ask.” I inquired what we were to do when our fuel and supplies ran low, and he just gave an odd smile and said I was not to worry.

  “Well, he’s a complete nutter obviously,” Hal said. “But we already knew that from his inventions.”

  “He most certainly wasn’t a nutter,” Kate objected. “He gave us some of the greatest—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Hal interrupted, “but what kind of man loads his life onto a ship and aims to disappear into the sky?”

  I had no answer to that, so I began to turn slowly through Grunel’s diary. Page after page was covered by his odd notations. It seemed incredible they could make sense even to him. His strings of numbers and symbols made my physics textbooks seem all simplicity.

  Nadira read some more from the captain�
�s log:

  Mr. Grunel dined with me and the officers on our first night aloft. He reminded us that we were on no condition to telegraph our position to anyone on earth. As of this moment we no longer exist. Furthermore, we are to keep our current position and heading to the bridge officers, and let none of the other crew know our whereabouts. We had, of course, already agreed to these conditions when Mr. Grunel hired us. At meal’s end, Mr. Grunel thanked us, and bid us adieu. “You will likely not see me again for quite some time. I have a great deal of work before me, and I do not wish to be disturbed except for the most urgent of reasons. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  When Nadira finished reading, I turned a page of Grunel’s diary and came upon a rare line of text, written in his small, meticulous hand.

  “Here’s something,” I said, and read aloud:

  Aloft now, and can at last complete my work without interruption, sneaks or saboteurs. Not even B. can find me now.

  “He was very paranoid,” Kate said, “I remember reading that.”

  “Who’s B.?” I wondered aloud.

  “Maybe someone trying to steal his ideas?” Nadira suggested.

  “He was convinced everyone was out to steal his ideas,” Kate said.

  “Another sign of lunacy,” Hal put in. For some reason he seemed irritated we were reading the journals. He listened impatiently, chewing at his lip, eyes straying to the far corners of the room.

  “But what was he working on?” I said. “There were dozens of things in his workshop.”

  But automatically I thought of the enormous telescope-like machine. It alone bore no label. It had no name. Maybe if Hal hadn’t shoved the blueprints back into the tube, we’d have some idea what it was.

  Nadira turned the swollen pages of the ship’s log. “It’s mostly just weather conditions now. Oh, here’s something:”

  Grunel is an odd fellow to be sure. Since the first night, we have not seen him. He keeps to his apartments, I suppose, waited on by his furtive little manservant, Hendrickson.

  “We never did see Hendrickson,” I said to Hal. I thought it a bit strange, since we’d searched all the staterooms. Surely we should have seen him, especially since it was late at night when the Hyperion met her doom.