20 Million Leagues Over the Sea

by K. T. Hunter

  Gemma pondered the next logical question. Would anyone else need the answer so badly? Should she just radio the information she had to Brightman anyway, considering that tralphium had been the object of her previous assignment? Surely they would not have consigned her to two years in this great void and her possible (even likely) demise to steal a secret within the first couple of days?

  "And where did we find the tralphium we are using now?" The Russian saved her the trouble of asking.

  "Ah, yes, the million shilling question," the Captain replied. "Any of you that were cleared for this trip are cleared to have some word about it, even though I can't give you the exact location. But I can tell you this much: we didn't stay a month on the Moon just to hop around like bunnies."

  The MOON? Oh, crickets, Gemma thought. Mrs. Brightman will have the Girls working triple time!

  At that moment, the dim yellowish lights in the chamber winked off, replaced by an icy blue glow. A clanging alarm echoed in the darkness. A voice chanted over the speaking tube and warned them about a flare alert. Gemma jumped at the blast of sound, as did most of the Cohort.

  Dr. Pugh looked at the Captain and asked, "The head?"

  "Over there," he said as he pointed towards the wall that they had followed into the chamber. He touched Gemma's elbow and guided her that way. "They weren't expecting many ladies down here. I'm afraid there's only the one closet, so you'll have to lodge with us," he said as they hurried across the floor. "Just don't tell Mr. Wallace."

  The rest of the men scrambled into the room ahead of them, and the trio were the last to squeeze in. The Cohort and the monitoring group were jammed in so tightly cheek-to-jowl that it was difficult to secure the door. Gemma found herself wedged sideways between the captain and Pugh. It seemed that Moreau's long arms had nowhere else to go except around her shoulders; this had the effect of pressing her cheek firmly into his chest. Navy blue wool and a tiny view of the door filled her vision. Occasional voices crackled over the speaker mounted on the wall as various departments reported to anyone listening that they were safe.

  "Flares? Already?" someone in the back demanded, his voice fraught with anxiety. "Alfieri, aren't we at solar minimum? I thought you didn't see any sunspots during your last observation!"

  "Oh, pipe down, Abbie," growled Dr. Pugh from behind her. "Bidarhalli, mind my elbow!" He whispered, and Christophe mouthed the words in imitation as he spoke, "I wonder if Napoleon had to deal with this insanity when he took all those savants to Egypt!"

  The priest's smooth voice answered. "Yes, yes, the sun should be quite calm now. Perhaps, being so early in the voyage, this is merely a drill? Perhaps the captain would enlighten us?"

  The captain merely cleared his throat and said, "So, we meet again, Dr. Pugh." He sounded as if he were some hero in a penny dreadful greeting his arch-nemesis in a dank corner of London.

  "Fancy seeing you here, Chris -- Captain." Even though she couldn't see his face, she could hear a hint of a smile in the old man's voice.

  "Well," Alfieri said, to no one in particular, "with the new protocols, we should be well-shielded here for several hours, if necessary."

  A general groan at the thought of imitating a tin of sardines for that length of time hatched among them. She could feel the press of the young man's body in places where she shouldn't be feeling it, but he didn't seem to be shy about the situation at all. Pulling away from him would only nestle her closer to Pugh, whose own shrinking reticence matched her own. She growled inwardly. Moreau was far too jolly about the situation for it to be anything than what he had planned. Silently, she hoped her mission included a swift kick in the nether regions for this cad. At the very least, she hoped her orders didn't rule it out.

  The Irishman and the Russian were fussing at each other about poking, and Pugh kept telling them to shut it. Every time the captain spoke, she caught a noseful of spearmint, as if he had spent the morning gargling with Doctor Norton's Men-T-Fresh Tonic. Its strength made her eyes water, but it did tend to mask the understink of fear and sweat in the teeming chamber. It was getting hot, and there was little fresh air blowing in through a vent in the corner above them. She felt a little faint. She wished she had a fan with her, and she grunted.

  He must have felt her rumble, as she sensed a subsequent chuckle in the man. "Have no fear, Miss Llewellyn. I've done this before."

  It was Pugh's turn to grunt. "Unfortunately, he has," he said. At that moment, Shaw and Stanislav squawked again, and he grumbled. "Good Lord! I'd almost rather be stuck in the broom closet with a gaggle of Martians! At least they have the virtue of silence."

  "We normally don't have so many crewmembers in this part of the Oberth deck at once," the captain said with a hearty laugh that vibrated through her rib cage. "Perhaps we'll rethink the closet size on the next refit. Or include one for the ladies down here."

  "If we have a refit." Pugh fidgeted behind her as he spoke. "In case Mr. Wallace asks, Llewellyn, I don't normally include the head in the Oberth tour."

  Gemma finally found her voice. "Why are we in here, of all places?"

  "Flares, child," Alfieri responded. "Every once in a while the solar disk reaches out with steaming tendrils and sends powerful energies hurtling through the skies. We are usually protected by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic fields--"

  Shaw interrupted, "Well, except for that time in '59! Remember the big one that Carrington saw, and all those telegraph fires--"

  "Yes, yes, but that was rather an extreme one," replied the astronomer, "with aurorae you could read by! But on Earth, we are protected from such things. Mostly. In space, we surrender those protections. Like our fuel, we have to bring it along with us. We humans need extra shelter during those times."

  "Well, that makes sense enough," she replied, "but why not just shield the entire ship?"

  "That is exactly what the Martians did," the captain replied. "But they used simple cylinders. I don't know much about Martian economics, but I'm certain that the cost of lining those buckets is much less dear than lining a ship like ours."

  "Please note that the Fury is a far cry from a simple cylinder," said Pugh. "Being lobbed about like tinned beef might be good enough for them, but to me that manner of travel is just plain silly."

  "And in the TIA, we don't do silly," the captain muttered under his breath, so low that only Gemma could hear. She could feel the vibrations of his words. "We copied their means of space travel--"

  "Stole, you mean," Pugh interjected.

  "I prefer improved upon," Moreau shot back. "But you must admit that we did invent the state-of-the-art water closet."

  "Hrumph," Pugh retorted. "If the Martians had actually had bladders, we'd have stolen their privies, too!"

  "It's just as well," cried someone in the back. "Can you imagine trying to take a wee with equipment designed for a bundle of limbs when you've only got the two!"

  "Lady present!" barked the captain.

  Commentary in the back of the room ceased.

  Gemma craned her neck up to look at the young man's face; she knew when she was being distracted. She had gotten the idea that solar flares were nothing to trifle with; how long would this one last, and how long would they be trapped?

  "It makes a sort of sense," he explained, beaming a smile down at her, "as people usually keep themselves within easy distance of the head, and we have them on every deck. We all know where they are, even when we can't find anything else. Why bother creating two rooms when one would do? Although I admit I did not expect to be chock-a-block with a clutch of scientists at the time."

  There was some pain behind that smile, though, that would be difficult for anyone less trained than Gemma to detect. She had just glimpsed a hard-won pearl of wisdom.

  Cervantes' voice hissed from the speaking tube. "Captain Moreau, this is the bridge. All departments have reported in. All crew accounted for; they all reached the shelters within two minutes. Is the Cohort with you on the Oberth Deck?"

  Gemma co
uld feel, rather than hear, the young captain's inner sigh of relief at that report. He leaned his face against the wall to reach the speaking tube just inside the door.

  "Aye, Mr. Cervantes, they are all here with me. We'll work on the timing, but pass on my compliments to the crew for their rapid response. Secure from panic stations."

  Moreau managed to work his arm into a position to open the door. They popped out of it like hot chestnuts. Gemma hopped out of the way of the spilling Cohort. She sucked in the cold air of the vast chamber and now felt grateful for it. It had been frighteningly large before, but the wide-open space was now welcome. The difference was not lost on her; it was a matter of frame of reference, she supposed.

  "Good drill, everyone, good drill," Moreau said. He pointed to one of the men from the Engineering group. "Good job, Chief Nesbitt. Expect more of those in the future. Want to keep everyone safe."

  The blue bulbs were now dark, and the normal yellow-white ones were bright once more. Gemma had not noticed the extra bulbs before the drill, but now she saw other bulbs in the ceiling. Red and green bulbs flanked the blue ones. She wondered if the red one meant fire. She hoped that if so, she would never see it lit. She had no idea what the green one might mean. She made a mental note to ask Pugh about the other lights later.

  Pugh led them over to the tank and the rows of barrels and continued his lecture as if nothing at all had happened. Gemma followed suit and pulled at her jacket to straighten it. It was a convenient way to avoid the gaze of the captain, who lagged behind their little group.

  "As we were saying before we were so rudely interrupted," Pugh said as he stared daggers at the captain, "the argon in this tank is the fuel that provides the ship's working mass. In order to create thrust, we inject the gas into a chamber and superheat it to create plasma, which we eject out the nozzles at the extreme end of the ship. Now, to heat that plasma, we use radio waves, which in turn--"

  "Dr. Pugh," Bidarhalli interrupted. "Please, can you explain how radio waves can do such a thing?"

  "With a prodigious great antenna," chirped the captain.

  "Of course, we have to have electric power in order to generate said waves," Dr. Pugh continued.

  "And run the rest of the ship, as well," the captain said. "We don't just run the engines with that electricity. We feed that power to motors and charge the batteries, in these flywheels over here," he said, pointing to the rows of shining barrels. "We keep these fellows charged up and then power the rest of the ship off of them. If power production should be interrupted, we can run life support off the batteries for quite some time."

  "How long, Captain?" asked Shaw.

  "Long enough to get the main power back online and spin up the flywheels again. There are more of them beyond that wall there." He pointed at the bulkhead through which the tank passed, like a spirit disappearing into a wall. "The rest of the Oberth Engine is there."

  Including the tralphium and the radio antenna, Gemma thought. She could feel some finality about the way the scientist and the captain were moving. We've seen what they wanted us to see. The tour ends here, I'll wager.

  "And since we had the honour of participating in a flare drill," Pugh growled with a meaningful jerk of his chin towards the captain, "we have run out of the time allotted for the tour. We will postpone the rest of it 'til later."

  This last caused an eruption groans from the Cohort, but the sudden turn of events was not lost on Gemma.

  "We have yet to determine the effects of using technology that we ourselves did not create," Pugh said, motioning his flock back towards the door. "Who knows what gaps there are in our knowledge? What else might we need to survive the ravages of space? We discovered some of those gaps on the lunar voyage, and our sailors paid the price. What price will we pay this time?"

  Gemma glanced back at the instrument panel underneath the tank as he spoke. The professor was correct; this ship was far more than a simple cylinder. It would have sent old Ned Ludd's lads into conniptions. And yet all the instruments seemed designed for humans with two hands, not for rotund beasts with tentacles. Even if the Fury's mechanisms were not part of her mission, she still wanted to know: who had designed them?

  Dr. Pugh's remark about the Martians having the virtue of silence came back to her. She hoped that he had not brought any pickled specimens of the beasts with him. That would truly be beyond the pale.

  ~~~~

  Christophe

  She is lovely, lovely indeed, Christophe thought. He strode down the corridor to his stateroom. His long strides covered the distance in short order.

  Captaincy had its privileges, but it had its downside, too; it was often a lonely position. Command of a space ship was doubly so. He was thankful for Cervantes. They had been together for so long that Miguel often anticipated Christophe's commands before he thought of them himself. But there were some empty places that even his foster brother could not fill.

  The Cultural Officer was outside the normal chain of command, but the thought of confiding in Wallace made him cringe. The man meant well, but he was a walking bundle of rules and etiquette. Christophe liked Nigel Davies, and his assistant Yeoman McLure was attractive in her own fashion; but fraternizing with the Booleans was against protocol. The Knopfs had been family friends for many years, but they had kept to themselves since the loss of their son during the maiden voyage. Sometimes he felt that the mourning cameo that the good Frau wore was more than just a token of remembrance. He felt a jab in his ribs every time he saw it.

  But Miss Llewellyn... she was new. The Cohort was outside the chain of command, so the fraternization rules did not apply. Here, perhaps, was a female with whom he could connect. He was happy enough when he was on-duty, which was most of the time; but in his rare down time, he was lonely for the company of the fairer sex, especially one that was so ship-shape and in Bristol fashion. It relieved him to know that he had an entire case of Men-T-Fresh Tonic in his storage locker.

  Overall, he was satisfied with his crew. Hard workers, all, not a snobbish bone in their bodies, not even the officers. He remembered Mr. Wallace's look of horror when he learned that there would be no Lords at his outer-space teas, and that memory made him smile. He bore no malice towards the Cultural Officer, who was only trying to do his job. It wasn't easy keeping a boatload of sailors from degenerating into savages with ladies on board. It was a responsibility that the two of them shared, though Christophe did enjoy tweaking him with a bit of harmless impropriety from time to time.

  Miss Llewellyn! Now there is a lady! He had met many women in his time, from the maids at Tesla's estate in New Zealand to the girls he had encountered whilst he had plied the seas of the South Pacific. They had been warm and happy girls who had been sad to see him go. He could never stay in one place for long. He had been training to lead a crew to another world. He had always been moving from port to port, never staying anywhere long enough to form lasting friendships outside of his crew and Pugh's colleagues.

  He had known no other goal. Mars had danced in front of him since his nursery days. He had spent his youth traversing the globe in order to learn how to leave it. He had worked his way up through the ranks on every manner of vessel -- with Miguel as his shadow -- from tall ships to tramp steamers to dirigibles, earning his command. Many of his former crewmates served under him now.

  The TIA had done more than teach him how to command. They had shown him the devastation of the Invasion. They had tried to build in him the same anger and hatred that they had, so that he would be the perfect commander for a mission of revenge.

  Instead of fury, though, he felt -- well, he wasn't sure if there was any word at all for what he felt. On many days, he was a bouillabaisse of sentiments, though he tried to conceal it. His crew needed a strong, solid captain, and that's all he allowed them to see. These villains had trampled the world with their tripods, and he should hate them with all the burning fire he could muster, like all the posters and bills told him to; and yet, and yet, if not f
or them, Dr. Pugh would not have met Maggie. And then he, Christophe Moreau, simply would not exist.

  He dragged his hand across the top of a book, the one that always sat on his desk: the journal of his mentor's mentor, Professor Aronnax. The cover was soiled and rippled from decades of salt air and dirty fingerprints. Dog-eared and wrinkled pages clung together in a binding that was near-broken in a few spots. He was surprised that the words had not fallen out. The book had traveled farther than most people. Pugh had trained Christophe to take it with him, everywhere he went, and to read from it every day, like some sort of nautical devotional. He already knew it, word for word, but there was still something invigorating about seeing the words in Aronnax's own hand. Christophe had even read parts of it aloud to Maggie from time to time. She always enjoyed his tales of the wide ocean. He had whiled away many hours with her, recounting the sunsets reflected in the world's many horizons. She had shivered when he had spoken about the terrifying squalls that he had sailed through, and she had applauded the tales of the beautiful girls waiting for him on the other side of those tempests. She loved it when he read to her, especially the stories of Mark Twain. Even though he had them memorized, he had still hauled them up from the Kiwi Clipper. They were as much friends to him as the brass spyglass nestled amongst them. It was as useless here as the old pirate shirt hanging in his closet, but he needed that little drop of seafaring life close by.