Starclimber

by Kenneth Oppel

  The shaking intensified.

  “I hope Lunardi built this ship strong,” said Tobias.

  “Lunardi builds all his ships strong,” I said.

  To my left, I saw, Dr. Turgenev had strapped his cane to the wall, as though he fully intended to take it up when we landed and walk off the ship—as though nothing unusual had happened. It struck me as a very hopeful sign, and it cheered me up considerably.

  The ride was much rougher now, and it was getting difficult to see straight.

  I looked over and saw Kate fumbling with her hands. In astonishment I watched her yank off her engagement ring and fling it to the floor.

  “I’d just like to say something,” she announced, her voice quavering as the ship juddered. “I don’t love George Sanderson.”

  “James,” I corrected.

  “I don’t love James Sanderson either,” she said. “And I have no intention of marrying him.” The ship shook violently, and she gulped. “I love Matt Cruse, and have for some time now! No matter what happens to us, I want everyone here to know that.”

  Dr. Turgenev sighed wearily. “This we already knew.”

  “You did?” Kate said, sounding astonished. “All along?”

  “Everyone knows. Even Sir Hugh knows. It is painfully obvious.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, disappointed. “I thought I’d done such a…Oh, well. You all know, and that’s what’s important.”

  If I stretched, I could just reach her hand. Our fingertips touched, hooking together for a moment. Above us: the black sky, the stars, twinkling again. She’d never told me she loved me before, and hearing these words for the first time, I smiled, intoxicated with joy.

  I looked up through the dome. “There’s your star,” I said.

  “Our star,” she said.

  “Do you know when I started loving you?” I said. I didn’t care that the others might hear.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  My voice rattled with the ship. “On the Aurora. I gave you the tour. I showed you the gas cells and said they were made from cows’ intestines. And you looked very serious and said, ‘It must have taken a great many cows.’”

  Kate looked at me, surprised. “Really? That exact moment?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Hm. It’s not very romantic, but it’s completely unexpected,” she said. “I like that.”

  From somewhere below came a horrible, drawn-out screech, like a piece of metal being twisted.

  “What was that?” Tobias asked.

  “Hull heating up,” said Dr. Turgenev.

  “It is getting very hot in here,” Kate remarked.

  Sweat filmed my back and belly. Beyond the windows, creeping around the sides of the ship, was orangy-blue light. It grew brighter still, and then it was suddenly streaming past the Starclimber in great sheets and ribbons, like our own aurora borealis.

  Heat.

  My heart broke into a gallop. I could see the heat. I imagined the ship’s stern, glowing like something in a forge, orange, then white. Soaking into the metal. Spreading up into C-Deck and B-Deck. How strong was the Starclimber? She wasn’t built to withstand such stress. How long before she buckled and melted away altogether?

  We plunged backward through the upper atmosphere. My body felt as though it were cast from iron. Our chairs groaned ominously, pulling at their bolts. My restraints bit into my body, creaking with strain.

  “No matter…what happens…we’re going home,” I said, touching Kate’s hand.

  “I’d rather…it wasn’t as…a shooting star,” she said.

  “There are…worse ways…of dying.”

  Gravity clenched me tighter in its fists. I felt as though I could scarcely fill my lungs to breathe.

  The ship shook. My body shook.

  The entire world was pressing down on me.

  My vision started to go red.

  Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay…

  Everything started to fade, like a painting tipped to its side, all the colors seeping out. I feared I’d black out altogether. Tobias had his eyes closed, grimacing, and I called out to him, but he didn’t answer. Or maybe I wasn’t making any noise, for my face was so heavy, I could hardly move my mouth.

  My vision contracted to a tunnel.

  So hot. My body was afire, itching unbearably against the clothing.

  Overhead the stars disappeared and the sky was suddenly blue.

  I heard beeping, and it took me a moment to realize it was the ship’s altimeter. I tried to find the gauge with my eyes. It was like looking through a spyglass in a small room; everything was too close. Finally I located it.

  One hundred thousand feet and falling fast.

  Emergency balloons. I blinked and squinted and found the lever on my panel. I was in charge of the starboard balloon, Tobias the port.

  “To-bi-as!” I moaned. “To-bi-as…”

  He wasn’t moving. I turned to look at Dr. Turgenev. Unconscious.

  “Ka-ate!”

  “Ye-e-s.”

  “Ca-an you re-each po-ort balloon le-ver?”

  “I thi-ink so.”

  “Pull whe-en I sa-ay.”

  I saw her reaching with great difficulty for the lever. At last her hand closed around it.

  I struggled for mine. My hand stretched weirdly down the spyglass tunnel of my vision. The world weighed on my eyelids, urging them to close and rest and surrender.

  “Matt. Take hold of the lever.”

  Kate’s voice was so clear and calm that my eyes snapped open in surprise.

  The lever was in my hand.

  “We’re at seventy thousand feet,” she told me.

  The altimeter could barely keep up with itself, we were falling so quickly.

  If the balloons didn’t deploy—

  If the compressed hydrium didn’t flow fast enough—

  “Fifty thousand,” I said. “Forty-five…Now!”

  My lever was stiff, and I worried I was too weak, but I gave a roar and pulled it down. Kate did the same with hers.

  There was a great bang like something exploding, then a clamoring outside the bridge. The Starclimber rocked frightfully. Outside the dome two long white banners unfurled into the sky, then swelled as they filled with the compressed hydrium.

  “Deployed!” I shouted.

  The deceleration was instantaneous and brutal. My thousand-pound body was driven back against the chair, knocking the wind from my lungs. All across the bridge, things came unhinged and flew about, striking our bodies.

  Please, do not let the balloon lines snap, I begged silently.

  The balloons grew, blocking my view of the blue sky. The altimeter’s beeping grew less urgent. We were slowing. The balloon lines held.

  The altimeter had us at thirty thousand feet and still falling, though much more slowly now. The immense load on my body was easing.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Kate.

  She nodded, wheezing.

  Tobias grunted and stirred.

  “What has happened?” cried Dr. Turgenev, waking suddenly.

  “The balloons are flying,” I said. “We’re slowing down.”

  “We’re through?” Tobias said, not comprehending. “We did it?”

  “We’re not done yet,” I said. “We’ve got to land this thing.”

  “This is your job,” said Dr. Turgenev. “I am just scientist.”

  “Let’s find out where we are,” I said, unbuckling myself.

  The hydrium balloons were holding the Starclimber more or less vertical, though we were rocking now from the wind. I staggered to the window, my body feeling incredibly heavy after its days of weightlessness.

  “Can you see anything?” Kate asked. She too had unbuckled herself and was coming over.

  Below me was a sea of cloud. My heart rejoiced to be back in the sky, but we weren’t free of danger. There were almost thirty thousand feet between us and a safe landing. I wanted to get the Starclimber down as quickly as possibly. We lurched thr
ough a thick layer of cumulus, getting tossed about dreadfully. We all held tight.

  “We should be over prairies,” said Dr. Turgenev.

  I checked our compass. Normally I could always tell north. But after so many days in outer space, I needed to orient myself.

  Down we went through the bellies of the last clouds.

  “I see land!” cried Kate.

  I saw water. True enough, off to the south was the brown texture of land, but directly below the Starclimber, and spreading off to the east and west, was water.

  “Was there a lake near our landing site?” asked Tobias, surprised.

  I ran around to the bridge’s north side. Nothing but water.

  “This is no lake,” Dr. Turgenev said.

  “Where are we?” Tobias demanded.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is we’re getting blown away from land.”

  The Starclimber was no airship; her shape was ungainly, and we were rocking and spinning, and it was very difficult to move about the bridge.

  “How do we steer?” Kate asked.

  “Like a balloon,” I said. “Change altitude until we find a favorable current.”

  It wouldn’t be easy. We had no ballast. Once we dropped, we couldn’t go back up. We couldn’t stop our descent.

  I checked the altimeter: we’d leveled off at just under fifteen thousand feet. We had some height to play with, but not a lot.

  “We’re going to valve some hydrium,” I told everyone. “We’ll drop bit by bit until we start heading south.”

  Each hydrium balloon had an escape valve that could be triggered from the bridge. I put Tobias on the starboard controls and me on the port. A pressure gauge showed each balloon at full capacity. Each control was like the trigger of a gun. We’d need steady hands to keep the ship balanced.

  “Dr. Turgenev and Kate, you’re the ship’s eyes now. When you see us start moving back toward land, shout out!”

  They took opposite sides of the bridge and pressed their faces to the glass.

  “Ready?” I asked Tobias. “Now!”

  We squeezed our triggers. I kept my eyes on the pressure gauge and altimeter.

  “Stop!” I said. We’d fallen a couple hundred feet, and the Starclimber spun about as the wind shifted.

  “How’re we doing?” I shouted.

  “We’re moving to the east now!” said Kate.

  That was an improvement, but not enough.

  “Valve again, go!” I told Tobias. Then: “Stop!”

  It was a tricky thing. Lose too much hydrium and we’d drop too fast.

  A big gust hit the Starclimber’s flank and swung us like a pendulum. Dr. Turgenev tripped and fell. We were at ten thousand feet now, running out of time.

  “How’re we doing, Kate!”

  “I think you’ve done it! We’re moving back toward land!”

  “How far to landfall?”

  “I can’t tell, I’m sorry.”

  I rushed to the window. I guessed we were twenty miles off, and we were moving south at quite a clip, driven by a stiff wind. So long as it didn’t change direction, we’d make landfall within minutes. The Starclimber swayed and swung.

  “I think I’m going to be sick now,” said Dr. Turgenev, and he was, noisily, against the wall.

  My stomach yawed uncomfortably, but I fought it. I couldn’t be laid low right now.

  Five thousand feet.

  “We’re over land!” Kate shouted happily.

  “Tobias,” I said, “see if you can raise anyone on the radio. Tell them we’re making an emergency landing.”

  “Good,” he said, and started calling in an SOS. I wished we had coordinates to give them.

  “It looks very brown,” said Kate. “I see roads and rivers and lots and lots of fields. Is that wheat?”

  We were too high to tell, but what we saw was definitely farmland. Our descent was reassuringly gradual. At a thousand feet I started looking for a likely landing site. To the south the fields suddenly gave way to a pale brown expanse that stretched to the horizon.

  “Is that desert?” Kate said in surprise.

  I seized a spyglass from its rack. “You’re right, it’s sand,” I said. “Dr. Turgenev, I don’t think this is the prairies.”

  He was slumped in his chair, his head between his knees. “Should be prairies,” he mumbled weakly.

  Static suddenly crackled over our speaker. “What are your coordinates, please, Starclimber?”

  “We don’t know our coordinates,” said Tobias. “We’ve just…um…returned from outer space. Can you tell us where we are?”

  “I think I see a pyramid,” said Kate.

  “What!” I said.

  She pointed. “Three of them actually.”

  I didn’t need my spyglass to spot them, rising unmistakably from the desert sand.

  “We’re over Egypt!” I exclaimed.

  “I misplace decimal point,” moaned Dr. Turgenev.

  All I cared about was setting us down safely. We’d just cleared the last of the fields. By my reckoning we would come down very close to the pyramids.

  The crisp voice sounded over the speaker again. “Starclimber, this is Cairo Aeroharbor. Do you have a rough position?”

  “We’re due north of the Great Pyramid,” Tobias said, “about…” He looked over at me, wanting an estimate.

  “Two miles,” I told him.

  “Two miles. Heading south. We have no power and are free ballooning. Making an emergency landing.”

  “We’ll dispatch a rescue crew immediately, Starclimber.”

  “Two hundred feet!” I shouted to everyone.

  The wind seemed to die down altogether as we skimmed over the peak of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. There was really nothing left to do now but hope we touched down on a nice sandy patch.

  “This is it!” I said. “Buckle up, everyone—this’ll be rough!”

  Kate pointed in alarm. “We’re awfully close to the Sphinx!”

  “Not much I can do about that,” I said.

  “But it’s an invaluable artifa—”

  There was a terrible thud and the Starclimber ricocheted off the Sphinx’s head.

  “I think you broke its nose!” Kate cried, holding tight as we swung wildly.

  “Sit down and buckle up!” I told her. “Tobias, keep your hand on the balloon release. The moment we touch down, jettison them so we don’t get dragged.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  I staggered into my seat. The altimeter’s needle sank lower.

  Forty feet…thirty…twenty…

  It seemed to take forever, but that was good. We needed a gentle touchdown.

  A great jarring bang sent us all lurching. The Starclimber bounced, tilting over at a crazy angle, then banged down again for good. Sand flew against the dome. Glass shattered.

  “Let fly!” I shouted, and Tobias pulled the lever. Through the dome I saw the hydrium balloons hurtle away from the ship.

  All was still.

  “Everyone all right?” I asked.

  We staggered out of our seats. Air, real air, swirled in through the cracked dome.

  “We did it!” Kate cried. “We’re home!”

  HOMEWARD BOUND

  In the hotel courtyard Miss Karr sat painting at an easel, Haiku on her shoulder.

  “I didn’t know you were a painter as well, Miss Karr,” I said, walking over.

  “I’m not,” she replied with a smile. “I tried very hard, long before I took up photography. I wasn’t very good. One of my teachers said his cat could do better. So I gave up. But I’m trying again.”

  I suddenly remembered something. The first time I’d seen Miss Karr, she was in her back garden at an easel. She’d stood up, angrily, like she didn’t want anyone seeing. I suddenly understood.

  “It’s the photographer who needs to change,” I said, quoting her words back to her.

  She nodded. “It is indeed. Come have a look.”

  She invi
ted me around the easel to see. I’d expected a picture of the courtyard: the fountain or the exotic Egyptian flowers, or the minaret rising in the distance. But it was none of that.

  The painting was of a luminous green forest of massive pines, and beyond it a night sky like I’d never seen. The light emanated from the stars in great auras. I felt the power of the sky and the trees, and heard the wind that stirred their great boughs.

  “I like it very much,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s not at all like a photograph, but it’s like I’m standing right there in the forest, and I can hear and smell everything.”

  “The soul of the forest,” she said, looking at the painting with a critical eye.

  “It’s funny you had to go all the way to outer space to paint it.”

  “Isn’t it?” she agreed. “Maybe sometimes you see things best when they’re out of sight. Or feel them best anyway. I’ve just ordered some tea. Will you join me?”

  I was glad to sit down. It was our fifth day in Cairo, but my body was still amazingly difficult to lug around. I worried I walked like an old man. Getting used to earth again would take some time.

  The sound of running water was still marvelous to me, and I listened contentedly to the fountain. I breathed in the warm scent of flowers.

  It was the smells I’d noticed first, climbing out of the Starclimber. Even the scent of the desert was overwhelming. The hot mineral aroma of sand, and beyond that, the fragrance of distant fields—turned earth, aromatic herbs, and water plants from the Nile. And then the pungent odor of camels, and the sulfurous fumes of the motorcars and ambulances rushing to meet us.

  The Starclimber was badly damaged. It was amazing it hadn’t been completely destroyed. The stern had absorbed most of the impact, which crumpled C-Deck almost entirely, and a bit of B-Deck. Safely strapped down in their cabins on A-Deck, Sir Hugh, Chef Vlad, Captain Walken, Miss Karr, and Haiku had escaped harm and walked off the ship—the captain having just regained consciousness moments after our landing.

  We’d all been taken straight to the hospital, where doctors poked and prodded us and shone lights in our eyes. Captain Walken was fine, with just a mild concussion. They kept all of us overnight, though. They’d never had patients who’d crash-landed after three weeks in outer space, and they just wanted to make sure we were truly all right. As soon as I could, I sent a telegram home to my mother and sisters, letting them know I was alive and well. I didn’t know how much news Mr. Lunardi had given them, but I hoped they hadn’t suffered too much worry.