by K. G. McAbee
11.
Aboard the Zeppelin Rheingold
Joseph Sheridan sat at the small table in his luxurious suite aboard the Rheingold. He was busily scribbling in his notebook in his self-designed code.
Germans up to something. Kurt too solicitous of my comfort while never parting with any meaningful information. Yesterday we did nothing but cruise around aimlessly, setting down only once to refuel at one of their many zepp terminals. No contact with natives allowed, even after I’ve insisted. I suspect Ku—
A sharp knock at the door stopped Sheridan’s pen in mid-word, and an inkblot immediately began spreading through the slightly damp paper.
“Yes?” he called as he blotted it with his stained handkerchief.
“Herr Sheridan, Herr Oberst Kurt’s compliments and he requests you attend him on the bridge,” said a voice.
“I’ll be there shortly,” Sheridan said as he tucked his notebook into its special pocket in his briefcase.
“Your pardon, sir, he is most insistent that you come now,” said the voice apologetically.
“Coming, coming.” Sheridan opened the door and nodded at the young steward.
The man—not much more than a boy, actually—looked relieved. “Danke schön! Danke! I will take you to the Herr Oberst!”
“No need,” said Sheridan, patting the thin boy on the arm. “I know how to get there.”
The boy shook his head, his pale, slightly protruding eyes wide. “Oh, no, Herr Sheridan. The Oberst said I was to accompany you. Come, bitte, follow me, if you please.”
Sheridan fell in behind the boy, who was literally trembling with something. Excitement? Fear? Distress? He couldn’t tell, but he was leaning more towards fear.
Herr Oberst Hans Kurt was an intimidating man. Even he had felt the threat emanating from the man. But he was here to do a job, and Sheridan always accomplished what he set out to do.
He followed the boy, who was dressed in snowy white shirt and shorts, up ladder ways and down corridors until they emerged into the shaded light of Venus on the top deck. Up another short ladder and they were outside the bridge.
Above them, the massive cigar-shaped hydrogen-filled balloon reached out in glorious curves, its enormous shadow keeping the entire gondola in the shade. The lines and ropes that attached the gondola to the balloon stretched and swooped and intertwined like giant spider webs. On the deck, everything that could be polished was.
Sheridan stood behind the steward as the boy stepped onto the bridge and announced, “Herr Sheridan, as you requested, Herr Oberst!”
Then the boy, well, all Sheridan could call it was “scuttled.” He dashed away as if all the hounds of hell were after him.
Or at least, one hound, though the location it had grown in was not in doubt.
Herr Oberst Hans Kurt turned away from the wide curving window that wrapped around three sides of the bridge. He nodded at the new arrival and beckoned him forward.
Sheridan walked slowly towards Kurt, eyeing everything he passed while trying not to look as if he were doing so.
“Good morning, Mister Sheridan.” Kurt snapped his heels together shortly.
Sheridan took in the man’s crisp uniform and gleaming boots and felt both grubby and badly dressed. Of course, he’d already realised that was precisely how Kurt wanted him to feel, so he dismissed it and took a place beside his host.
Below stretched endless miles of green, broken here and there with a silvery lake or thread of azure river. Just coming up even with the shadow of the zeppelin, in a grassy clearing, Sheridan could see a tiny village, no more than a double ring of a dozen huts each. Directly in the centre of the innermost circle of huts was an odd pile of glittering rocks heaped as high as a tall man’s head. Beyond the village, perhaps half a mile away, was an outcropping of bare tumbled rock, all of it a dark bronze colour and most unusual; Sheridan had seen nothing to compare with it in all his journeying about Venus, neither on the English plateau settlements, the Italian pole settlements, nor any of the German forts.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the rock outcropping.
“You might better ask, sir, what is that?” replied Kurt, motioning towards the glittering rock pile in the centre of the small village.
The captain of the zeppelin said quietly into a speaking horn, “Reduce engines.”
Sheridan looked at the tiny village, now almost directly below the vast balloon. He could not recall ever seeing a lizard-man town set up in concentric circles. Generally, they were more along the lines of a haphazard cluster of homes surrounded, often enough, by herds of the sluggish lizards the inhabitants bred for food.
“I see the village,” Sheridan said. “Rather unusual set up, is it not?” Something extraordinary was happening. He felt it with all the senses he’d honed over the years as a secret agent. He would like to have had his notebook, though he knew his memory was good enough to reproduce anything he saw or heard. What he really wished for at this minute, desperately, was his Kodak camera. It was a brilliant new invention by his countryman, George Eastman; the Kodak had just come on the market right before he’d left Earth on this expedition, and he had insisted to his superiors that he must have one.
But his Kodak was down below in his cabin. He was quite sure that Kurt was not going to allow him to fetch it.
“It is not a village proper, Mister Sheridan,” said Kurt smoothly. “It is instead a living place for the miners of varenien. That outcropping you see in the distance? It is the largest varenien deposit we have found on Venus thus far.”
Sheridan tried to keep his expression neutral, even bored, as he stepped closer to the window and gazed below. Inside, however, he was boiling in excitement.
Varenien! The most valuable substance in the System thus far found, used in the construction of the most powerful explosives! Now Sheridan was interested. If the Germans controlled such a huge amount of varenien, they would be able to manufacture bombs and explosives which could, conceivably, give them the power to win any war, any place, any time. Even the pile below in the village centre—if it was indeed varenien ore—would be enough to make a hundred bombs of incredible power.
Now he was curious, intensely curious. Why was Kurt showing him something so important, so potentially shattering?
“Varenien?” Sheridan hoped he sounded casual, uninterested, uninformed, but he was afraid—suddenly, he was very much afraid—that Kurt saw right through his act. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Something…scientific, I seem to recall? But you must remember, sir; I’m merely a simple newspaper man.”
Kurt joined him at the window. “Varenien is an elemental substance used by scientists, yes; we Germans have found a substantial supply here on Venus. It occurs in minute amounts on the other planets, I understand, but appears to be rather common on this one. At least, it is common in the swamplands. I do not believe it can be found at the poles or on the various plateaus. I am, as you say, no scientist, but that is what I have been told.”
“Is it valuable?”
“Immensely valuable, Mister Sheridan. And naturally, the…other Powers on Venus are interested in acquiring their own supplies.”
Naturally, thought Sheridan, raising an eyebrow; so would any country, any colony in the System.
Sheridan yawned. “Fascinating. I must remember to study up on it before I send my reports back to the paper. The Tribune will be most interested, as they always are in any new exports from Venus or the other colonies. I suppose your people set up the mining village below, and that’s why it’s so different from the common native village?”
Kurt shrugged. “Sadly, we have discovered that the mining of the raw ore must be done by the lizard-men. They seem to have some sort of inborn immunity to the dangerous dust raised by the mining process. Our own people become quite ill after only a short exposure to this dust—a serious respiratory reaction which can result in death after only a few days.”
Sheridan didn’t want to know how this was discovered. He c
ould just picture poor German colonists coughing their lungs out in the heavy, dense air of Venus. He shuddered.
“Yes, it is tragic,” Kurt said, noting his reaction. “But the lizard-men, as I have said, have immunity. We are taking advantage of that fact.”
I’ll just bet you are. Sheridan turned away from the window. “Well, that’s interesting, Herr Oberst, really interesting,” he said in a voice he tried to make sound as bored as possible. “I’m sure my bosses will be glad to know these things.” Oh, how glad they’d be! “Might we visit the mining camp, or would it be dangerous? I have no wish,” he laughed softly, “to get sick myself. The Tribune doesn’t pay me that well. But it would be interesting to see, I’m sure.”
“Of course, Mister Sheridan. I thought you might be curious, and I have already checked with several of our scientists before we left on our little voyage. A brief visit, not more than a couple of hours, will have no effect on us whatever.”
“May I take my Kodak?” Sheridan asked, holding his breath, for he never suspected Kurt to allow any such thing.
Kurt surprised him.
“Naturally. You have perfect freedom to report anything and everything you see, sir; such were my orders from my superiors.” Kurt pulled an immense gold pocket watch from his jacket. “It is nearly luncheon time, and the days are short here so near the equator. The captain has told me you’ve requested to send a heliogram this afternoon, and he shall have to take his ship quite high into the atmosphere for that purpose, I understand. Shall we plan a visit to the Kaiser Mining Works tomorrow morning after breakfast?”
12.
Trapped!
Nathanial braced himself, his back against the hut’s wall, his eyes tightly shut. He had never realised how thick and rough the soles of Annabelle’s boots were until they were pressed, hard, into the tops of his shoulders, one boot on either side and uncomfortably close to his neck.
“Can you move just a bit to the left, Nathanial?” she asked from far above his head.
Nathanial, one hand on either boot, shuffled carefully to the left about a foot.
“Sorry,” Annabelle said, sounding most irritatingly cheerful. “I meant my left.”
Nathanial sighed and shuffled, as far as he could judge, twice the distance he’d moved but in the opposite direction.
“Ah, just there.” Annabelle rose up on her toes and Nathanial was barely able to stifle a gasp of pain.
“All right, old man?” Jericho danced around anxiously in front of him, his hands raised. “Sorry I’m not taller. I’d be happy to take a turn.”
“I am…sorry…you are…not …too,” Nathanial grunted, his hand locked around Annabelle’s ankles.
They were—well, Annabelle was trying to see outside the hut where they were imprisoned. There was a four-inch gap all around the top of the hut, which provided her a narrow view in all directions.
“It seems to be deserted,” she reported. “Now, at least. That small airship I saw in the distance on that high rocky hill has gone. I wonder what it was here for? What a pity we were unable to signal it!”
Nathanial sneezed.
“Sorry,” she called down. “I’m sure my skirts are quite dusty.”
“You see no one, no one at all?” asked Jericho, sounding panicky, to Nathanial’s concern. He could hardly deal with an exuberant and combative Annabelle as well as a panicked Jericho.
“You don’t think that bounder O’Ryan or O’Rourke or whatever his bloody name is—excuse my French, Miss Somerset—has simply left us all here to die, do you?” Jericho’s voice quavered. “To starve, or perhaps to die of thirst? Why, we’ll be fighting like rats for the last scraps of food! We’ll be battering ourselves senseless against these massive wooden walls! We’ll be driven mad by hunger! Cannibalism! Torment! A grisly death!”
“Mister Jericho, get hold of yourself!” Annabelle ordered. “You have read far too many penny dreadfuls. I regret lending you my own favourite issues, I do indeed. Now, as we have quite encircled our hut, I would appreciate some assistance in getting down, preferably without embarrassing Nathanial any more than is quite unavoidable.”
“You are a model of bravery, Miss Somerset,” Jericho said stoutly, breathing in deeply as he quite clearly tried to calm himself. “Especially for a lady. I shall take you as my example and strive to be as brave as you.”
“I would…prefer,” Nathanial managed to gasp, opening one eye the merest crack, “that you would take her confounded weight off my shoulders, Jericho, if that would be at all possible.”
Jericho hurried forward and Nathanial could see through his squinted eyes, the man had his arms out.
“Ready, Miss Somerset,” Jericho said.
Suddenly, the weight on Nathanial’s shoulders was gone and, at the same time, he saw Annabelle land lightly in Jericho’s arms, her skirts aflutter. He set her down carefully.
“Well, now, I’m glad that’s over,” Annabelle said as she took out a grubby handkerchief and dusted her hands. “And I’m sure you’re even more glad, Nathanial my dear. It’s your own fault,” she grinned up at him. “You are so delightfully tall.” Then her smile disappeared. “Of course, dear Thymon is even taller. I just hope that monster didn’t murder him.”
“I fear you do not seem to be taking our situation seriously at all, Annabelle,” he said, as severely as he could manage. “If only your uncle had insisted you stay safely on Earth, where I indeed wished to leave you, you would not be stuck here with us now, in danger of our lives.”
“What you really mean is, if only I had not insisted on visiting the escarpment and accepting O’Rourke as a guide, none of us would be here, isn’t that correct, Nathanial?” Annabelle put her hands on her hips and stepped closer to him.
“Here now, here now,” Jericho bleated. “We must all hang together, don’t you know. Time for blame and recriminations later, once we’re out of here.”
Annabelle threw her head back and laughed. “Mister Jericho! What about your fears of cannibalism? Where are they now?”
Jericho looked somewhat sheepish. “Well, now, that was just a bit of panic talking. But I really should like to know what we’re going to do. After all, with only your penknife, we can hardly dig our way out or fight off—”
At that instant, they heard a rough scraping sound—a creaking with which they were most familiar, the sound of the bar at the door being moved.
At once, as if they’d planned it, they lined up facing the opening, Annabelle in the middle and slightly behind the two men.
The door opened slowly, creaking like the door of a tomb. Nathanial waved the uneasy thought away as he stood up straighter. He only wished he felt braver.
Simon O’Rourke stood in the doorway, his sturdy body limned in the dusky light behind him.
“Well, now, and how are my guests today? Ready to get out of these charming accommodations and stretch your legs a bit, I’m thinking? All in good time, my friends, all in good time. But until then, I’m sure you’d like to have a bit of a wash and brush-up, and a nice bit of luncheon. I’ve got quite a good bottle or two of wine here,” he winked roguishly, “guaranteed to be nothing but wine, I do assure you.”
The Irishman came into the room, followed at once by the same two burly men as before, both with rifles in hand and each with revolvers at their waists. They stepped smartly to either side of the door and stood at a sort of relaxed attention, not seeming to look at any one thing in particular but to be taking in the entire room with their roving glance. One was fair, with pale grey eyes; the other was darker, with black hair and a long scar down one cheek that had barely missed his left eye. Neither spoke, but both emanated a palpable sense of menace.
Nathanial looked at one, looked at the other, and recognised the cold ruthlessness that dwelt within both men. They didn’t speak; they simply stared.
Next, a pair of lizard-men entered the hut, both of whom looked, as far at Nathanial could tell from their alien aspects, as frightened as he felt. The
one on O’Rourke’s left had several baskets, with the most glorious and delicious odours emanating from them. Nathanial’s mouth began to water as the lizard-man set the baskets down and then took a cloth, woven of rough native fibres, and spread it on the floor. He moved the baskets to the middle of it, then turned and scuttled out of the door as if he were being chased.
The other lizard-man crept forward, his head hanging down low as if he did not dare meet anyone’s eyes; he was burdened with two large wooden buckets, apparently quite heavy, hanging from a sort of yoke over his shoulders. He squatted and set them both down, then turned and followed his partner out.
“Nice hot water,” said O’Rourke, waving a negligent hand towards the buckets, both of which were steaming gently. “A good meal. Do clean yourselves up a bit after you’ve eaten. You’ll find some fresh clothes in that bundle there, which I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”
“Mister O’Rourke.” Annabelle stepped forward, and Nathanial could not help but put a restraining hand on her arm. She shook it off as if it were a pesky fly and continued, “I insist you tell us at once exactly how we got here, where we are and, most of all, why you’ve brought us here!”
“Insist, is it?” O’Rourke crossed his arms and smiled down at Annabelle. “I’m thinking you’re in no position to insist anything. But just so you won’t have any problems with your appetite, I’ll answer some of your questions. As to how, I brought you here in the same balloon we brought down from the plateau. Where? We’re deep in German territory, so don’t go thinking you could get back by yourselves, even if you did manage to get out of this hut. The why, now, I think will wait a bit. Enjoy your meal—especially you, Mister Jericho, me poor starvin’ boyo—and when I return, I will share a bit more as to the why.”
Before any of them could say another word, O’Rourke pivoted on his heel and was gone, the two bully boys following and the door shutting behind them.
They could all hear the heavy bar slam home.