“I believe it is done thus,” Arabella said. She returned Aadim’s hand to Diana, moving it slowly and evenly to respect the gears and levers, then pressed down on the index finger to indicate the start point. A click sounded from within Aadim’s mechanism. Next she opened a panel on the side of the desk, where several brass levers were labeled with the letters of the Greek alphabet.
She paused for a moment in thought, then raised the beta lever and lowered the lambda lever. Then she contemplated the gamma lever. For a transit by drogue, should it be set up or down? Down, she thought. She laid her finger upon the lever and pressed it gently downward.
The lever seemed to resist her finger, quivering gently from the motion of the gears behind it. Aadim’s whole body joined in this motion, his head seeming to shift fractionally from side to side.
Curious, she thought, and tried raising the lever instead. This time it moved smoothly, locking into position with a soft click, and Aadim’s head remained still.
Upon reflection, this combination of settings made the most sense.
Arabella moved Aadim’s hand to the side current and pressed the index finger again to indicate the destination of the transit. Finally she returned the three levers to their initial positions and moved the hand to Paeonia, carefully setting the dial indicating displacement in the vertical dimension before pressing the index finger for a third time. Immediately a series of whirs and ratcheting sounds began to vibrate from inside Aadim’s desk. “It may take some time for the calculations to complete,” she said. “The use of drogues adds quite a bit of complication to the course.”
“A very tidy bit of work,” Stross said admiringly. “How many years did it take you to learn all that?”
“I’ve only been studying with the captain since I came on board,” she admitted. “But my father—” She stopped herself, wary of revealing too much about her past. “He owned a great many automata,” she concluded feebly.
“I must thank the man when we return to England! What might his name be, and where might I find him?”
Suddenly the nervousness which had vanished while Arabella was working with the automaton returned in full force. This line of questioning probed perilously close to secrets which must not be revealed. “My—my father has passed on,” she said, which had the benefit of being true. “I would prefer not to discuss him any further. It pains me to do so.” Which also, she realized, was true.
“I’m sorry, lad,” Stross said, and clapped her on the shoulder so hard that she began to tumble in the air. “Well, now. You stay here, look after the captain, and let me know straight away when the course is plotted. I’ll go see how Mr. Higgs fares with the construction of the drogues.” He paused in the doorway before departing. “I won’t lie to you, lad. This is as nasty a situation as any I’ve faced. But with your work on the navigator, I think we may have a chance.”
Arabella could only hope that his trust in her was well founded.
13
DROGUES
Arabella was giving the captain his water when a bell sounded, indicating that Aadim’s calculations were complete. She took a slate and chalk and recorded a series of numbers from the dials on the front of his cabinet, double-checking her work because there were many more figures than usual. She then consulted a book of tables—this part was something she knew the captain would have done from memory—and wrote down the sailing order and navigation points required to implement the course. When she was done with that she again double-checked her work, then copied it out quickly but neatly on a sheet of vellum.
As she sanded and blotted the sheet, she was forced to admit that she had only a theoretical understanding of how this plan would be implemented. As an airman, her skills were limited to hauling on a rope when instructed; as a navigator, she was keenly aware of the great size of the field of navigation and the tiny proportion her own command of it encompassed. It was as though she knew how to lay out the major blocks of color that made up a portrait, and understood the general principle of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but must rely upon others to execute the actual brush strokes.
She was deeply concerned about Richardson’s abilities in this area. The man was plainly more interested in maintaining his own authority than he was in the actual running of the ship. The other officers, and the men who reported to them, were doing their best to work within the constraints that the acting captain laid upon them, but she feared that at some point their practical knowledge and Richardson’s orders would collide. Arabella hoped that would not occur in the middle of a difficult navigational maneuver.
She gently laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder before leaving the cabin. He looked even more thin and pale than he had even that morning. Despite her best attentions, and the nourishing broth that the surgeon fed him several times a day from a kid-leather squeeze bag, he seemed to be fading rapidly. “The head wound is healing well,” the surgeon had said. “I’ve seen men recover from worse. But whether or not he regains his senses … that’s in the Lord’s hands.”
Fighting to keep the tears from her eyes, Arabella silently pledged to do every thing in her power to keep the ship and crew alive until he returned to his proper place on the quarterdeck.
* * *
She emerged on deck to a scene that would have been humorous in its domesticity, had not the situation been so perilous. Dozens of airmen, rough-handed muscular men, worked closely and diligently with needle and thread, plying their needles through heaps of shining white linen tablecloths instead of the usual sails or shore-going clothes. Other men were employed in bending canes of rattan into hoops and pounding out brass grommets. And the ship’s carpenter, assisted by two of the most senior airmen, was busily cursing over a strange assemblage of wood, iron, and cordage.
“Have you the sailing order?” Stross called out from where he hung by the rail in close conference with the purser.
“Aye, sir,” Arabella replied, and with a kick propelled herself across the deck to hand him the paper. He looked it over with a skeptical eye. “It’ll be close,” he muttered. “Very close.” He tapped the page. “If that cross-wind isn’t exactly where the charts say, we might miss the asteroid completely.”
Arabella floated at attention, unable to reassure Stross. Although she had confidence in Aadim’s calculations and her own transcriptions, she had no idea how practical the resulting course might be.
Stross peered hard at the paper, then shook his head. “We’ll need five drogues, lads,” he called out, “not four!”
The men with the needles groaned at this new intelligence, but the purser cried out as though in pain. “Lord’s sake!” he said. “At this rate we’ll go into the red for sure!”
“Better that than dead,” the sailing-master replied. He folded the paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Ashby, can you ply a needle?”
“Aye, sir,” she admitted. Though she despised needlework, thanks to her mother she had considerable experience with it.
“Report to Mr. Higgs, then, and be sure to make every stitch tight!”
“Aye, sir.” But, despite the direct order, she did not leap to comply, finding it very difficult to tear her gaze from the great cabin’s door.
Stross must have seen her reluctance, because he reassured her, “The captain will get along without you for a few hours.” Then he pursed his lips and shook his head. “If it’s much longer than that … well then, it won’t really matter.”
* * *
Arabella was somewhat embarrassed to discover that many of the men were both faster and tidier with needle and thread than she was. Her mother, she knew, would be terribly disappointed in her. She soon shook off this attitude, though, and concentrated her efforts on working as rapidly as possible. Stross and the other officers continually admonished them to work faster, faster, for they had only a few hours until the current carried them irrevocably past the asteroid. But at the same time, they must be sure to make the seams as strong as possible, for the drogue woul
d bear the entire weight of the ship.
Richardson, she noted, remained imperiously on the quarterdeck, looking out over the work but not taking any part in it.
* * *
Soon they had the first of the drogues completed. A great cone of white linen, its open base was formed of a ten-foot circular loop of bent rattan, and it measured twenty-five feet from base to tip. Two of the topmen quickly lashed together a rope harness to attach it to a sturdy cable, the other end of which they carried below.
The carpenter and his men, meanwhile, had managed to cobble together a sort of crossbow from a long, springy plank and several yards of cordage. This they had fastened to the forecastle deck, arranged to fire its projectile just larboard of the figurehead.
Arabella, still stitching as fast as she could, stole an occasional glance over one shoulder as Stross and Higgs packed the drogue into as compact a bundle as possible and placed it in the improvised crossbow’s basket. They then called all available waisters—those not currently occupied with stitching—to the forecastle, while a series of commands from the quarterdeck sent the topmen scurrying aloft.
Only Arabella and a few other waisters were left to continue fashioning drogues. Some of the idlers, including the surgeon and Pemiter the one-legged cook, took the topmen’s places. She helped them to understand what needed to be done, and they set to their sewing with a grim determination entirely unlike any thing Arabella had ever seen on land or in the air. The cook’s technique had only enthusiasm to recommend it, but the surgeon worked with astonishing precision and rapidity, his long pale fingers flying.
While Stross conferred with the waisters gathered in the forecastle, all the sails came down, leaving Diana completely bare-masted for the first time Arabella could recall. Soon a stiff breeze began to ruffle the billows of fabric around her, as the wind current was now able to slip past the ship nearly unimpeded. After so many weeks of near perfect calm on deck, other than when the pulsers were being employed, it was a very strange sensation, which pointed out how very unusual this maneuver would be.
Stross sprang to the masthead. “Listen up, lads!” he called. “If this works, there’ll be a h—l of a jerk. Be prepared to hang on tight!” He then descended to the quarterdeck for a muttered conference with Richardson and the other officers.
Arabella made sure her safety line was snug about her ankle and there was a solid handhold nearby. She kept stitching; the second drogue was nearly complete.
“Crossbow men, haul away!” came the command from the quarterdeck. The waisters in the forecastle, bracing themselves against capstans, masts, and pinrails as best they could, began to haul on a line, drawing the crossbow’s string with the bundled drogue back and back. Soon the line was quivering with tension, the men groaning and sweating with the effort.
“Away drogue!”
The waisters released the line, which whipped hissing along the deck, and with a great deep thudding vibration the crossbow flung the bundled drogue away downwind. The cable behind the drogue paid out rapidly as the package of linen and rattan diminished in the distance.
And then, suddenly, it reached the end of the cable. Immediately the drogue snapped open.
The deck jerked out from beneath Arabella, sending her and the rest of the drogue-makers crashing into the quarterdeck’s forward bulkhead in a great untidy pile of men and rope and linen. With many shouts and curses—and Arabella using her arms to fend away any hands that approached her chest—they began to untangle themselves.
She shook herself free from the imprisoning fabric. A torrent of commands was flowing from the quarterdeck; in the rigging above, topmen scrambled to sheet home sails and bowse up the yards. Soon the force that had propelled her against the bulkhead changed direction, sending her and every other loose man and object sliding to starboard. Unaccustomed winds buffeted her face and threatened to whip the linen away into the blue.
The ship was swinging from the drogue, she knew—swinging like a vast pendulum, moving crosswise to the great current that still carried her forward at a speed of thousands of knots. Arabella hoped the linen, the stitching, the rattan, the cables, the knots would hold. The whole ship thrummed like a bowstring.
Arabella fetched up against a coaming and made herself fast there. As quickly as she could, she found her work and resumed her sewing. The second drogue must be complete, and well made, very soon. At one point she drove the needle all the way through her thumb, but though she cried out from the pain she drew it right out and kept working.
“Cast away drogue!” came the command. A moment later the cable zipped away across the deck; the pressure on Arabella’s back vanished. Even as she floated up into the whipping air she kept stitching.
“Ready drogue number two!” came the cry from the quarterdeck. Nearly done!
Stross appeared above Arabella. “Come on, lad!” he cried, holding out a desperate hand. “We’re falling free!”
She bit off the last stitch. “Here it is, sir!” She wadded up the ungainly package and thrust it at him. He and Higgs carried it away, while Arabella joined the cook in his work on the third drogue.
* * *
And so it went with the second drogue and the third and the fourth and the fifth. After she handed the final drogue to Stross, who looked as weary as she felt, she could do no more than float nearly insensate near the quarterdeck. The final thrum and jerk, still an impact though no surprise, barely impinged upon her consciousness as she fell heavily against the bulkhead below her. Only a few remaining scraps of linen cushioned her fall. She didn’t care.
For the fifth time the ship swung through the air, hanging impossibly from a great bag of linen. The force on Arabella’s back grew, changed direction, then slacked away.
She opened her eyes. The cable stretching away to the final drogue now pointed well to starboard, no longer taut and straight but slack, a long gentle curve that grew more and more pronounced as the drogue at its end began to fold and tumble like a flower losing its bloom.
The air calmed. The ship drifted.
Diana floated, turning slowly, in the immense blue bowl of the air.
“Where’s that d____d cross-current?” cried Richardson from the quarterdeck.
Stross, floating beside the acting captain, turned to face Arabella, annoyance on his face warring with fear welling up from far below.
The other officers, and then the men, followed Stross’s gaze.
It seemed that every man on the ship was staring at Arabella. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “I—” she began, then choked off. “I checked the figures twice.…”
“We should never have trusted that godforsaken machine!” Richardson shouted. “Useless f____g thing! Now we’re stranded in midair!”
“At least we tried,” Stross said. The annoyance and fear in his face had faded, replaced by weary resignation.
“This is your fault!” Richardson shrieked, rounding on Stross.
“I don’t recall hearing any better suggestions from you!” Stross replied with considerable heat.
“We might’ve tried the pedals at least!”
So this is how it’s to end, Arabella thought. Drifting and bickering until we smash upon the Martian sand. She closed her eyes against the unpleasant sight and touched the locket at her throat. I’m sorry, Michael, I did what I could. Please don’t trust Simon.…
And then something changed.
It took her a moment to realize what had happened. The arguing had stopped. Even the muttering of the men had ceased, leaving a silence in which the gentle sough and creak of the rigging could plainly be heard.
Arabella opened her eyes.
Captain Singh hung in his cabin hatchway. Thin—oh, so painfully thin—with his skin still ashen and his head still bandaged, he floated with his night-shirt tail drifting above his bare feet and his hands gripping the coaming on either side. But though his face was sallow and drawn, his eyes were bright and alert.
She was so very, very happy to
see him so that her breath caught in her throat. If only she could embrace him, to properly express her joy!
“Gentlemen,” the captain said, his voice no more than a whisper but plainly audible in the stillness, “what was all that banging-about just now?”
Stross swung himself over the quarterdeck rail, stopping himself with one foot on the deck exactly in front of the cabin. He drew himself up to attention in the air and saluted smartly. “We are attempting to intercept the asteroid Paeonia so as to make charcoal, sir. We have deployed drogues in order to reach a cross-current; however we are currently stranded.”
“Glass,” the captain whispered, and extended a hand. One of the midshipmen immediately appeared with a telescope.
The whole crew waited as he peered about in all directions.
“Observe, gentlemen,” he said, and pointed off the larboard beam.
Stross accepted the glass from the captain. Richardson and the other officers on the quarterdeck used their own instruments.
Then Stross laughed aloud. “Aha!” he cried, pointing. Other men with telescopes began to shout and cheer, clapping each other upon the back.
Arabella shaded her eyes and peered in the indicated direction. At first she saw nothing.
And then she realized what she was seeing.
Motion in the air. Scraps of cloud, tiny bits of drifting matter, even the shimmering air itself, all whipping past so rapidly the eye could barely perceive it.
The cross-current.
“To the pedals, lads!” Stross cried. “We’ll be set in that current in less than half an hour!”
But though the men streamed past her, laughing and jostling, toward the lower deck, Arabella forced her way through the crowd to the captain’s side. The surgeon was already there, peering into the captain’s eyes and feeling with his fingers for the pulse in his neck.
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