Many years.
Arabella sat, stunned, as she suddenly comprehended her problem in an entirely different way.
She had been a fool.
She had wasted weeks and nearly all of her sheet brass.
But the game was not yet lost.
* * *
Arabella scrapped nearly all of her completed work and began again on a new basis. She had been thinking at much, much too large a scale.
The elliptical gear for each planet was necessary to account for its motion throughout its orbit—an orbit which, for the outer planets, required decades. Aadim housed just such a set of elliptical gears within his massive base, but he had been designed to function for many years and had been built with the facilities of several specialized manufactories. Arabella’s little mechanism need only work for this one voyage, of just a few months’ duration.
And if one were considering the span of just a few months, the elliptical orbits of the planets were sufficiently close to a perfect circle that they could be approximated by a circular gear.
Her pen flew across the paper. Circular gears she had in plenty, but only in certain sizes. She would have to add smaller gears—ironically similar to the epicycles which the ancients had imagined, before they understood that it was the Earth that orbited the Sun rather than the other way around—to make up the difference between the available tooth counts and the actual motions of the natural planets. But even as she calculated the necessary ratios, she realized that she could turn this necessity to her advantage. By designing the mechanism so that the epicycle gears were easily replaceable, she could change them over time, compensating for the difference between a circular gear and the planet’s actual elliptical orbit.
This simpler, more easily constructed, and more reliable mechanism could, with a little calculation, be made to serve for an indefinite period!
And if the primary gears were made larger … it would actually be more accurate over the short run than the elliptical gears she had at first envisioned. Even more accurate, perhaps, than Aadim himself!
Suddenly a hand touched Arabella’s shoulder, giving her a start that sent gears and papers scattering all over the ward-room.
Enraged at the interruption, Arabella rounded on the intruder. After so many weeks, the officers should know better! But it was Lady Corey who was drifting away from her, hands clapped to her cheeks and face a knot of concern. “My dear Miss Ashby!” she said. “Please forgive me.”
“I … I am sorry for my … intemperate reaction,” Arabella said, trying to calm her racing heart even as she fought to remember the interrupted calculation.
“I apologize for the interruption,” Lady Corey said, “but I have been concerned for you. We all have. You have barely moved from this spot in days. You have not slept except in snatches; you have hardly eaten a bite.”
Even as Arabella began to protest that she had done no such thing, she realized with surprise that Lady Corey’s words were nothing but the truth. She had, in fact, worked through meal after meal, snatching only the occasional biscuit or slice of ham from the officers’ table, and she could not recall the last time she had returned to the tiny cabin she shared with Lady Corey for a full night’s sleep.
Or a wash. Now that she considered her person, she was forced to confess that she had become as grimy—and, indeed, as noisome—as any common airman.
“Your concern is appreciated, and entirely appropriate,” Arabella said, fastening her pen under its clip and, suddenly very aware of the disheveled state of her hair, trying to push it into something resembling order. “I have been, perhaps, too much engrossed in this mechanism of mine.”
“Perhaps just a bit,” Lady Corey said, with a small smile. “Might I perhaps entreat you to join Captain Fox and myself for a collation in his cabin?”
“I am famished,” Arabella admitted. She looked around the ward-room, appalled at the papers, gears, and books scattered everywhere. “Pray let me collect my materials here, and freshen myself a bit, and I shall join you directly thereafter.”
But despite her hunger, it was still exceedingly difficult to put away her notes without completing just one more calculation.
* * *
After that brusque awakening, Arabella strove to moderate her labors, take regular meals, sleep properly, and spend time with other people.
However, she still felt considerable pressure upon herself to complete her mechanism as rapidly as possible. For though she had grown to tolerate, and even occasionally to admire, Fox, she still found his navigation lacking—slipshod in places, in others overly cautious. The sooner she could work out a better plan and present it to him, the more quickly they would arrive at Venus, and the sooner she could set to work at releasing her fiancé from the clutches of the demon Fouché.
Thus it was that when Fox entered the ward-room, where Arabella was tightening the set-screw upon the epicycle gear for Jupiter and Lady Corey was casting-on for a lightweight lace shawl—for as the ship drew nearer the Sun, the temperature was rising each day—Arabella set down her screwdriver and greeted him cordially rather than ignoring him as she would have before.
“I would like to invite you both to the quarterdeck,” he said, “to observe a natural phenomenon rarely seen in these climes. Wind-whales!”
“Wind-whales!” exclaimed Lady Corey. “I had not thought to ever see one in my life.”
Nor had Arabella. Wind-whales were rarely seen outside the orbit of Venus; the crews of whaling vessels were tough, hardy men accustomed to long stretches of stifling heat. And Touchstone had not yet even crossed Earth’s orbit. “What can have brought them so far from the Sun?”
Fox shrugged. “I am no natural philosopher. Though I have noted that the temperature of the breeze, of late, has been far higher than any I have seen before in these currents; perhaps some new wind system has boiled up from Mercury and brought them with it.”
Arabella glanced at her mechanism, which sat upon the ward-room table held in place by light clips. Several of the planetary gear systems were present and functioning, but Mercury—the smallest, fastest, and fussiest of the lot—was not yet among them. “Whatever the cause,” she said, slightly distracted, “we would be remiss if we passed up this opportunity to observe them.”
Arabella tidied away her work, making sure to fasten down her papers and workings lest they drift away in some passing breeze, and accompanied Fox and Lady Corey to the quarterdeck.
All the officers were there already, pointing and gesticulating and eagerly jostling each other for the use of the few available telescopes, and many of the men had paused in their work or interrupted their rest to perch in the rigging and stare sunward.
Arabella, shading her eyes and searching the sunward sky for a few faint specks, did not see the whales at first. But then, with a sudden gasp, she comprehended that the large, distant clouds which obscured her view were, in fact, the whales she sought. Vast curving shapes of sky-blue and white, mottled to blend in with the sky beyond, they would have been nearly invisible save for the shadows of their great fins, or wings, upon their bodies. “There they are!” she said, nudging Lady Corey and pointing.
Each whale had a long, narrow form: bluntly pointed at the head end, broad in the middle, then tapering to a broad vertical tail like a shark’s. Two enormous sail-like wings spread from the center of each flank, rowing in concert to drive the creature forward. Smaller wings and fins dotted the whales’ skin, gently sculling and angling themselves to control their path through the air.
They seemed to be dancing, swooping in lazy circles about each other, the shadow of one occasionally falling on another to create a pleasing play of light and dark in the sky. Delicate, graceful, majestic—despite their great size, they were not at all ponderous.
“How delightful,” Arabella breathed.
“But also quite dangerous,” Fox replied. “On the Venus circuit, many a ship—and not only whalers—is lost each year to those mighty jaws. A big male can
swallow a ship like this whole.”
Arabella peered at the whales. “I see no mouths at all.”
“They use their teeth only when threatened,” said Fitts, the dour purser, with dismissive reassurance, “and for combat between the males during musth, or mating season. For their nourishment they draw in great quantities of air through those openings at the front, straining it for the small creatures upon which they feed. I believe they are feeding now.”
Now that Fitts had pointed them out, Arabella saw that each whale had two long narrow slits, resembling nostrils, at its pointed tip, and these repeatedly gaped open and shut with a rhythm like a giant’s breath.
“Are they growing nearer?” asked Lady Corey. Indeed, in their ever-twining dance the whales had drawn gradually closer, looming larger in the sky.
“Perhaps,” Fox replied. “Still, they are yet some considerable distance away, and show no signs of intending a closer approach. You need have no fear.”
But something Fox had said earlier nagged at Arabella—nagged at her so severely that she was compelled to wrench herself from the fascinating sight of the whales’ pavane. Neither Fox, nor Lady Corey, nor any of the officers seemed to note her departure; their attention remained fixed upon the whales as Arabella made her way belowdecks to the ward-room.
On the table there, her half-assembled mechanism lay gleaming and quiescent in its clips. Though its box-shaped outer frame enclosed as much air as clockwork, and only three of its intended seven sets of hands had been attached, the mainspring which powered the action was fully wound, and she had run all of the assembled portions through a test of their motion just that morning.
And three hands would be enough to fix the ship’s position in space, if those three bodies—Polaris, Jupiter, and Saturn—happened to be in view. Which she thought they were.
With some trepidation she unfastened the clips. The device, especially in its current incomplete state, was rather fragile, and if she bumped it against any thing she might jar its gears out of alignment or even damage them. But though it was bulky and awkward, it weighed little, and she was easily able to guide it through the air out of the ward-room and into the captain’s cabin, where the ship’s chronometer and observational instruments were stored.
Although Fox’s sextant was not so fine as Captain Singh’s, nor connected with the navigational mechanism as Aadim’s was, she was familiar with the use of the instrument. She quickly noted down the angles of Saturn, Jupiter, and Polaris, all of which were skyward of Touchstone and hence visible through the cabin’s broad aft window, and set the corresponding specification hands on her mechanism appropriately. She then set her mechanism’s clock dial to match the time shown on the ship’s chronometer. Finally she held her breath, gave the key one final half-twist to tighten the spring to its full extent, and released the catch that put the action in motion.
The mechanism whirred and clicked, small gears spinning and large gears creeping. Indicator hands vibrated gently, moving slowly into position, as the wheels spun and the spring wound down. Then, with a definitive click, it stopped.
She bent down and inspected the positions of the three result hands.
She swallowed.
She inspected them again. Wrote down the values on a piece of paper. Checked the paper against the hands one more time, to be sure. Then, heart racing, she pushed herself across the cabin to where the current aerial chart was tacked to Fox’s desk. With ruler and calipers she located the indicated position, marking it with a red-headed pin.
The pin was a good three inches on the chart from the ship’s current position. Or, at least, the current position as determined by Fox’s observations and calculations.
* * *
Fox held the pin between thumb and forefinger, waving it brusquely in Arabella’s face. “I refuse to accept,” he said with considerable heat, “that this … this toy of yours has fixed our position more accurately than I, with my years of experience.”
Arabella plucked the pin from Fox’s fingers and returned it to the hole from which Fox had pulled it. “Whether you accept it or no, it is correct. I have checked and rechecked its calculations. And the implications are devastating. We must begin pedaling immediately or we may be lost.”
At that Fox gave a derisive snort. “If we obey your girlish whims, we will certainly be lost.”
But Liddon, at least, was running his finger down Arabella’s written calculations. Though he, too, had expressed skepticism of the mechanism’s results, he was at least willing to inspect her written verification of them.
The cabin was crowded, with Arabella, Fox, Lady Corey, and Liddon all floating cheek-by-jowl above the chart, and the air was thick with tension. It had been a considerable struggle for Arabella even to get Fox and Liddon away from the whales and down to the cabin, and even more difficult for her to explain to them what her device seemed to indicate and why.
“What is this term here?” said Liddon, pointing to the paper.
“Compensation for the proper motion of Saturn. It is substantial at this time of the planet’s year.”
“Hmm.” He ran his finger down his scarred cheek. “I must say that it is highly irregular to base a fix on Saturn at all.”
Arabella set her jaw. “When the mechanism is fully operational it will take every visible planet into account. Saturn merely happens to be visible at the moment, and the corresponding dials on the device are functional. If I were able to incorporate more planets into the calculations, the result would be the same, only with even greater confidence.”
“Piffle,” said Fox. “Piffle and natural philosophy, I say. Dead reckoning and an accurate shot of the Sun have served aerial navigators for centuries, and I see no reason to suspect them now.”
“You yourself said that the air was particularly warm!” Arabella protested. “And the whales—they are hardly ever seen in these climes! Can you not acknowledge that an unexpected breeze from sunward could have blown us far off course? In this circumstance, dead reckoning would be unreliable, as the air in which we are embedded would have moved along with us, and a solar observation confirms only our angular and not our radial position relative to that body. We could be a thousand miles nearer or farther the Sun, and your beloved Sun shot would be exactly the same!”
“She may have a point, sir,” said Liddon, still inspecting the paper.
“You think you know a man,” Fox fumed, glowering at his chief mate, then set his hands upon his hips. “Very well. Suppose I accept for the moment that this impossibility has occurred. What of it? If the air in which we fly has been moved as well as we, the currents are the same and our eventual destination unchanged.”
Arabella shook her head. “Here, sir, I must confess I am less certain of myself. But from my reading, I believe that an upwelling of warm air will divert a major current such as the Simpson only slightly. If I am correct, and we continue on our present course for much longer, we will drift completely out of the current into the surrounding dead air. Even if we are not torn to bits by the difference in wind velocity, we will have no alternative but to attempt to pedal our way back into it … but to match speeds with such a strong current from a standstill, using pedals alone, may not be possible.”
Liddon’s scarred face showed that he was beginning to accept Arabella’s position as a frightening possibility. “If what you say is so … what can we do?”
“Put all hands on the pedals at once, and pedal directly sunward with all our might. According to the charts, the Simpson Current is some fifty miles across in these parts; one good day’s pedaling should put us back at its center if we are currently at its edge. Even if I am wrong, and we are in fact currently near the current’s center as your calculations show, one day’s pedaling will not put us outside it.”
Liddon nodded slowly, then turned to Fox. “The girl’s suggestion seems a prudent course, sir.”
“Pedal directly sunward?” Fox’s astonished face turned from Liddon to Arabella and back, th
en even, beseechingly, to Lady Corey. The great lady merely looked back at him blankly; she had plainly not understood a word in the past five minutes. “Have you all gone mad?” he gaped. “That would take us into the very midst of the whales!”
“Scylla and Charybdis,” Arabella said. “We must choose one or the other, and the whales at least are visible—they can be avoided with careful navigation.”
“Unless one of the males decides to charge!”
Arabella looked to Liddon, who shrugged. “This is very cold air for them. They may not be so aggressive.”
Even Lady Corey put in a word, having recognized the classical reference. “The whales are visible,” she said, “unlike the air currents. This much at least I understand.”
Though outnumbered, Fox set his face in a determined scowl. “I care not what any of you say,” he said. “I am the captain of this vessel, and I say—”
At that moment one of Fox’s lieutenants—a Negro by the name of Johnson—burst into the cabin without knocking. “Begging the captain’s pardon, sir,” he stammered, “but we’re losing the current!”
They all rushed out on deck, where a stiff breeze was whipping from larboard to starboard athwart the quarterdeck and the ship was showing a decided yaw. Amidships and forward, though, the air was still.
It was immediately clear to Arabella that Touchstone’s stern was beginning to emerge from the current—the cross-wind at the stern was, in fact, dead air, beginning to slow the ship’s aft end even as her forward end continued to be propelled by the current. And the process was continuing; even as Arabella watched, the wind across the ship’s stern strengthened and sails further forward were beginning to luff. It might be mere minutes before the ship fell from the current completely and became stranded in dead air.
Arabella and the Battle of Venus Page 7