by George Wier
“I’m following you so far,” Teach said. “Pray, continue.”
“Very well. Because we’re in motion, and the Earth and the Moon are also in motion, then they are assigned different numerical values, which have to do with their relative mass and relative size.”
“Relative,” Teach intoned. Perhaps he understood all but that one most important thing.
“You might say, for the sake of argument, that there is no such thing as distance. Put your hand up to your face. Go ahead, do it.” Teach decided to humor the man and complied. “There. It appears rather large, doesn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Now hold it away from yourself.”
“Yeah. Smaller, of course.”
“Exactly. We treat the Moon and the Earth in the same manner. We must because distance must be removed from the computation. If you had to factor in distance, why, you would have to factor in the rate of change of distance, which is another factor of calculus altogether. But we short-change the calculus. Instead, we take a reading from the transmogrifier and it tells us exactly the Moon’s relative mass and size at any given point, and we adjust differential between the Moon’s pulling force and the pulling force of the Earth. In this manner the Arcadia appears from the Moon’s point of view as if it’s a large object on an intercept course, and it grabs us and pulls us to it. At the same time we filter out the pulling force of the Earth, essentially nullifying it, or for the purpose of illustration, make ourselves appear as a pebble.”
“Ah. I suppose I’d have to understand the engines better.”
“The transmogrifier and the Tesla coil are the engine.”
“Oh. You’re trying to deflect me. You never fully answered before—why the fake accent?”
“A diversion. I get to hide myself behind it. I don’t have to get overly cozy with the remainder of the crew. No one bothers me—they keep out of my way. It’s the perfect arrangement.”
“Alright. Are you going to continue the charade?” Teach asked.
“Yes.”
“Your secret’s safe with me. Whiskey?” Teach held up a small jug. “Jay-Patten’s best.”
“I believe I’ll have some. Thank you. It should help me sleep.”
Teach handed Koothrappally the jug.
“Why did you signal the sky pirates to attack Custer’s forces, allowing us to escape. It is not the act of a prisoner.”
“I’m no prisoner here. I had a friend once who was in Newgate prison for almost fifteen years. When they let him out, he became a big nothing. But when he was inside, he flourished and prospered. He ran the prison from the inside.”
“A prisoner...running the prison. I’m not sure I understand.”
“Let me put it this way. The only way the warden could get any control was to get rid of him. As I understand it, the warden had to do a lot of politicking about how my friend was the model prisoner—about how he had completely reformed and was now morally capable of being set free. It apparently took quite a bit of pull, but he managed to pry the man from his cell and cast him adrift into the world. Short of that he would have had to concoct a way to kill him, and there would have been dire repercussions from that. The easiest way was to free him, and this he did.”
“I still do not understand.”
Teach shrugged. “I suppose a man has to have certain barriers in order to express his freedom. He has to have something to push against. Some of us have to have an impossible situation in order to have a challenge.”
Koothrappally nodded. “I think I understand now. That is you. You want to go on this quest to the Moon.”
“I would give my right arm, like Mr. Ross, to be able to do so.”
“I would give the same.” Koothrappally sighed and handed the jug back to the pirate.
“And now, good sir, I believe we understand each other.”
[ 44 ]
The moon steadily increased in size. From the bridge viewing port, it filled half the sky. The mountains along the moon’s horizon became jagged pinpricks against the blackness beyond. The stars, though, as would have been seen from Earth, were oddly absent.
“Why do we not see the stars?” Tesla asked Judah Merkham, who reclined in his pilot’s seat.
“I have wondered that since my last one-man jaunt away from the Earth. I believe it has to do with light and atmosphere. The atmosphere is like a prism of sorts, the ocular on a telescope. It focuses the light. Out here there is no atmosphere to focus it, so we see nothing.”
“What about the moon, then?” Tesla asked. “And for that matter, the Earth and the Sun?”
“Inverse square law,” Merkam replied.
“Ah. I see what you mean. For the other stars, the distances are too vast. I had erroneously thought we’d see the stars better, and far many more of them, once we left the planet behind.”
“I once thought so too. No. This is what we see,” Merkam passed his hand across the window. “The great void.”
“It is lonely. Disturbingly so.”
“Yes.”
Koothrappally entered the cabin.
“Will the Captain be requiring the estimation of the current readings?”
“We’re fine for a little while yet, John,” Merkam stated. Merkham then shook in his chair. He brought his hand up to his head and groaned.
“I say, Jude,” Tesla said, “are you quite all right?”
“It...it will...pass.”
“We must be relating of these events with the physician,” Koothrappally said.
“No,” Merkam stated. The fit appeared to have passed. “I now regret bringing him along. I don’t want him touching me. He quite unsettles me.”
Tesla nodded. “I feel the same.”
“If it’s all the same to you, gentlemen, I believe I shall retire for a bit. Rouse me in an hour and we’ll see how far we’ve come.” Judah Merkham rose from the chair. “John, please summon Billy. I want him at the pilot’s station while I am resting.”
Koothrappally nodded, then darted outside the cabin.
“You don’t look well at all, Jude. Your pallor is becoming... somewhat verdant.”
“I don’t feel well. It’s this lack of gravity, perhaps. At least my bed will be under gravity. One hour, please. No more.”
“Rest well.”
[ 45 ]
Will Quinlan had survived for ten days in the metal container in the cargo hold of the Arcadia. He was blindfolded, his hands and feet were bound. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t bring himself to move any part of his body. He could feel nothing below his neck. Once every day the gag was taken from his mouth and liquid was forced into it. He tried to scream, but the voice whispered to him, telling him that if he screamed his life would end abruptly without further fanfare.
He had been the surest and fleetest of the three brothers who set out to join Blackbeard’s sky pirates. He had risen above trusty to become an ensign. He was twenty-one years old and all of his life should be ahead of him. Vast vistas, blue skies, plenty of whiskey, loot and ladies waiting for him in any Colorado town.
But this future was not to be. He would die here in this strange sky ship, at the powerful hands of the demon who snatched him up as easily as a farmer pulling a carrot from the earth.
Will could only whimper in the dark, and dream of the days of light that lay behind him. Ahead of him, only hell awaited.
[ 46 ]
Abigail Ross squirmed in her bed. Her husband had not come to her, and for this she was glad. Still, she missed him, or at least, she missed the man he once had been. That man seemed long gone from her.
She ached for Billy. Her loins ached. Her body was swollen all over and she could do little else but cry into her pillow. When she sobbed, her body quaked with shudders. She was unsure whether the knot in her stomach was from the incessant vertigo of being in space, or from the utter lostness of unrequited love.
Abby cried until she dozed. Even when dreaming, she dreamed of Billy. In this dream, he came to h
er. He took her into his powerful arms and pinned her to him. His hard lips kissed her with animal brutality, as if he hungered for her, and she was his prey.
In the dream she heard a tapping sound. At first it was distant, and then as Billy kissed her, it became louder, more insistent.
She awoke abruptly, and the tapping was still there.
“Who is it?” she called to the door.
“Billy,” the voice said. She would never get used to these metal doorways and their hollow echoes.
Abigail flew to the door and opened it. Her eyes flashed.
It wasn’t Billy.
[ 47 ]
Judah Merkam was lost in the oddest of dreams, or perhaps it was memory. It was powerfully real. It felt real, and yet it could not be real.
He was nine years old and his dog had come down with the distemper. There was no treatment except the bullet.
His old man walked behind him as he lead the dog into the woods with a rope.
“That’s far enough, Jude,” his father said.
He turned to his father and saw the butt of the rifle held out to him.
“Now, son. Kill the bitch.”
“Kill the bitch,” Merkam repeated.
“It’s the only way,” his father said. “It’s unkind to let her suffer. It is a...mercy.”
“Kill the bitch,” Merkam said again. “It is a mercy. A mercy. Kill the bitch...”
[ 48 ]
When Koothrappally came to rouse Judah Merkam, he found him lying on the floor beside his bed. His head lolled to the side and spittle ran from his mouth. His eyes were open and staring and would recognize no entreaty to awaken.
Instead, Merkam said the same thing over and over again, as if it were a litany.
“Kill the bitch. It is a mercy. Kill the bitch.”
[ 49 ]
“Ross!” Tesla’s voice came through the loudspeaker in the engine room.
At the moment Jack Ross was trying to turn one of the pressure valves in the boiler to let off a little steam. They were running hot.
“A minute!” He shouted.
The wheel would not easily turn. He swore at it, hefted one of the large wrenches, and then applied it through the valve wheel for torque, and put his weight behind it. When that didn’t work he swung his right robotic arm at the wrench. Sparks flew and the wheel turned abruptly, but not before throwing his left arm into his right, leaving a five inch gash in this arm that began bleeding immediately.
“Dammit!” Ross yelled.
“Mr. Ross, I need a reading from the transmogrifier.”
“Where is Koothrappally?”
“Gone to rouse Mr. Merkam.”
Billy Gostman’s voice came over the speaker, “You need some help down there, Jack?”
“I don’t need no help from nobody!” Ross shouted. He was semi-drunk, angry, frustrated, and now wounded, yet again. Ross grabbed up a greasy rag and wrapped it around his left arm with his robotic right. He couldn’t easily tie it off, so he tucked the end under the wrapping and left it at that. He peered over at the mass gauge.
“Relative mass, one thousand eight niner niner!” He shouted. “You got that?”
“Message received, Mr. Ross,” Tesla intoned, as if unbothered. “Thank you, sir.”
Up on the bridge, Billy turned to Tesla.
“The moon is looking awfully large. It fills the biggest part of the sky. Do we have a time estimate?”
“Twenty minutes, or thereabouts,” Tesla replied. “Where the hell is Jude?”
“You and Dr. Merkam been friends long?” Billy asked.
“We are not what you would call friends,” Tesla stated. “I suppose I have only one or two true friends, and those are my hoteliers in New York.”
“You mean, your friends charge you to stay at their hotel? Those are your only friends?”
“They are the only people who understand me. No one else does.”
“What about that Westinghouse fellow?” Billy asked. “He handles all of your patent stuff, right?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I read the papers,” Billy said. “I read everything, nowadays. It might surprise you that I can do more than fire rifles and six-shooters.”
“Indeed. No, George is not my friend. George Westinghouse buys and sells people. I doubt he has any friends at all, apart from his accountants. Remind me never to become so rich that I forget about the little people, would you do that for me, Mr. Gostman?”
“I’d be more than happy to oblige.”
The moon perceptibly grew larger.
“Do we know where we’re landing?” Billy asked.
“Yes. Course change coming up in...” Tesla consulted his watch, then glanced at the card Koothrappally had filled out before leaving. “I say.” Tesla looked over at Billy with some concern etched into his features.
“What?” Billy asked. “What?”
“Course change in two minutes.”
Billy’s eyes grew wide. He reached over, pulled the cone of the speaker before his mouth and shouted, “MERKAM!”
PART IV:
LANDING
[ 50 ]
John Koothrappally heard Gostman shout “MERKAM!” over the loudspeakers, and then ran to the door of Merkam’s stateroom. He flew out the room and down the hall, then climbed the ladder into the main capsule chamber. His weight decreased as he climbed. At the top of the ladder, he was weightless and sailing through the air. In his headlong plunge he miscalculated and found himself thumping hard into the wood paneling on the opposite side of the craft, having narrowly missed coming into contact with the Tesla coil. While Tesla himself had assured each of them that contact with it would mean nothing, Koothrappally was not so sure. When the transmogrifier was running full tilt like this, there were literally trillions of volts running through the thing. Instead he checked his fall with his hands, and felt something give way in his right wrist.
“Help!” he cried.
There was no other person in the main chamber to hear him.
[ 51 ]
Ekka Gagarin heard Billy’s shout from her stateroom. She hastily donned her leather harness over her house dress and ran toward the ladder around the curved deck.
She stopped abruptly when she realized that Abigail Ross’s stateroom door was ajar.
“Abby!” she called.
Nothing.
Ekka walked to the closed door.
“Abby?” she asked softly. She looked down while awaiting a response, and noticed the drops of blood at her feet.
[ 52 ]
Ekka knew that the horror of what she had seen in Abigail Ross’s stateroom would haunt her the remainder of her life. Nothing she had seen on the steppes of the Ukraine while fighting for the Tsar, in Russian Georgia while fighting against the Turks, nor in the carnage of Mexico could have prepared her for the sight.
The power fled from her legs and she slid along the corridor wall around the broad wheel of the spinning stateroom ring toward Judah Merkam’s room.
His door as well was ajar.
She almost fell inside. She found Merkam on the floor repeating his ghastly litany.
Ekka then vomited the contents of her stomach.
[ 53 ]
Denys Jay-Patten awoke abruptly from a drunken stupor to find Edward Teach lying atop him, snoring away.
He’d heard a voice, of this he was almost certain. But there was no other sound but Teach’s unquiet droning.
There was a loud thump on his stateroom door.
“Yes?” Denys called.
The door opened. It was Two Hats.
“You two make like man and woman,” Two Hats said. “Maybe do so later. Now, big problem.”
“What big problem?” He shoved Edward Teach’s inert frame aside.
“Come,” Two Hats commanded. “You come now.”
[ 54 ]
“All right,” Billy said. He took an iron grip on the two sticks. “Call the numbers,” he said calmly.
�
��Right fifteen degrees. Zee minus eight degrees.
Billy counted seven tiny clicks forward with the right stick, four clicks back with the left.
“Good,” Tesla said. “Now drop ten point two percent power.”
Billy bent forward to the cone. “Ross, decrease power ten point two.”
“Ten point two. Got it.” Ross’s voice came back. There was a bad echo from down there.
The ship lurched to the right and down, it’s nose now aimed at the edge of the dark gray sea that filled the viewport.
“Mare Tranquilitatis,” Tesla stated.
“The only mares I know are brood mares”
“ ‘Mare’ is French for ‘sea’. ”
“I knew that.”
“The Sea of Tranquility,” Tesla said.
“I wonder what’s happened to Merkam.”
“I do not know. I am wondering about Koothrappally as well.”
Billy placed his mouth to the cone again and called out, “Ekka Gagarin to the bridge. Ekka to the bridge.”
“Let’s hope that everyone is alright. There are eleven of us on board, Mr. Gostman. Someone will come.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He bent to the cone again. “For that matter, anyone who can hear my voice, come to the bridge now!”
“Except Jack Ross,” Tesla corrected him.
“Anyone except Jack Ross!” Billy said into the cone.
“I’m staying put,” Ross’s voice came back. “I think I hear Koothrappally whimpering out there somewhere, though.”
Billy’s eyes were fixed on the moon. It now filled the entire viewing port.
“It’s...it’s—” Billy began.
“What?” Tesla asked.
“It’s a whole other world!”
“Yes. Very almost. Another course change coming up in thirty seconds.”
