by Frank Tuttle
“Doesn’t matter,” Meralda said. “It’s not really your paper we’re trying to reach.”
“Subterfuge! Deception! Plots and treachery!” said the penswift. “Dear, I believe we’re going to get along fabulously!”
Back in her cabin, Meralda hurried through the charging of her makeshift telesonde enhancer while Mug announced the time as the clock raced toward ten in the morning.
“Done,” Meralda said, putting down the spent holdstone and her latching wand.
“Ten of the clock,” Mug said. “Let’s hope this works.”
Meralda’s contrivance, a small, hastily assembled device composed of two teacups, sixty feet of wire, and a rather expensive electric meter that had been a gift from Donchen, began to hiss and crackle.
“This is Mrs. Wedding O. Primsbite, reporting from aboard the airship Intrepid,” said a shrill voice from deep within a teacup. “We are bound for the Air Corps base at Kenney, and after that, the vast, uncharted Great Sea! The airship is performing marvelously, as is the brave crew. Spirits are high as we near the coast well ahead of schedule. What wondrous sights will we behold? What strange and exotic lands await? Only the Great Sea can tell, and we will soon soar above it for the first time in the history of the Realms! I shall continue to record the details of our voyage, where you will find them published first in the pages of the Tirlin Times, the first and best of all newspapers, since 1277! Mrs. Wedding O. Primsbite, reporting. Authenticity cipher one one oh one. Out.”
The device fell silent.
“She’s good,” Mug said, with grudging admiration in his voice. “Think the Vonats heard?”
“If they were listening, they heard,” replied Meralda. “I boosted the signal by several orders of magnitude.”
Mug’s cage buzzed. “What makes you so sure the Vonats had a hand in the newspaper’s secret telesonde?”
“That’s what I’d do,” Meralda said. “Too, it’s the only thing I could think of on such short notice.”
Mug rustled his vines in the expression Meralda knew as a shrug. “Well, if we make it to Ambervale in one piece, we’ll know you were right,” he said.
“You have such an uplifting, positive outlook on life,” Meralda said. “It’s always a joy, being with you.”
“Isn’t it though?” Mug sailed his cage about the tiny cabin, coming to rest by the open porthole. “I wonder if I’ll be able to see the Vonats coming?”
* * *
Three hours to the minute, and the mooring lines were cast away. The Intrepid, her hold filled with everything fifty soldiers and their wheelbarrows could haul aboard, soared away from the Ambervale tower on four fans before tilting her nose toward the clouds and engaging her flying coils.
Meralda let the breath she’d been unconsciously holding go. “No Vonats,” whispered Mug, from close by her ear. “You did it, Mistress. I’d insist on a hefty increase in your salary.”
The airship pierced the lead-grey clouds and emerged beneath a bright blue sky. Lightning played within the clouds below, arcing and racing silently in the distance, until the Captain gave the order to ascend to ten thousand feet.
Soon neither land nor sea was visible below, just the unbroken plain of flashing rain clouds.
“We’ve just left the Realms,” said the navigator, after a time. “We are now over the Great Sea, bound for Hang.”
Captain Fairweather nodded and reached for the brass handset that fed every speaking tube aboard the Intrepid.
“This is the Captain speaking,” he said. “We are now over the Great Sea. Our voyage has begun in earnest. Clear skies and fair winds to us all.”
He hung up the handset and faced the forward glass, his hands clasped behind his back.
Meralda joined him, marveling at the deep blue of the sky.
“Never was much for speeches,” said the Captain.
“You’ll have to get used to them,” Meralda said. “One day soon, you’ll be known as the captain of the first airship to cross the Great Sea. You won’t be able to buy a paper without first giving a speech.”
The Captain fetched his pipe from his jacket and clenched the stem of it between his teeth. “I won’t light this until my boots are on Hang soil,” he said. “My first speech will be along the lines of ‘has anyone got any matches?’”
Meralda laughed, and the Intrepid soared east toward Hang.
~~~
From the private journal of Mugglesworth Ovis, Novembre 15, RY 1969
You can’t see the salty waves for the clouds, but we’re well out over the Great Sea and even if wiser heads prevailed there’s no turning back now.
Mistress received her first report about the flying coils from Tower late last night. She claims everything is fine, but I saw her frown. I have no doubt that she has discovered some fatal flaw to the machines, and is hoping against hope to produce a remedy before we all plunge screaming into the caustic brine below.
Tomorrow, we’ll need to replenish the lifting gas we’ve lost to leaks by descending to within fifty feet of the merciless waves so some unwieldy contraption can be lowered in order to pump water aboard. Mistress contrived a machine which turns seawater into lifting gas, which is one of the many reasons I wish she’d focus her considerable intellect on more pressing matters of horticulture, most notably the suppression of leaf-cutter beetles.
If we survive the eight-hour stop in the morning to replenish our gas envelope, we’ll take to the skies once again, and repeat the pattern every day hereafter. Why all this is considered the superior alternative to a nice safe boat is quite beyond me.
But at least all this will give Mistress something to do. She was fine most of the day today, until suppertime arrived. She retired early from the Grand Salon and sat at her desk, mooning over Donchen with many a deep sigh and sorrowful gaze out yonder window or porthole or whatever it is they call flotsam before it is smashed to pieces on some nameless rocky shore.
I have made the acquaintance of a number of the crew who, to a man, seem oblivious to the deadly peril at every turn. A few of us, including my new friend Mrs. Primsbite, enjoyed a merry game of what they call ‘poker’ this afternoon, and I find myself three dollars and a nickel the wealthier for it. I shall buy Mistress a black veil to match her funereal mood if we should by some wild chance make Hang’s shore intact.
And so shall go our days at sea. Eight hours of station keeping, to replenish lifting gas and drinking water. Four hours on the flying coils, four hours on the fans, switch again for the next eight hours. If all goes according to plan, we’ll make eight hundred miles a day that way, and reach Hang in thirty-three more days.
But I ask you, gentle reader–does anything ever go according to plan?
Penned by my frond, on this 15th day of Novembre, in the Realm Year 1969, I remain,
Mugglesworth Ovis.
Chapter 6
The Intrepid’s second day aloft dawned clear and bright. Meralda joined the bridge crew until the airship halted, hanging a mere fifty feet above the gentle swells. Then she joined the pumping crew at the back of the airship’s long loading ramp to oversee the deployment of the seawater pump.
Mug joined her, his cage buzzing and darting, his eyes turning nervously to and fro. “Not a single crow in sight,” he observed, still scanning the empty sky. “I tell you, Mistress, I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
The pump basket, followed by its pair of thick tar-sealed hoses, began inching down toward the Great Sea.
“Well, of course you don’t see crows this far from land,” Meralda retorted, watching the basket. Her grey day hat shielded her eyes, but the wind kept blowing at her skirt and she resolved to wear britches for any subsequent excursions outside the Intrepid’s hull. “And don’t you claim to detest crows?”
“I do.” Mug pushed all of his eyes through the bars of his cage to better see the water. “They’re detestable creatures. But if they’ve got better sense than to be out here, what does that say about us?”
Meralda sighed and tur
ned away from Mug.
The basket dropped the last few feet and splashed into the water. Men shouted as adjustments were made, and the basket submerged until only the bright yellow ball affixed to the top was visible.
“Ready, Engineer?” shouted Phister, the Chief Mechanic.
Meralda nodded, and the man shouted, and the massive water pump came clanking and whirling to life above.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the black hoses snapped taut, and a great, wet gurgling sounded from below and began to rise.
The gurgling stopped abruptly, turning into the sound of rushing water, which raced up the tubes and past Meralda and continued into the Intrepid’s belly.
Cheers rang out. Meralda smiled and would have clapped, but for the wind trying to steal her long skirt.
“Mistress.” Mug spoke softly, each one of his twenty-nine eyes turned down and staring intently at the Sea.
“Are we pumping at full volume?” shouted Meralda over the rush of water and the roar of the pump.
“We are,” replied the Alon Chief Mechanic, after a flurry of shouts and gestures to his crew in the pump room above.
“Mistress,” Mug repeated. “How long do we need to keep that contraption submerged?”
“Five, perhaps six hours. Why?”
“I don’t mean how long are we scheduled to stay here. I mean how long will it actually take to pump water aboard? Not counting the checking of that and the fiddling with this and the talking about the other thing?”
“Mug, if you’re uncomfortable being outside, just go back up the gangway. The hatch is wide open.”
Mug lifted a single blue eye and looked to Meralda. “There’s something moving down there, Mistress.”
Meralda peered over the railing, her hand on her hat to keep the wind from snatching it away. “I don’t see a thing,” she said, after a moment.
“Pardon my bluntness, Mistress, but you don’t have my eyes. Look. Right below us, down deep, but rising. Can’t you see it?” He sent his flying birdcage darting close to Meralda’s side. “Mistress, it’s seen us! It’s coming up from the deep! You’ve got to order them to rise, right now!”
“We cannot.” Meralda looked to the waves again, saw nothing but the vast expanse of deep blue Sea and the Intrepid’s long shadow riding far behind. “Mug, honestly, if this is one of your jokes—”
Mug poked a dozen eyes through his bars and regarded the water below.
“Mistress, I’m not joking. There’s something big coming at us.”
“How big?”
“Bigger than the airship,” replied Mug. “Those woodcuts, with all the kraken and sea serpents and dragons? All true, every one of them, I knew it, I just knew it.”
“Could it be the sun glinting off a wave—” but then she stopped. Did I just see some hint of movement, a flash of sinewy motion, below the lazy waves?
“Did you bring any weapons?” Mug’s voice had grown frantic. “Elbon’s Raging Inferno? Cotton’s Irresistible Hammer?”
Meralda looked away from the water. “Of course not! This is a peaceful diplomatic mission.”
Mug groaned. “Right. It’s not as if we’re crossing some great bloody unknown ocean —Mistress, grab something, here it comes!”
Mug withdrew his eyes, worked his levers, and placed his cage nearly atop Meralda’s head.
The surface of the Great Sea bulged upward, growing smooth and dark, as something large rushed up from the deep. Meralda waved frantically for the Chief Engineer, but before she could catch his eye the Great Sea exploded in a column of spray. Hundreds of writhing, serpentine leviathans leaped from the sea, straining to reach the motionless airship.
Horns blasted from the top of the ramp. As the coiling snakelike creatures leaped and then fell back into the water, each with a thunderous crash, Meralda shouted the order to raise the pump basket, but her words were lost to the thrashing and the spray.
The great pump tubes stretched and swayed. Meralda watched the boiling sea, trying to make sense of the tangle of glistening grey flesh coiling and looping below.
A sinewy neck rose up, then another, and another. Water fell away, revealing dozens of great serpents, each perhaps half as long as the airship. Every smooth, blunt head snapped and roared, wet pale fangs flashing in the sun.
The beasts jostled each other, butting and bumping necks as they struggled to stretch high enough to reach the airship. One emitted a loud birdlike chirp, and the second echoed it. Within moments, the pair was chirping back and forth between nips at the chin of the other, and soon the rest joined in. Like siblings at the breakfast table, they argued over who would get the first bite.
Mug flew his cage over the rail. “Go, Mistress!” he shouted. “I’ll draw them off!”
Before Meralda could reply, his cage fell out of sight, veering toward the rising heads of the monsters.
More creatures surfaced, stretching their long necks up and up, straining to reach the Intrepid’s hull. Twenty feet, thirty feet, and still they rose, coiling and uncoiling, great dark eyes glinting in the sun.
“Let’s go, lass!” The Alon mechanic charged down the gangway toward Meralda. “We’ll let the basket tear free, but let’s go!”
Meralda clung to the rail, watching helplessly as Mug piloted his tiny yellow birdcage directly at the snout of the highest sea serpent.
“You there!” he cried. “Back down under with you, you great ugly garden slug!”
The monster honked and surged up, leaping from the water, its head nearly reaching the ramp before crashing back down to the sea.
Another head took its place.
Mug darted so close he bumped its snout and went reeling back, spinning out of control for an agonizing moment.
Just before he fell into the sea, he righted himself and turned his plunge into an orbit. “Back, you aphid!”
The Alon’s hand gripped Meralda’s right arm. “Lass, we have to run!”
“Stand back.” Meralda shook loose and raised both hands. “To me,” she whispered, and suddenly each hand supported a large ragged crow.
Here there be monsters, whispered one.
Shall we smite the beasts? asked the other.
The Chief Mechanic went wide-eyed and took a pair of long steps backward.
“One of you fetch Mug,” Meralda ordered. “The other, remain. Obscure our words.”
The crow perched upon her right hand leaped and flew. The remaining bird looked at Meralda with a single black eye.
“What manner of beasts are those?” Meralda asked.
They have no name I ken, said the crow. Master knew of them, but had no interest in their study. They are easily slain, if you wish it.
“Can you lead them away, without an attack?”
The crow hopped from foot to foot. We are not herders of kraken, it said. Will you not slay them, and be done?
“Not if there is another way,” she said.
Mug’s cage came floating over the rail, borne by a flapping crow.
“I had them on the run!” Mug shouted. “Let go, you daft chicken!”
The crow returned to Meralda’s hand. Mug fumed as the sea serpents leaped, their great jaws snapping, sending spray washing over the end of the ramp.
She hesitates to slay the beasts, said the one who had remained.
Folly, replied the other. Let us dispatch them. ‘Tis easily done.
“You will not,” Meralda said.
One of the beasts managed to bump the bottom of the ramp with its snout before falling back to the water, and Meralda nearly lost her footing. “I forbid any bloodshed, unless the Intrepid is in dire peril.”
“Begging your pardon, Mistress,” Mug said. “But I believe this might be the very definition of the phrase ‘dire peril.’”
The crows hopped from foot to foot as if engaging in some secret dance.
You are not our Master, said one.
You may ask, Mage. You may suggest. But you may not forbid, said the other.
/> “If you will not assist, depart.” Meralda snatched her hands away.
The crows soared off, cawing as they flew.
Mug watched them go.
“I take it they have declined to render aid?” he said.
Sea monsters leaped. Spray washed across the ramp, which pitched up again as another serpent managed to butt the bottom of it.
The Chief Mechanic stared in horror at the serpents.
Meralda leaned carefully over the rail, searching for the pump basket amid the churning waters below. Seawater continued to move through the lines. They haven’t destroyed the basket. Yet.
“Shut off the pump,” Meralda ordered. “Shut it off and drain the lines.”
Another head butted the ramp. The sea serpents began to issue great hooting blasts as they leaped, one after another, until Meralda was sure her ears would burst from the noise.
The Chief Mechanic turned and raced up the ramp, waving to his crew.
Mug shouted, but his words were lost to the chorus of hoots and deafening birdlike chirps from below.
In a moment, the roar of the pumps fell silent, and the pump lines shuddered as the water drained back into the Sea.
“With no water weighing down the works, we might ascend without tearing the basket loose,” Meralda said.
She dragged Mug’s cage close. “Tell them to rise to a thousand feet,” Meralda screamed, as loud as she could. “Go!”
Mug hurtled away, bobbing and weaving through great clouds of spray.
Alone at the end of the loading ramp, Meralda gripped the rail. She watched the long necks and wagon-sized heads bump and weave with the others, watched as twelve pairs of inky unblinking eyes fixed on her, growing closer with each determined leap.
Then, beyond the boiling water whipped into a froth by the frenzied sea serpents, a long dark shadow moved toward the Intrepid from the west, gliding as easily beneath the Sea as the airship raced through skies.
The dark shape in the Sea was easily as long as the airship. Longer even, and still taking shape, elongating and widening as it grew near.
