All about her, Touchstone’s timbers creaked as the ship rocked in the water, muttered conversations and gentle footsteps punctuating the ship’s rhythm as the crew roused themselves for departure. She slipped on her shoes, put her fur wrap about her shoulders, and went out on deck.
* * *
Earth’s enormous moon glared down from a clear black sky as Arabella came out on deck. Nearly full, it outlined Touchstone’s spars and lines with a frost of icy white light and turned the golden khoresh-wood planks of the deck to silver. Silhouettes of airmen clambered in the rigging, managing the balloon envelope as it filled with hot air from the Navy furnace-house on shore close by.
Arabella requested and received permission to ascend to the quarterdeck, where Fox and Liddon conferred in hushed tones. “Morning, ma’am,” said Liddon, for it was well after midnight.
“Good morning,” she replied. “How much longer?”
Fox turned his face skyward, inspecting the swelling envelope and the moon above it. “Less than an hour.” He pointed to one of the airmen and raised his voice, but only enough to be heard. “Mind the ratlines, there!”
“Aye, sir,” came drifting down from above.
From the other ships close by, all Navy vessels, came very little sound. Only a light watch stood on any deck, with a few lanterns here and there. “Will we encounter any opposition when we launch, do you think?” Arabella asked Fox.
“I do not expect that we will.” Despite his confident words, his eyes scanned the dark water in every direction. “For the Prince to oppose us in public would tip his hand. He might attempt to prevent our departure through some administrative action or subterfuge, to be sure, but I do not anticipate any overt action. The fewer people who know about this Mars scheme before it is set in motion, the more likely it is to succeed.”
“But stopping us would prevent people from finding out about it.”
“I said that opposing us in public would tip his hand. If there is to be opposition, it will find us somewhere above the falling-line—out of sight and out of mind.”
“And what will you do if that should occur?”
“I have a few tricks in mind.” He winked. “Have no fear, this old privateer knows how to get his ship out of port in one piece. But after that it will be up to you to get us to Mercury, and then to Mars.”
“I will do my very best.”
“I expect nothing less.”
Fox excused himself then, and Arabella fell back to the quarterdeck rail, where she could observe the launch while remaining out of the way.
Fox’s management of his crew, she noted, was remarkably different from Captain Singh’s. Although Captain Singh’s darting brown eyes seemed to take in every detail, he trusted his men’s discipline entirely, offering only the occasional word of direction or correction. Most commands issued aboard his ship came from the mates or the captains of divisions, based upon the captain’s stated or implied wishes. But Captain Fox took a far more active part in the operation of his ship. Even given the unusual noiselessness of this moon-lit launch, he was constantly flitting about, commanding individual airmen directly and sometimes even hauling on a line himself. None of his officers or men took any offense at this—they were, if nothing else, used to their captain’s behavior. Furthermore, they understood that he knew all of their jobs as well as his own, and though he seemed omnipresent his actions and advice never interfered with their work.
Soon the envelope had swollen to its maximum extent, and with the very minimum of shouting the furnace-gut was detached and the furnace-men rowed away. Touchstone now rode high in the water, swaying uneasily in the light breeze with most of her weight carried by the balloon.
“Easy now,” Fox said, just loud enough to be heard, “ballast away.”
On every other launch she had observed, the command ballast away had been immediately followed by a great roar and rush as the water, or sand on Mars, was rapidly released from the lowest level of the hold. But now the ballast-ports creaked open slowly, and the ship simply floated higher and higher until her keel rose dripping from the water’s surface.
Gently, gently, Touchstone eased herself into the sky. A few pale faces turned up curiously from the Navy men on the other ships close by, but no halloos nor hurrahs greeted her departure. It was as surreptitious a launch as Arabella could imagine, nearly eerie in its silence.
But even as Touchstone began her ascent, a lighter set out from the quays toward her, its oars splashing with fevered haste. “Flag Queen Charlotte!” came a cry from the lighter’s coxswain.
At this call, incomprehensible to Arabella, Fox’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in calculation. “Did you hear something just then, Mister Liddon?” he remarked to his chief mate, delivering the seemingly casual question with a very serious gaze.
Liddon looked back with a matching expression of surprise followed by understanding. “I do not believe I did, sir.”
“Carry on, then.”
“Flag Queen Charlotte!” repeated the lighter’s coxswain, more urgently, as Touchstone continued her ascent. “Flag Queen Charlotte, d—n it!” But Fox and Liddon only exchanged looks—Liddon’s concerned and questioning, Fox’s firm and insistent—and spoke no words, nor took any action. The crew, following their commander’s lead, continued raising ship, ignoring the lighter completely save for the occasional worried downward glance. Soon the splashing and continued shouts had drifted into inaudibility.
“Just out of idle curiosity,” Arabella said to Fox with studied nonchalance, “have you ever heard of a Flag Queen Charlotte?”
“Queen Charlotte is the largest ship in the dockyard,” he replied in a matching tone. To Arabella’s blank expression, he clarified, “The largest ship in dock is considered the dockyard’s flagship, and is thus the nominal command of the Port-Admiral in charge. If a boat, or perhaps a lighter, should happen to pull alongside a ship with the hail ‘Flag Queen Charlotte,’ that would indicate that the Port-Admiral himself is aboard the boat. Perhaps bearing some important papers, such as an order that under no circumstances is the ship to depart the dock.” He raised one eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason.”
Higher and higher the ship drifted. Moonlight sparkled on the surface of the black Thames and glinted from the snowdrifts that still heaped its banks; a few cawing seabirds sculled past below. Soon the ship had floated so high that the whole of London could be seen—a jumble of dark gray and black buildings contrasting with snowy parks and alleys, illuminated only by the occasional street-lamp: white gas flames on the main streets, yellow whale-oil elsewhere. A few carriages clopped along the streets, their tiny lanterns shimmering like summer stars, but the overall impression was of stillness—the city lying cold and sleeping beneath a tattered blanket of snow. No other ships rose from the dock; all remained still.
In remarkably short order the city became vague and indistinct, merely a dirty patch at a bend in the river. The countryside around it spread out beneath the moon, sparkling snowy fields and gray forests laid out in a gigantic checkerboard. The wind freshened then, striking at Arabella’s face with a cold crisp bite, and she pulled her wrap and her bonnet more tightly about herself.
“Set main-course and main-tops’l,” Fox remarked casually to Liddon.
What? Arabella thought, and her surprise was echoed by the expression on Liddon’s face, but nonetheless he immediately conveyed Fox’s command to the captains of divisions. The crew immediately set to, raising the two lower sails on the mainmast and sheeting them home. But Arabella knew that it was pointless to set sails before reaching the interplanetary atmosphere; the balloon itself was essentially one giant sail, and additional sails could not direct the ship any where other than with the wind. What was Fox doing?
“I mean to catch every tiniest particle of this breeze,” Fox explained to Arabella’s unspoken question, “to get as far away from London as I can before reaching the falling-line. If any one should await u
s above the Horn … I intend to miss that rendezvous.”
Several other surprising commands followed, not the least of which was to sway out the side and lower masts—though not yet to set their sails—far earlier than usual. This was certainly more dangerous, but Touchstone’s experienced crew were up to the challenge, and it would let the ship set sail and take up the wild winds of the Horn immediately once the falling-line was crossed—far sooner than any pursuing ship would anticipate.
Fox’s trickery continued after they entered the Horn. Using every ounce of his skill and experience, Fox sought out, caught, and rode the fastest, wildest winds of that perpetual storm, resulting in an exceptionally rapid passage … and a horrifically turbulent ride. No sane captain would deliberately seek out such a rough road, of course, but Touchstone and her crew took the jolts in stride—in fact, most of the crew’s faces, illuminated by the nearly constant lightning, bore broad excited smiles at the challenge. Arabella was very glad for Lady Corey that the great lady had stayed back on Earth—she would have been absolutely miserable.
So turbulent, though, was Touchstone’s journey through the Horn that Arabella became violently ill, spewing her breakfast over the larboard rail and into the lashing rain beyond. Nor was she the only one to do so—even Liddon, whose scarred face and world-weary demeanor bespoke his decades of airfaring experience, “sacrificed to Uranus,” as the airmen said. But Fox, clinging to a backstay with one hand and one foot, merely laughed uproariously at their discomfort, the wild rain washing his bared teeth and the wind whipping the brim of the hat tied upon his head.
Arabella glared at him and retired to her cabin, where—despite feeling as though she were a pair of dice being rattled in a dice-cup—somehow she managed to fall asleep.
* * *
When Arabella awoke, the ship had ceased to lurch and the sun—the ever-present sun of the interplanetary atmosphere—shone through the prism in the deck above. She pushed herself up out of her hammock, drifting freely until she collided gently with the deck above.
It was good to be back in a state of free descent. She stretched languidly, extending her limbs as far as possible in the tiny cabin and enjoying the relief from the constant pull of Earth’s oppressive gravity. Pulling her arms in suddenly, she spun herself on her long axis, whirling like a top in midair and grinning at the sensations. She then extended her arms, slowing her spin, ending with a light touch of one finger upon the wall that stopped her motion altogether.
She had not forgotten. She had not forgotten a thing.
Still grinning, she opened the door and pushed herself into the ward-room outside with her natural foot. The space was crammed with boxes, crates, and casks, an unavoidable trade-off between maneuvering room now and survival later. But at least now, in a state of free descent, the narrow path on the floor between the stacked supplies was no longer the only route. She sailed with ease over the top of them.
Up on deck, the chaos and havoc of the Horn had been replaced by the peace of the interplanetary atmosphere. Only a few puffy clouds marked the clear blue of the sky all around, and though the ship was no doubt racing sunward at a speed of some thousands of knots, she was unmoving relative to the current in which she was embedded and the air on deck seemed perfectly still. A few airmen, whistling negligently, floated above the deck, engaged in coiling cables; the ship’s balloon envelope had already been deflated and stowed. Earth floated in the blue sky abaft, a gleaming sphere as big as a dinner plate, her visible face fully illuminated by the Sun toward which Touchstone now sailed.
“Good morning!” called Fox, emerging from the great cabin with a sandwich of ham and cress in his hand. “I trust you slept well?”
“No thanks to you,” she replied, accepting his offer of half the sandwich, “and that wretched passage.” The sandwich was delicious, and she determined to enjoy it thoroughly; unsalted pork, soft bread, and especially fresh greens would very soon be nothing more than a happy memory, and would remain so for all the months of their long and unconventional voyage.
“It is thanks to me, and that wretched passage, that your slumber was uninterrupted by cannon-fire! When we emerged from the Horn, we spotted a flotilla of Navy vessels in the distance, but our velocity was sufficient that we easily evaded them. I am certain that they were lying in wait for us, and that our turbulent passage was the reason we did not come out right in the middle of them.”
“I thank you for that, then, my dear sir,” she replied with exaggerated politeness, and gave him an elaborate midair curtsey.
He smiled at that, and bowed. “Your skirt is riding up in back,” he commented mildly.
“Oh dear! Thank you.” Feeling a blush rise in her cheeks, she reached behind herself and pushed the offending garment back down. In her cabin she had a sort of large garter to hold it in place, which she had forgotten to slip on before coming out on deck. But though that device was effective at preserving her modesty, she found it interfered greatly with her maneuverability. “I suppose,” she remarked, “with Lady Corey not here, that I may be able to get away with wearing my brother’s trousers on deck. Would that be too scandalous?”
“With Lady Corey not here,” Fox replied, “there is no telling what you might get away with.”
“Sir!” she replied, genuinely shocked at the implication. “I am still a married woman … as are you.” At his obvious amusement she immediately corrected herself. “Married, I mean.” Again she felt herself blushing. It was far easier to blush in free descent, she reminded herself, due to the absence of gravity drawing the blood downward from the head.
“Of course,” he said, inclining his head and barely suppressing laughter. “I meant no impropriety.”
“I am certain you did not.” She was not certain at all.
Their eyes met then, and something was communicated in that gaze. But she was not entirely sure what that something was … and definitely did not know what she wanted it to be.
“Excuse me,” she said, and before the blush could appear in her cheeks again, she pushed off the rail and descended the ladder to the deck below.
* * *
Back in her cabin, Arabella considered the garter and the trousers for a long time.
A skirt, with the garter, was the more feminine garment. The trousers would give her a more masculine, serious air, and would free her limbs for action … but it could not be denied that the limbs thus exposed could be considered an enticement to inappropriate gazes and inappropriate comments.
Really, neither choice could completely spare her from unwanted attention. But the skirt was ordinary, conventional, and expected … and as such it was nearly invisible. It made no statement either way regarding availability or attraction, and did not call any more attention to her sex than did her voice and figure, neither of which could be completely disguised.
With some regret, then, she removed the garter from its bag and fitted it about her ankles. For now. But she would hold the trousers in reserve … they might be needed in case of battle.
She sincerely hoped it would not come to that. And yet she could not deny that some part of her desired it.
* * *
Days passed. Soon the days became weeks, and the weeks months.
Arabella spent quite a bit of her time in her cabin, reading upon topics of navigation and aerial battle from Fox’s considerable collection of books, and took most of her meals in the ward-room with the officers, Fulton, and Dr. Barry. Occasionally she was invited to the captain’s cabin for dinner, but she made sure that she and the captain were never left alone together.
Sometimes the captain’s remarks verged upon indelicacy, or occasionally even indecency. Sometimes, she had to admit, her own remarks ventured into that same territory. But though she was now thousands of miles away from her husband, and—she was certain—even further from him in his emotions, she was still married to him.
And though he had betrayed the principles she had thought they held in common … though he had cho
sen loyalty to crown and country over love, honor, and decency … though he was now, of his own free will, fully embroiled in a horrific scheme which would, if unchecked, end in war, bloodshed, and terror for millions … despite all that, she still loved him. It was against her will, her principles, and her intellect, but the pull of her heart toward him could no more be denied than the force of gravity which held the planets in orbit around the Sun.
She could not deny, though, that Fox held a bit of gravitational attraction for her heart as well.
She pedaled against that attraction. Oh, how she pedaled.
But sometimes she grew weary of pedaling.
* * *
They crossed the orbit of Venus—a milestone for which, as no one aboard had ever crossed before, they had no particular ceremony in mind. So, perforce, they celebrated with an improvised observance involving costume, music, and wild gyrations in free descent. While raucous and hilarious, the affair lacked even a semblance of solemnity and was thus, at least to Arabella, somewhat disappointing. But she tried to mask her disenchantment.
In any case, the crossing of Venus was significant in that it marked the approximate midpoint of their journey to Mercury and, if Arabella’s calculations were correct and the speed of the Swenson Current had been properly estimated by the Royal Society, nearly one-third of the entire voyage. Arabella and the quartermaster inventoried the stores, sampling some casks for spoilage—fortunately they found very little—and determined that, if all went well, they would neither starve nor perish of thirst before reaching Mars. But it would be a near thing, and would require careful apportionment of their supplies.
The heat grew intense, as she had known it would—a parching dry heat, which seemed at first more tolerable than the steamy suffocating dampness of the air near Venus, but soon grew debilitating in its own way. Most of the crew went about near-naked, and Arabella wore only a very light dress. In her cabin, she sometimes soaked it with water for the slight relief it gave. Lady Corey would have been completely scandalized.
Arabella the Traitor of Mars Page 9
