Arabella the Traitor of Mars

by David D. Levine

  Every once in a great while they came upon another ship, which inevitably proved to be a wind-whaler. Most of these were Americans, and as such their meetings were extremely strained, but as a state of war no longer existed between their two countries there was no need for actual hostilities. Once they met a Russian, and the mutual incomprehension of language and culture proved rather entertaining. And on two occasions the whalers were English, which provided a welcome respite from the inevitable isolation of the airlanes. One of the two, homeward bound after a very successful expedition, hosted a celebratory feast for Touchstone’s officers, which raised Arabella’s spirits greatly … until they departed, and she realized how very many more months the voyage would last.

  The sky turned pale and cloudless, and shimmered with heat in every direction. The Sun grew gigantic, and pounded his rays upon the ship and crew like red-hot iron hammers. Not an asteroid, nor a whale, nor even a bird relieved the endless featureless brightness in which the ship seemed trapped and unmoving.

  And Mercury was still weeks away.

  7

  ROUNDING MERCURY’S HORN

  Arabella floated in the dubious shade of a sail which the crew had stretched across the ship’s waist to offer a bit of a respite from the Sun’s endless pummeling brilliance. But even the heavy, double-strength canvas proved permeable to his rays, and she still saw red through her closed eyelids. Her outward breath blew hot on her lips, her inward breath nearly as much so. But at least here, unlike her cabin, the air moved a bit.

  The time when she was too abashed to go out on deck with her dress soaked in water was long past … but so was the water. The crew’s consumption of the irreplaceable stuff was so much greater than anticipated in this dry, unending heat that they had been required to limit its use to drinking and cooking alone. So Arabella’s dress was wetted only with her own perspiration, and its hems were stiff with salt. Every other washable thing on the ship was equally filthy. This slovenly situation would no doubt have incensed Captain Fox … if he had had the energy to stir from his cabin more than once per watch.

  Suddenly Arabella’s indolent misery was interrupted by a cry from the quarterdeck: “Sail ho!”

  She cracked open first one eye and then the other, squinting against the unending brightness. Following the gazes of the men floating in the yards, she peered into the distance abaft … away from the burning Sun, at least.

  The air shimmered like a pot on the boil, making seeing difficult. Here and there an eddy or a vortex swirled, looking momentarily like a thing alive … “strange phenomena of the near-solar atmosphere,” Collins had called them. But finally Arabella saw it.

  Sail ho, indeed. A white fleck swimming in the pale, roiling blue of the overheated sky.

  And something about that fleck, a half-glimpsed detail, made the hot breath catch in Arabella’s throat. “May I borrow your glass?” she asked Collins, who floated near her. His broad exposed belly, once milk-white, was now brown as strong tea.

  The telescope’s brass nearly burnt her fingers. She pulled her sleeve down to protect her hand, and held the glass carefully away from her eye. Even so, the detail the device revealed was more than sufficient to confirm her suspicion.

  Three masts. A triangle of sail, proudly set to catch the current, and heading directly toward them.

  Whalers were all four-masters, like Touchstone herself. Navy ships-of-the-line generally bore six masts, three fore and three aft forming a hexagonal “snowflake” when seen head-on.

  Three masts … might be a Yankee clipper, or a Navy frigate.

  Or might be a Marsman—a ship of the Honorable Mars Company.

  Arabella made her way aft, where she encountered Fox as he emerged, shirtless, from his cabin. “Have you seen…?”

  “I have,” he said. His voice was dry and cracked from disuse, and he swallowed several times before continuing. “Three masts, ship-rigged. But she might not be a Marsman.”

  “There is no good reason for a Marsman to be on this course,” Arabella said, trying to convince herself.

  “There is no good reason for us to be on this course.” He shrugged. “Might be a ship of the Royal Society, on a scientific expedition. Or a courier, bound for…” But he could not come up with a single plausible destination, and the sentence died unfinished. He took out his glass and peered aft at the interloper.

  How, Arabella wondered, could Diana—assuming it were indeed she—possibly have followed them? Touchstone’s course was so unprecedented that Arabella herself could scarcely have imagined it even a week before they had taken the air, and despite Captain Singh’s brilliance and the assistance of Aadim she doubted that he could have reproduced it. But he had other skills than navigation. Through interrogation of ships they had encountered in their course, inspection of cast-off barrels and other aerial flotsam, observation of the air currents, and knowledge of Arabella’s navigational proclivities—many of which he himself had inculcated in her—he might have been able to follow in Touchstone’s wake even without knowing her intended course.

  The Navy flotilla which had awaited them above Greenwich showed that he had informed the Prince immediately of her departure and likely course of action, and when Touchstone had evaded that trap he must have set out in pursuit as soon as Diana could be provisioned. Even so, it was a testament to his skills, and Aadim’s, that he had been able to catch Touchstone up at all, never mind as quickly as he had.

  “Whoever she is,” Fox said, interrupting Arabella’s uncomfortable musings, “our courses may merely be parallel.” He handed his glass to Arabella. “Note the sails. With her sails set like that, she is traveling with the breeze, as we are. Now, if she were to strike the square sails and set spankers and jibs … we’d know she’s pedaling. And in mid-current, as we both are, the only reason for her to pedal is to catch us up.”

  Arabella raised the glass to her eye—it was better than Collins’s, and cooler to the touch as well—and noted the other ship’s sails. They were, indeed, all square to the ship’s course, a wide spread of canvas shining bright white in the devastating sun. But even as she watched, they folded themselves up, diminishing with crisp precision. The men performing the operation were too distant to be seen, but in her mind’s ear Arabella heard the commands, the disciplined rhythms of an experienced captain and crew.

  The sails vanished exactly as rapidly as she expected. She had performed those actions so many times herself. And the next step in that oft-rehearsed dance …

  Yes. There it was. Spankers and jibs, flashing out on all three masts in perfect unison. The fore-and-aft sails that would prevent the ship from rotating counter to the spinning propulsive sails, driven by the crew at the pedals.

  Wordlessly, she handed the glass back to Fox. He looked through it and grunted, then lowered it from his eye. “Well,” he said.

  “Well,” she agreed.

  “I suppose we must prepare for visitors.”

  * * *

  Arabella, Fox, Liddon, and Collins conferred in the sweltering dark of the great cabin. “Hard to tell for sure with the air so lively,” Liddon said, “but I’d say she’s some two hundred miles behind us. If they pedal watch on watch at six knots, she’ll catch us up in two days.”

  “Diana can do seven or eight knots, pedaling,” Arabella said. She told herself she was merely offering information on the capabilities of a typical Marsman.

  “Day and a half, then,” Fox said. “Or a bit less. Not much difference.”

  Arabella tried to think strategically. “If we pedal watch on watch as well, we can maintain the distance between us indefinitely.”

  Fox snorted. “Until we collapse from the heat. And if she is a Marsman, she’ll have a bigger crew, and likely better fed and watered than ours. That’s a race we can’t win.” He shook his head, just slightly. “No. We’ll need to save our strength for the circumduction of Mercury. Which is…?”

  Collins glanced down at the chart laid out on Fox’s desk. “Three day
s off. At least.”

  The four of them stared at each other across the chart. Liddon rubbed the scar that marred his cheek. “So … we turn and fight?”

  Fox considered the question for a long moment, then grimaced. “No, d—n it. We’re too weak from heat and thirst. Even if we win the battle, we’d lose in the end.”

  “So what remains?” asked Arabella, despairing. “Surrender?”

  “Might not be any need for that. She might just be coming by for a friendly chat. Perhaps bringing tea and crumpets.” But his eyes showed he knew better. “Still … let us keep our dance card clear and our powder dry. We will await our visitors, conserve our strength … and if they prove hostile, hit ’em with a double-shotted broadside before they know what’s what.”

  “Scarcely sporting,” said Collins.

  “We are filthy privateers,” Fox replied, spreading his hands. “And, so far from civilization as we are, there’s none to keep track of the score.”

  Arabella, aghast at Fox’s callous brutality, felt her breath catch in her throat … but nonetheless held her tongue.

  She had made her bed, and if murder were the price for lying in it, she would have to pay it. The tears would come afterward.

  * * *

  They shifted all stores and empty crates from the gun-deck, freeing the eight eight-pound guns for action. They cleared the path from the gun-deck to the magazine, and filled bags with powder and with shot. They rehearsed firing the great guns, running them in and out in dumb show … not wanting to reveal their intentions with live fire. Cannon-balls were chipped to perfect roundness; slow-match tubs laid out clean and ready; rammers, sponges, and worms racked at each gun for immediate use. Every man cleaned and loaded his pistols, if he had them, or practiced with his cutlass if not.

  Aboard Diana, Arabella knew—she was forced to admit the three-master, whose every maneuver was as familiar to her as her own face in the glass, could be none other—they would be doing exactly the same. Her crew, largely composed of Venusians, had proved themselves remarkably adept gunners in the Battle of Venus. And though a Marsman usually carried only three four-pound guns, Diana had been refitted as a ship of war by the French and now was armed with twelve eight-pounders—throwing half again Touchstone’s weight of metal. Touchstone might be a privateer, a vicious predator of the air, but if it came to a battle between her and Diana …

  Arabella hoped it would not.

  She floated at the quarterdeck rail, staring aft. Diana had grown as large from masthead to masthead as a spread hand held at arm’s length, and her crew could be seen with the naked eye as moving specks. Yet she had not signaled, which was worrisome.

  Perhaps she merely had nothing to say.

  Arabella touched the rail, turning herself in the air on her long axis, and looked down the length of the ship. There, beyond the bow-sprit—barely visible against the pale shimmering sky—stood Mercury, big as a clenched fist. The planet, pocked with craters and lifeless as a sun-baked rock, shone half-full as they approached it from behind in its orbit about the Sun. It seemed to grow as she watched, but she knew that was only wishful thinking. The pale, boiling sky shimmered all around it.

  Mercury was smaller in the sky, but much bigger and further away than the other ship. Diana looked bigger, but was smaller and closer. And the two ships, drawing ever closer together by dint of Diana’s constantly whirling pulsers, were both falling toward Mercury at a speed thousands of times faster.

  Would the two ships meet before they both encountered the planet? So long as Diana kept pedaling at the same speed, they would. And what would happen then was any one’s guess.

  Arabella had worked out the details of the planetary circumduction again and again, refining and adjusting every detail as they drew closer to Mercury and gained more information about the planet, the currents in its vicinity, and the ship and crew’s capabilities in the heat. She was as certain as she could be that the maneuver, however novel, would succeed … but it would be conducted at unreasonably high speed and with exceptionally tight tolerances. There was no room whatsoever for error, and if Touchstone were distracted by battle, or even an uncertain rendezvous, during the maneuver or in the critical hours beforehand, she might find herself shooting away from Mercury into the trackless void between planets, or directly into the Sun, rather than into the welcoming arms of the Swenson Current.

  “Aha!” It was a shout of surprise and triumph. Arabella turned to see Fox, on the other side of the quarterdeck, peering aft through his telescope and grinning like a fiend.

  “What is it?”

  “See for yourself!” He shot across the deck, bringing himself to a neat halt with one foot on the quarterdeck rail, and handed her the glass.

  At first Diana seemed the same as before, if a bit closer. But then Arabella saw a wisp of white curling away behind her like a stray bit of sukureth peel. “What am I seeing?” she asked.

  “One of her pulsers has torn loose!” he crowed. “I knew he was pushing them too hard, too long. This heat does terrible things to the grommets and clews.”

  Arabella raised Fox’s glass to her eye again. Tiny crewmen were already moving to retrieve the wayward sail. If Captain Fox had considered this sort of damage a possibility, she knew that Captain Singh would have done so as well, and would surely have laid plans to recover from it. “How long will it take to repair?”

  “Some hours, at least. Perhaps as much as a day, if the torn sail fouled the hub.” He rubbed his hands together. “At this rate we may very well beat her to Mercury. And, as she lacks the aid of your greenwood box, we will surely lose her there.”

  “Surely,” Arabella agreed, but without conviction. For if the pursuing ship were indeed Diana, she carried Aadim, by comparison with whose capabilities the greenwood box was little more than a toy.

  Even with this injury to their opponent, she knew, the race was not yet won.

  * * *

  Hours passed. Ahead, Mercury swelled rapidly … not quite so fast that its growth could be detected with the unaided eye, but quickly enough that the difference was easily noticeable from one hour to the next. Abaft, Diana maintained her same distance. Arabella inspected her frequently, using Fox’s glass, but the progress or lack thereof of the repairs to her damaged pulser was undetectable at this distance.

  But, still, every hour Diana’s pulsers did not turn increased the chances Touchstone would reach Mercury before the two ships came within cannon range of each other. And if that should occur … one of two things would happen.

  Arabella was confident in her projected course around Mercury, and had studied the Swenson Current specifically before leaving London. Captain Singh, in pursuit, would not have known the specifics of Arabella’s course, and could perforce have made only a general plan. He might, by observation of Touchstone’s course and with the help of Aadim, be able to match her planetary circumduction maneuver, but even so might not come out of it in a position to catch the Swenson. So if Touchstone reached Mercury before Diana caught Touchstone up, they might very well leave her behind, as Fox had asserted … indeed, might leave her stranded and becalmed, or hurtling uncontrollably toward the Sun. Alternatively, Diana might perform the maneuver perfectly, perhaps by following in Touchstone’s wake, and the pursuit would continue in the Swenson Current. With Diana’s more numerous crew, the outcome of that pursuit was not in doubt.

  So to lose her husband forever, or to be chased by him until he caught her … these seemed to be her alternatives. Neither was very attractive.

  Captain Singh had made a very serious gamble in pursuing her, she knew, and to a certain degree this flattered her. Yet by doing so, he had declared himself her enemy, and for this she could only condemn him.

  Of course, there were many other possibilities. If Diana caught Touchstone before Mercury, Captain Singh would be in a position to seize her, board her, or disable her, and Arabella’s expedition would end right there. Or, if Arabella had erred in her calculations or Touch
stone failed to perform the circumduction correctly, the ship might be lost without Diana’s help.

  Arabella bit her lip and raised Fox’s glass to her eye again. And swore.

  Diana’s pulsers were turning. Turning fast.

  She turned in the air and shot down the ladder from the quarterdeck to Fox’s cabin. There she consulted the chronometer and the charts … and swore again.

  Diana would catch them up just as they reached Mercury.

  And there was nothing at all to be done about it. For if Touchstone began to pedal now, in an attempt to outdistance her pursuer, she would round Mercury with too much speed and would miss the Swenson completely.

  * * *

  Mercury now loomed above like a giant’s face, peering down at Touchstone as though the ship were a tiny skorosh scuttling about on a table-top. Now only quarter-full, as the ship whipped around toward its dark side, the planet was plainly a sphere rather than a disc, its heavily cratered surface turning visibly overhead as Touchstone shot past its south pole at a speed of over twenty thousand knots.

  Arabella lowered her sextant, adjusted one of the greenwood box’s dials minutely, and pressed the lever to activate its clockwork mechanism. She, Fox, and Liddon all stood upon the quarterdeck, with leather belts about their waists fastened by straps to cleats in the deck; the greenwood box, too, was firmly pegged to the deck. All of this was necessary to ensure a safe circumduction of Mercury.

  They were, in fact, already in the midst of the maneuver, skating the upper reaches of Mercury’s Horn. Careful touches of the sails and pedals had been needed to compensate for those turbulent winds, and Arabella had been thoroughly occupied with the sextant and greenwood box even as Fox utilized all his skills in ship-handling to keep them on the course she laid out.

  Diana, too, had grown, now wider in the sky than Arabella’s spread hands held thumb to thumb. But though the two ships had closed to within cannon range, she had not fired. Arabella suspected that Captain Singh and Aadim were as busy as she and Fox were, if not more so due to their lack of knowledge about Touchstone’s intended course, and had no attention to spare for battle.