Almost immediately, steam began to whistle from the safety pressure-release valve. I could try to jam it with a piece of metal or stone, but would that hold it? Before the metal-bellied boiler exploded, the pressure would be enormous.
Our ro-butler was lined up with the other automatic servants, a shovel in his hands, lifting scoop after scoop of coal and tossing it into the furnace. The glow of the fire reflected from his metal body, turning it a deep red. His movements were awkward, though. His worn cogs kept slipping.
I trudged across to the speaking tube.
“Hold the pressure-release valve closed,” I said. “Tight. Don’t let go. No matter what. One copy.”
With a whir, the machine spat out its punch card.
The ro-butler straightened, dropping his shovel, when I fed him the punch card. I had to turn him to point him toward the valve. His body was hot under my hands. I wanted to cry.
His fingers clamped around the valve, shutting off the escaping steam. I imagined the pressure building up, the steam shrieking past his metal fingers. Then the explosion, tearing through him.
The ro-butler had never been alive, but he’d seemed it. He’d felt like part of the family.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The ro-butler didn’t reply. He just kept on holding with those strong metal fingers. I turned away.
* * *
The thrumming of the boiler grew louder and louder around me. The heat from the furnace became so great I couldn’t bear it. I backed away. Steam shrieked through seams and around valves.
“The boiler is going to explode,” Freddie shouted down the workshop stairs, mimicking the voice of the native Martian. “Get out of there!”
There was a moment’s pause, then, faintly, the other man replied, “Then stop it.”
“I can’t,” Freddie shouted back. “Someone’s jammed it. It’ll destroy the house.”
Frog-face cursed.
Another seam sprang on the boiler. Steam punched out, splitting bricks apart and scattering fragments across the wet floor. I backed away. The automatic servants were grinding to a halt now, their delicate mechanisms overwhelmed, but it was too late. The furnace was roaring too fiercely. No one could stop it.
I turned and ran.
The boiler’s shriek increased behind me as I raced up the servants’ stairs. I burst into the corridor just as Frog-face came up the stairs leading from the workshop. Freddie grabbed him around the neck with one hand and punched him in the stomach. Frog-face folded over. Mama, Papa, and Jane emerged behind him.
Freddie had done it! He’d freed them. I started to cheer. Then something cold touched my throat. I smelled sweat. A rough hand grabbed my arm.
The native Martian had somehow managed to free himself and had found a weapon. The serrated edge felt like a kitchen knife.
“Edward!” Mama screamed. The native Martian pushed the knife harder against my throat. Papa laid a hand on Mama’s arm, his eyes never leaving me.
“Step away!” the Martian shouted at Freddie. “Keep your hands above your head and get against the wall.”
Freddie did what he was told.
Frog-face took a long club from his belt. In a single, vicious movement, he drove it into Freddie’s stomach. Freddie’s breath exploded out. He fell to the floor and curled around his stomach. Jane shrieked. Freddie gasped as he fought for breath.
The Martian dragged me toward the door of the house. Frog-face followed, herding Mama, Papa, and Jane ahead of him.
A sharp crack sounded below. The house seemed to lunge to one side. The movement knocked me forward. I turned the motion into a roll as the Martian shot out his arms for balance. I hit the floor, still moving, came up onto my feet, and ran. Spitting fury, the Martian chased after me.
We came out onto the lawn, into the clear, steam-free air.
I cut suddenly left, and the Martian missed me by an inch. He was taller and faster than me, but he couldn’t turn as easily. I dodged under a thrown-out arm. Mama, Papa, and Jane stumbled out of the house, followed by Frog-face. There was no sign of Freddie.
“Leave him!” Frog-face shouted at the Martian. “Look.”
The Martian slackened off. I tore away from him.
An airship lifted over the fern-trees. It blotted out the setting sun. Its huge, spring-powered propellers pounded the tops of the canopy, sending the fern-trees into a cacophony of sleepy protest.
The men hurried toward it, still pushing Mama, Papa, and Jane ahead of them. A ladder unrolled down.
Another, much louder crack shook the house. For a moment, it stood frozen. Then, as though a giant had shrugged beneath it, it bucked up. Bricks and timbers separated, and glass splintered from the windows. The house seemed to hang, broken, in the air. Then gravity took hold, and it crashed down, sending bricks, dust, and shards of wood flying.
Freddie sprinted from the collapsing ruin. He flung himself down, covering his head. The dust rolled over him, hiding him from view.
The men reached the airship ladder. The Martian manhandled Jane onto the first rung and forced her up. Mama and Papa followed, and finally Frog-face climbed onto the bottom rung. The airship started to rise.
“No!” I yelled. I raced toward the airship. It was rising slowly, fighting against gravity, but soon it would be out of reach. I increased my pace.
Almost lazily, Frog-face pulled a device from his pocket and flicked it at me. Another clockwork Martian starblade whirred through the air. I threw myself to one side. The starblade thunked into the ground not a yard distant.
Then it was too late. The airship rose and turned. In seconds it was above the fern-trees, swinging away, its propellers driving it up and on.
I stood there and watched until it was gone, out of sight, and Mama, Papa, and Jane with it.
PART TWO
Into the Wilds
9
The Chase Begins
Dust settled over the red Martian grass.
The sun was going down. Long shadows stretched from the fern-tree forest across the lawn and the ruins of our house. In the distance, the thwop-thwop of the airship’s propellers faded into silence.
“They’re gone,” I whispered.
I hadn’t been able to stop them. I’d read a thousand stories in Thrilling Martian Tales about kidnaps and villains and daring rescues, and I still hadn’t known what to do. I’d never felt so useless or so frightened in my life.
“Blast it!” Freddie was limping toward me, leaning on his walking stick. He was covered in so much dust he looked like a ghost. “They got away?”
I nodded. “And took Mama, Papa, and Jane with them.”
Freddie swore again. “Our friend with the face mask got away, too. He wasn’t where I left him.”
Putty and Olivia hurried across from the other side of the lawn. For once, Olivia seemed too shocked to reprimand Freddie for the swearing.
“They had an airship!” Putty said, eyes wide and shining. “Why did they want to kidnap Jane? They should have kidnapped me. I’ve never flown in an airship.”
“It was Sir Titus,” I said to Freddie. “After you saw him leave in the airship, he must have circled around and waited for his men to do their job. He must have planned to pick them up the moment they’d finished their work.”
“Then straight off to Lunae Planum and the dragon tomb.” Freddie shook his head. “That way no one would have a chance of stopping him. I underestimated him.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said. “Why is Sir Titus doing this? He’s a friend of Mama’s.”
“Sir Titus Dane isn’t a friend of anyone except himself,” Freddie said.
“Sir Titus has a map that shows the location of an undiscovered dragon tomb,” I said. “But it’s in code. He wanted to use Papa’s water abacus to decode it and lead him to the tomb. Those men were working for him.”
“But you destroyed the abacus,” Olivia said, her face pale. “And now he has our family.”
“What will Sir Titu
s do with them?” I asked Freddie.
Freddie looked grim. “He’ll take them to Lunae City and force your father to build a new machine. He may not know exactly where the dragon tomb is, but it won’t be far from Lunae City.”
I turned to Putty. “So how long will it take Papa to rebuild the water abacus?”
Putty thought about it for a moment. “Ten days. It’s easy now we know how. An extra day to get the parts, I expect.”
“And another day to get to Lunae City in that airship,” Freddie said. “Twelve days total.”
Twelve days. That wasn’t long. My family might be safe until the water abacus was done, but there was no way Sir Titus would just let them go afterward. As soon as he didn’t need Papa any longer, they would be finished.
“What if Papa refuses to build it?” Olivia said.
“He won’t,” I said. “Sir Titus has Mama and Jane. Papa will do as Sir Titus wishes. He’ll build the abacus and decode the map.” Then Sir Titus would have no further use for any of them. I clenched my fists. I would never let him hurt them. Never. “We have to go to Lunae City,” I said. “Right away.”
“We?” Freddie said. “Edward, this won’t be a carriage ride in the park. It’ll be difficult and dangerous, and I don’t need—”
“Don’t need what?” I said, feeling my cheeks redden.
“Forget it. Look, does your father have an automatic carriage?”
I nodded toward the stable block. Bricks from the explosion had crashed down on it, shattering the roof tiles, but it was still in one piece. “In there. Freddie, I’m not staying. Sir Titus has my family. It’s my job to rescue them.”
“It’s your job to look after Olivia and Putty,” Freddie said. “Have you forgotten?”
“The girls can stay,” I said. “They’ll be safe with the neighbors.”
“No.” Olivia’s voice was quiet but firm. “We’re coming. They’re our family, too.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I said, knowing that I was using the same argument that Freddie had just used on me.
“If it’s too dangerous for us, it’s too dangerous for you,” Olivia said. “And what would you have us do? Play cards and sing and chatter with our neighbors while your lives hang in the balance? Sit and wait as though nothing were wrong, all the while not knowing if you are alive or dead, whether you have rescued Mama and Papa and Jane or been captured yourself? Do our sewing and embroidery like good little girls while we wait for word from you, word that might never come? No, Edward. We will be coming with you.”
“Enough!” Freddie thumped his walking stick on the ground. “We don’t have time for this. Very well. We will all go. And God help us, because this is no way to run a rescue mission.” He jabbed his walking stick toward the stables. “I will be getting the automatic carriage prepared. Be ready to go in five minutes. If you are not, I will leave without you.” He stomped off, and Putty scurried after him. I took one last look at our ruined house.
In the late evening light, the glitterswarms were rising from the depths of the Valles Marineris, turning the sky into a sheet of shifting gold. High, wispy clouds reflected red from the sinking sun. Dust and smoke from the collapsed house rose and spread to obscure the sight. I turned away.
My foot caught on a piece of debris. Lying among the splinters of wood and the shards of brick was my copy of Thrilling Martian Tales. Its cover was torn and its pages filthy.
I almost left it there, but it was the only thing I still had. Everything else was gone. I shoved it into my jacket pocket. Then I followed Olivia, Putty, and Freddie to the stables, where Papa’s automatic carriage awaited, to begin our long journey north in pursuit of Sir Titus and my family.
* * *
The drive to Ophir City in Papa’s automatic carriage took all night. The sun was rising over the hills as we came through a pass between overhanging claws of rock and saw the city spread below us. I couldn’t help but count down the hours. Not twelve days anymore. Eleven and a half. Maybe less. The automatic carriage was so slow.
Freddie rolled the power dial back to zero and disengaged the round spring that drove the carriage. He loosened his shoulders, then slumped with an exhausted sigh.
“This is it,” he said. “Ophir City. There’s been a town here for over two thousand years.”
Tall, closely packed wooden buildings in the old Martian style clustered in unplanned confusion, their turrets, spirals, and spires prickling the air like an enormous, crazy hedgehog. Clockwork Express tracks swept high over the hills to the west in a glittering bronze arc and plunged down to the city. Pillars every couple of hundred yards held the railway above the ground. In the morning light, the tracks shone like thread in the Martian sky.
“You can see the Clockwork Express tracks from the void when you fly from Earth to Mars, you know,” Freddie said. “When the Mars-ship sails down into the atmosphere, you can see them like a golden spiderweb laid across the surface of Mars.”
Putty sighed.
“That’s beautiful,” Olivia said.
“Yes,” Freddie agreed. “And empty. When you’re up there, coming down, you see just how little of Mars we’ve conquered. The spider’s web looks fragile and it doesn’t stretch far. There are places it doesn’t even get close to.”
“Like Lunae City,” I said.
“Yes. Like Lunae City.”
Ophir was the last stop on the Express line that ran all the way from Tharsis City, a journey of over two thousand miles. Beyond Ophir, the only way north or east was by airship. The morning Express had already arrived. It would have run all night, skirting the Candor and Ophir Valleys in the dark. I could just make out the passengers disembarking. A single, giant airship was tethered to a spindly tower above the station. Its silvery, oblong balloon was over a hundred yards long, and it cast a shadow over a large portion of the city.
Freddie glanced at his pocket watch. “Time to go. The airship departs at ten. If we miss it, we’ll have to walk to Lunae City.” He flashed a smile as he dropped his watch back in his waistcoat pocket.
“Walk?” Olivia said. “Is it far?”
Freddie waved a hand negligently. “Oh, just hundreds of miles of wilderness and desert. Hardly worth mentioning.”
“We’re not going to miss the airship,” I said. “We’ve got three hours.”
“That’s true,” Freddie said with a smile. Moving the brake lever forward, he started the automatic carriage rolling down the hill toward the city. “But we have a problem. If we intend to book tickets to Lunae City, we’ll need to pay for them. And I don’t have a penny to my name.”
Olivia dropped her gaze. “Then we are destitute … helpless.”
“Nonsense!” Freddie said cheerily from the driver’s seat. “You have me!”
“Marvelous,” I muttered. I was exhausted from the night’s drive, feeling my bruises, and worried about Jane and my parents. I wasn’t in the mood for Freddie’s sense of humor.
The automatic carriage reached the tangle of wooden Martian houses on the outskirts of the city. The tall houses jutted out so far that they nearly touched each other, turning the road into a tunnel.
“Actually,” Freddie said, “I do have a solution. We’ll sell the carriage.”
“No!” Putty said, jerking upright in her seat. “Papa built it himself. There’s not another one quite like it anywhere.”
“Which is why someone will buy it,” Freddie said.
“We haven’t got a choice,” I said. “We have to be on that airship.”
Freddie turned his attention back to the road. This early in the morning, the sunlight didn’t really penetrate between the tightly packed native Martian houses, but the street was already full of men pushing barrows, women carrying baskets, and children darting about.
I’d only been to Ophir City once before, when I was five years old. The twelve-hour drive from our house was too far to be comfortable. Usually when we traveled, we took a boat up the Valles Marineris to Candor City on the other
side of the Candor Valley, and then continued on the Clockwork Express toward Tharsis and the rest of British Mars. I wasn’t used to this city.
The people here were a mixture of native Martians and those of Earth descent, and although they shared the streets, they didn’t really mix. The taller native Martians kept their gazes fixed firmly above the heads of the Earth natives.
“They’re not very friendly, are they?” I said, remembering the native Martian who’d captured us. We hardly saw any native Martians where we lived, and there were none at all in my school.
“You’re wrong,” Freddie said. “Native Martians are as friendly and generous as any Englishman. More so than most.”
I snorted.
“If they trust you,” Freddie added.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Olivia said.
Freddie steered the carriage around a man who had set up his stall in the middle of the street. “Mars was their world for thousands of years,” he said. “Then we arrived from Earth and swept across it, taking their cities and ransacking the tombs of their kings. Imagine they had done that to Earth. How would we feel? Why should they trust us?”
“We don’t all approve of the way they’ve been treated,” Olivia said.
Freddie smiled. “I wish there were more on Mars like you, Cousin Olivia.”
Olivia blushed and ducked her head.
“The native Martians think it’s rude to meet the gaze of someone who isn’t a friend or family,” Freddie said. “Just like you would think it was rude to speak to someone you hadn’t been introduced to. To them, we’re the ones who are being rude.”
“If anyone had stolen my planet,” Putty said, “I wouldn’t be polite to them.”
Freddie laughed. “You’d make a fine native Martian, Cousin Parthenia.” He nosed the carriage through the press of people. “Blast it!” He slapped the seat beside him. “This is taking too long!” He glanced up at the airship that was still visible between the elaborate spires of the houses. His lips twisted into a half smile, and he looked back at Olivia. “Forgive my language.”
Secrets of the Dragon Tomb Page 8
