Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  The evening would close, more often than not, with a rendition by Traveller on his collapsible piano of a few hymns, or, more likely, of some of the rowdy variety-palace numbers of which he appeared to hold an encyclopedic knowledge. With the port settling inside us we would float at all angles around the engineer, his coat tails floating in the air as he played, bawling out ditties that would have made our mothers blush!

  And so for the next several days our ship traveled on, a tiny bubble of warmth, air and English civilization, adrift on a river of celestial darkness.

  Once the vertiginous fear generated by our state of continual falling was passed—and also, in poor Holden’s case, a severe physical sickness reminiscent of mal de mer—we found the sensation of continual drifting more than pleasant. The novelties of floating, the endless ingenuity of Traveller’s marvelous gadgets, and the sheer peculiarity of our position all combined to make our predicament at first fascinating and even enjoyable.

  But the darker side of our situation was never far beneath the surface of my thoughts, and—as time wore on—the dangers and uncertainty confronting us emerged ever more clearly in my mind, as sand blows steadily away to reveal buried ruins.

  My dreams centered on Françoise.

  I passed idle hours envisioning the love which might one day blossom between us—and my dreams were so intense that sometimes it was as if I knew already that feeling of companionship, of relief that one is no longer alone, that comes from true love. And, even beyond that: as I meditated further, Françoise’s sweet and distant face became transformed in my mind into a symbol of the human world from which I had been torn.

  Each morning I would watch eagerly as Pocket folded back the blinds, hoping beyond hope that somehow our situation might have changed during the night, that our flight might have been reversed by our unseen pilot (though Traveller impatiently explained more than once that were the engines engaged again we should hardly sleep through the experience). But each morning I was disappointed; each morning Earth shriveled a little more, demonstrating that we continued to recede from the planet of our birth by hundreds more miles every minute.

  So we four strangers, thrown so suddenly into this aerial jail together, waited out the days. We were tolerant of each other—wary even. Holden and Traveller bore their plight with stoicism and fortitude, broken only by Traveller’s impatience to return to his various engineering projects on Earth. (Personally I found my work, and Spiers’s malevolent little face, easy to forget.) And Pocket—though the most vertigo-prone of us all—seemed as happy in his domestic routine as if he were on solid ground.

  But as time went on without change, boredom, resentment and claustrophobic irritation grew within me like weeds; and on the fifth morning, as I sat in my chair facing Pocket’s bacon and toast breakfast and listening to Traveller and Holden discuss the vagaries of the Stock Exchange, something broke inside me.

  I rose from my chair and dashed away my breakfast tray. “I can no longer listen to this!” I hovered in the air like some avenging angel, an effect spoilt only by fragments of orbiting toast.

  Traveller looked up, a blob of marmalade perched comically on his platinum nose. “Good God, Wickers. Restrain yourself, sir.”

  I felt my anger shine through the trembling of my voice. “Sir Josiah, for the hundredth and last time my name is Vicars, Edward Vicars; and as for restraint, I have had quite enough of that over the last several days.”

  Holden said gloomily, “This will do no good, Ned.”

  I turned on him. “Holden, we remain trapped in this ridiculous padded box which hurtles ever more deeply into the untracked void! And yet you sit and debate hypothetical stock movements—”

  Traveller took another bite of toast. “What alternative do you propose?”

  I thumped my fist into my palm. “That we abandon this game of normality; that we sit down and discuss ways of wresting back control of this vessel from the deranged Hun who has occupied the Bridge.”

  Holden said, “Ned—”

  But Traveller nodded. “We will converse on any subject you nominate,” he said with a rasp. “But, sir, you will allow me to finish my breakfast in good order.”

  I spluttered, “Breakfast? How can you swallow toast in a situation unparalleled in the experience of man—when, indeed, our very lives are at peril…”

  I continued in this vein at some length, but the old gentleman would have none of it; and I was forced to subside, fuming, and wait until breakfast was over and cleared away.

  Traveller, utterly composed, wiped his long fingers on a napkin.

  “Now then, Ned, I sympathize with your sentiments, and even admire your resolve which, while founded on ignorance and hotheadedness, nevertheless contains elements of courage. However, Ned, you are not as stupid as you appear, and you know very well that the connecting hatchway between this compartment and the Bridge is jammed from above. And we are bereft of tools by means of which we might effect a forced entry.”

  I found myself grinding my teeth together. “And your conclusion?”

  “That there is nothing we can do to improve our prospects—although there are many actions we can take which would make things worse.”

  Holden had blanched, but steepled his fat fingers together in a composed manner. “Then what do you recommend?”

  “We must accept that which we cannot change. We must hope that our Teutonic pilot sees fit to reverse the course of this vessel—if indeed he can. Then we must pray that the craft retains the ability to return us safely to our native world.”

  I leapt from my chair and cannonaded from the padded ceiling. “Hope? Pray? You counsel us with inactivity, Sir Josiah. Will you continue to press this advice when the marmalade supply dwindles to naught?”

  Traveller barked laughter.

  I said, “I for one am not prepared to face my death without a fight.”

  Holden sat straighter in his chair and faced me grimly. “I hope you will face your death with resolution, as an Englishman should, Ned.”

  That evoked a sunburst of shame inside my anger, but I went on regardless: “Holden, there is nothing English about lying down to die.”

  Traveller rested his hands on his lap. “Gentlemen, it can certainly do no harm to talk. Provided,” he said to me severely, “we conduct our conversation in a civilized fashion.”

  I climbed back into my chair; but my fingers danced restlessly on the chair’s arms throughout the ensuing discussion.

  “So,” said Traveller, “what would you like to talk about, Ned?”

  “It’s obvious. We must find a way to open that hatch to the Bridge.”

  “And I have already explained that such a course of action is impossible. What else do you suggest?”

  Baffled and angry, I looked to Holden, who said smoothly, “Sir Josiah, I fear that without the advantage of your deep knowledge of the Phaeton and its construction, young Ned is likely to lack ideas. Perhaps we could explore the nature of the craft’s design, in the hope of some notion evolving. For example, how thick are these walls?”

  Traveller’s eyebrows rose. “The walls? Perhaps, you speculate, a heroic figure could slip between the inner and outer hulls, slither like a ferret up to the Bridge, and burst upon our German friend? Alas, the space between the hulls is only nine inches deep—a little too narrow even for our young companion, let alone one with such ample girth as yours—and in any event is occupied by pipes for heating, water and air, by springs which cushion the inner compartment from impact—the inner chamber is gimballed, you know—and the various beds, chairs and other devices of which you both make such extensive use. And anyway the double hull terminates at the joint with the Bridge; the Bridge and Smoking Cabin are separate, airtight compartments.

  “To save you time, let me say that the only access to the Bridge—other than the blocked hatch above us—is through the hatch set in the Bridge’s outer glass wall. And that, of course, could only be opened were one positioned outside the vessel.”
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  Holden shook his head. “I cannot understand how you allowed a design in which access to the vessel’s controls can be blocked so easily!”

  Sir Josiah smiled. “In my youthful naпvety, I did not anticipate sabotage. I never envisaged the situation which pertains today.”

  Traveller’s use of the word “airtight” had given me an idea. “Sir, where is the air supply which feeds the Bridge?”

  “Bridge and Smoking Cabin are both fed by the same network of air pipes, which climb through the hull from pumps and filter sets in the Engine Chamber beneath our feet.”

  I nodded. “To which we have access.”

  “Ned, what’s in your mind?” Holden asked.

  “Suppose we were to block the air pipes which feed the Bridge? Then our Hunnish companion would surely expire in his own stink within a few hours.”

  Traveller nodded gravely. “Elegantly put. But while such a course of action would be satisfyingly vengeful, I fear it would leave us only worse off. We would still have no access to the Bridge, and would have replaced a German pilot with a dead one!”

  The engineer’s calm, condescending dissection of my proposals, all delivered in the flat, nasal tones of the Mancunian, enraged me. “Then let us continue,” I said, endeavoring to keep my voice steady. “The air pumps lie within the Engine Chamber. What else is to be found there?”

  “You can see for yourself,” said Traveller. “Pocket, would you raise the maintenance covers?”

  The patient servant, with scarcely a nod, pushed himself from his seat and floated down toward the floor. There he tugged at the Turkish rug and oilskin which covered the bulkhead; the carpets were affixed by hooks and eyes which disengaged readily enough, but the poor man had a deal of trouble rolling up the loosened carpets in our floating condition. Pocket steadily refused all our offers of help, the only request he made of us being to raise our feet from time to time.

  I never knew a man who knew his place so well, and filled it to such perfection.

  At last the carpets were rolled up and stuffed into a crevice near the top of the Cabin wall. The bulkhead so revealed bore the sheen of aluminum, but it was not a solid slab; instead the bulkhead, some fifteen feet wide, was little more than a framework into which great holes had been cut, and these holes were covered by large rectangular plates held in place by wingnuts. One portion of the bulkhead was covered by overlapping sheets of rubber; this, I recalled, concealed the enclosed bath we used daily.

  Now Traveller braced his feet against the ridged aluminum surface and twisted away the wingnuts restraining one of the plates. He stored the nuts neatly in a row—in thin air—while he worked, finally stowing them in a waistcoat pocket. “You need not fear a loss of air,” he said. “This bulkhead is not airtight, and the lower compartment is held at the same pressure as the Cabin.”

  Holden and I peered inside the hole. The compartment revealed was some seven feet deep, and directly below the hole was a sphere perhaps four feet in diameter, held in place by a stout framework; this sphere was coated with silver plate, so that our reflections, and those of the acetylene lamps above and behind us, danced in its curving belly. This, Traveller explained, was one of the Phaeton’s three anti-ice Dewar flasks. I considered the flask with something approaching awe, and I touched its silvered epidermis. But I felt only a smooth, pleasantly warm surface; there was no hint of the layer of vacuum which lay beneath the vessel’s outer shell, nor of the handful of primordial violence which lay at its heart.

  Traveller showed us an elaborate system of rods which, he said, led through the hull to levers set in the Bridge. The rods penetrated the Dewar, said Traveller, thereby forming the basis of the system by which—under direction from the Bridge—controlled portions of anti-ice could be moved from the central Arctic compartment of the Dewar, allowed to melt and so release their heat.

  Traveller told us how the anti-ice energy was used to heat water in a series of fire-tube boilers. These were metal boxes surrounding water-bearing pipes. Super-heated steam was piped out of the boilers and then back through channels cut through the anti-ice Dewars themselves.

  Now, to improve the performance of his motors, Traveller ingeniously exploited that other marvelous property of anti-ice, its Enhanced Conductance.

  Powerful electrical currents circulated endlessly through the anti-ice slabs. These currents generated strong magnetic fields which accelerated further the superhot steam before it was expelled from the ship’s three nozzles, which were situated beneath the Dewars. By this elaborate arrangement, Traveller said, it was possible to raise the steam’s “exit velocity” to extraordinary levels without further contact with the ship’s pipes and plates, which would otherwise surely have melted. This high velocity enabled a design requiring a comparatively small “reaction mass.”

  Traveller raised another plate, and we were confronted by a jumble of piping, slim tanks each about the size of a bookcase, globes of brass, and various other pieces of machinery. The bookcase tanks contained the water which served so many of the ship’s systems, Traveller explained. Acetylene gas and air were stored in compressed conditions in the spherical reservoirs. Pumps drove fluids and gases continuously around the hull and interior of the craft, much as human organs maintain the flow of vital fluids around the body; and the pumps worked exclusively off the heat generated by the anti- ice boilers. There was also a robust hypocaust which heated the supply of bathing water.

  I stared gloomily into the craft’s bowels. The machinery was markedly less pristine than the stokehold of the Prince Albert, for example; the metalwork was roughly finished and patched, and scorched by crude welds, demonstrating—to my discomfort—that Phaeton was, after all, nothing more than an engineering prototype.

  And, even more depressing, I could see no opportunity to change our trapped situation, save by wrecking the very systems on which our lives depended.

  “Sir Josiah,” I said, “the purpose of these removable panels must be to allow access to the equipment here, so that any repairs necessary can be effected in flight.”

  “Correct.”

  “Where, then, is your tool kit?”

  For the first time the engineer, floating above the disassembled bulkhead, looked a little chagrined. “The tools I carry are not stored in this compartment, nor in the Cabin, as perhaps they should be. They are on the Bridge.”

  I slapped my forehead with frustration. “Then there is a perfectly good tool kit aboard, which might be used to force access to the Bridge, and it is stored not ten feet from here—but it is sealed with that deranged Hun behind the upper hatch!”

  Holden floated with his arms folded, his several chins resting on his vest, and his legs stuck straight out before him. “Sir Josiah, you have shown us the anti-ice propulsive system and the water supply. What else is stored in this Engine Chamber?”

  Traveller clapped his hands together. “Pocket?” As the manservant moved to unscrew the wingnuts restraining the cover of another subcompartment, Traveller said, “What I will show you now is an experiment of mine, yet to be made fully functional. You can see that I have designed for access to the engine section in case of some internal breakdown during a flight. But I have also imagined the circumstance in which some damage is done to the ship’s exterior, by an untoward event.”

  I was mystified by this. “But we travel through empty space, sir—a vacuum, if your ideas are correct. What agent is available to do such injury?”

  Traveller frowned, and his face, with its platinum centerpiece, became a mask of intimidating grimness. “Outer space is far from unoccupied, young Ned; for meteors lance constantly through its darkness.”

  “Meteors?”

  Holden interjected, “Fragments of rock or dust, Ned; they travel at several hundreds of miles an hour, and, when they encounter Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up, forming the phenomenon of shooting stars with which you are familiar. According to the newest theories several tons of this interplanetary dust—both meteors and th
eir heavier kin, meteorites, which can cause impacts large enough to leave craters—fall to Earth every week!”

  Traveller locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in mid-air, quite at ease. “The subject is fascinating. Traces of carbon have been detected in meteorite fragments; and carbon, of course, owes its origin solely to the action of living organisms, proving that the domain of life must extend beyond the limits of Earth. For example, the French have—”

  “Sir Josiah, please! Can we return to the point? The scientific interest of these meteor objects is no doubt enormous, but I’d just as soon do without the blighters, for they sound more than a little dangerous to me!”

  The aluminum walls suddenly seemed as frail as the canvas of a tent, and I pictured hundreds of rock fragments traveling with the speed of bullets. I reflected ruefully that perhaps the Lord had thought I had not had enough to worry about already.

  Traveller’s subsequent words, though, reassured me to some extent. “One should not worry unduly,” he said, “for space is large, and the chances of such a collision are vanishingly small. But it seemed to me that I should essay preparations for such an eventuality—or for other disasters which might affect the exterior of the craft.”

  The newly exposed sector of the Engine Chamber contained an aluminum box set flat against the lower floor of the compartment; the box was about the size and shape of a coffin and it was sealed by a lid held in place by a wheel lock. Traveller explained that this “air cupboard” was airtight, and that on its far side was another door which led to the exterior of the craft—to space! This second door could be opened by a man within the box by means of another wheel. “The air in the box would puff out to space, of course,” Traveller said blithely, “but—as long as the upper door were sealed shut—no harm would come to the inhabitants of the Cabin. Thus access to the exterior can be gained without breach of the airtight shell.”

  Holden frowned as he studied this device. “Most ingenious,” he said quietly, “except for the fate of the poor chap inside that coffin, who would surely die for lack of air within minutes of opening that second door.”