Fox’s eyes twitched rapidly from the whipping Sor Khoresh flag at the ship’s stern to the whales which still danced ahead. “Scylla and Charybdis,” he muttered, then raised his voice to a full-throated bellow of command. “To the pedals, boys!” he called. “Ply to sunward, with all your might!” Then, as the men dashed belowdecks, he commented to Liddon in a more conversational tone, “Do try to avoid the whales.”
“Aye, sir,” Liddon replied, bracing himself at the wheel.
In the ensuing pandemonium, as almost the entire crew hurried below and the shuddering, windswept ship yawed still further to larboard, Fox glared across the quarterdeck at Arabella. “Don’t think that this cancels our wager,” he said.
Arabella had no reply to that.
Moments later came a muffled grunt from belowdecks and the great, windmill-like pulsers—or propulsive sails—at the ship’s stern creaked into motion. Within the ship’s hull, Arabella knew, the men were straining at pedals, the effort of their muscular legs transmitted to the pulsers by a system of chains and pulleys. Pedaling was far slower than wind power, and the men’s energy was not unlimited, but pedal power was the only method of propulsion under the full control of the ship herself.
And, at the moment, it was the only power that might save them from a slow death of hunger and thirst, marooned in dead air somewhere between Mars and Venus.
Even Fox ran below, whether to join in the pedaling himself or merely to exhort the men she did not know. Only Liddon remained on the quarterdeck, clutching the wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
Soon the pulsers were spinning like a top, creating a strong man-made breeze that blew aft. Its strength was only a fraction of the cross-wind that now tore across the entire aft half of the ship, but it was persistent, and the men at the pedals were laboring as though their lives depended on it. Which, indeed, they did.
The ship seemed to shudder on an invisible precipice, teetering between the racing Simpson Current on her bow and the fatal dead air astern. Arabella bit her lip and stared hard at a fluttering studding-sail amidships. If the cross-current crept forward, the sails forward of that one beginning to luff, she would know that the battle was being lost. But if the spinning pulsers began to win out, that one sail would cease to flutter and the cross-current would move aft.
For an endless time nothing changed: the one sail continued to ripple, the sails beyond it remaining still. “You are hurting me, child!” Lady Corey said.
“Pardon.” She tried to relax her grip.
And then … and then she saw a sail beyond her bellwether give one lazy flap, and her heart sank.
Was this the end? Was this the moment that all was lost?
But … but no. That single flap was the sail’s only movement. And, a long minute later, her bellwether—that noble stuns’l—slowed in its fluttering, then luffed gently, then ceased to move at all.
Gradually, as the men below continued to grunt rhythmically and the pulsers behind continued to spin, the cross-wind moved aft, leaving one sail and then another to fall still.
Finally even the Sor Khoresh ensign at the ship’s very stern ceased to billow in the cross-wind. Instead it waved directly aft, obeying only the man-made wind of the pulsers.
They had escaped the dead air.
But the whales still remained, swimming dead ahead.
“Why are we not stopping?” Lady Corey asked Arabella, her eyes fixed on the looming beasts. From this extremely reduced distance their forms showed far more detail, their flanks scarred and pocked, and even the clouds of tiny drifting aerial life upon which they fed had become visible.
Arabella glanced behind, seeking in vain the invisible wall of the Simpson Current. It might be a hundred feet behind, or just five. “We must put a good distance between ourselves and the edge of the current,” she said, “lest some stray breeze push us right back out of it.”
“But the whales!” Lady Corey cried, pointing.
The whales, indeed. They drew nearer and nearer, their huge swooping forms now looming above the ship and to both sides. The wind from each beat of their massive wings swept across the deck, making sails flutter and lines rattle against spars. The breath of their broad black nostrils could even be smelled—a warm, moist exhalation like a breeze off the sea.
One enormous eye swept past, regarding the tiny ship with wary caution. Ships not unlike Touchstone, Arabella knew, hunted wind-whales for their meat and the tough, resilient material of their air-bladders.
Arabella looked to Liddon, whose last command from Fox had been to avoid the whales. He was, indeed, doing his best, spinning the wheel hard a-larboard and calling commands to the topmen to set sails for a tight turn. But the whales, whether by unhappy chance or as a deliberate move to intercept the ship, were moving in the same direction.
They would never evade the whales this way. But else could they do?
Suddenly Arabella realized she could answer that question. She turned in the air, put one foot on the rail, and thrust herself away. Catching the ladder with one hand, she spun herself about and redirected her path downward.
“Where are you going, child?” Lady Corey called after her.
“The captain’s cabin!” she replied.
7
CALCULATING A NEW COURSE
Arabella shot through the cabin door, checking herself on an overhead beam just before she crashed through the broad stern window.
Her half-assembled mechanism remained where she had left it, floating beside the chart table. It seemed a strange, fragile thing upon which to pin the ship’s hopes of survival.
The device had been designed to be used in either direction: in theory, it could not only provide the ship’s location from astronomical observations, but also provide a heading to reach a specified location. But the latter function was one she had not yet had any way to test. This would be its first trial, and any failure might prove fatal.
Fingers trembling, she set the mechanism’s hands for a location to one side of the whale pod; a brief glance out the stern window at Saturn, now far to starboard from Arabella’s last sighting, provided an approximation of Touchstone’s current heading. Then she wound the key, moved the action lever from POSITION to HEADING, and released the catch.
The device’s sound was different this time, some gears turning in the opposite direction, others now driving which had before been driven. It whirred and muttered to itself for what seemed like for ever.
And then it clicked, the hands coming to a definitive stop.
Quickly, using pen and paper, she translated the astronomical coordinates displayed on the specification hands to a course heading and sail plan … and stared appalled at the result.
The velocity result was a negative number.
She must have made some error, either in the design of her machine, or in setting the dials, or in her calculation. Negative velocity was an impossibility! Why, that would mean …
That would mean …
Suddenly understanding, she pushed off from the navigation desk with both feet, leaving papers and pins scattering in her wake.
* * *
“Back pulsers! Back pulsers!” Arabella shouted as she emerged onto the deck. But Liddon only stared upward in stunned amazement, the wheel already jammed against its stop.
The pod of whales had grown so close that their great blue bodies now filled half the sky. And one—the biggest whale of all, the one directly ahead—was turning to charge the ship, the black lips pulling back to display two enormous rows of jagged teeth. Teeth large enough to tear Touchstone to flotsam.
Arabella pushed off the rail, shot across the quarterdeck, and caught herself on the wheel. “Back pulsers!” she shouted into Liddon’s face.
The sudden, unexpected command roused Liddon from his stupor. “Back pulsers!” he repeated automatically, calling down the scuttle to the lower deck. The command was repeated and re-echoed down the length of the ship, followed by a massive grunt as the men strove to cancel the
great momentum they had spent the last half-hour fighting to build up.
The great spinning pulsers ground to a halt, then began to turn in the opposite direction—pushing air forward rather than aft. The man-made wind whipped Arabella’s hair, growing until she and Liddon must cling to the wheel to avoid being blown along the deck. Lady Corey shrieked as she lost her grip on the taffrail, but was saved by her safety line.
The ship still swept toward the whale, whose jaws now gaped wide, displaying an enormous black tongue. But she was slowing, and turning as she slowed. “Brace main and mizzen topsails up on a larboard tack!” Liddon cried, and the topmen on the upper and lower masts—including faithful, clever Mills—sprang into action, shifting the sails to increase the turn.
The turning ship began to slip sideways in her path, the air sliding along the canted main and mizzen-sails joining the wind from her pulsers to nudge her further to larboard even as she continued to slow.
The whale’s great jaws snapped shut on the very tip of the bowsprit, tearing loose a foot of khoresh-wood with a sickening crunch. But the rest of the ship slipped by unmolested, continuing to turn and slip sideways as she swept past one, then another of the whales in the pod.
In one terrifying minute they were through the pod, the whirring pulsers now pulling them stern-first through the air. Beyond the damaged bowsprit, the largest whale closed its mouth and turned away as though in dismissive disgust; the others continued their dance, never even noticing the smaller man-made creature that had coasted between them.
“Avast pedaling!” called Liddon through the scuttle, and with an exhausted groan from belowdecks the pulsers ground to a halt, leaving the ship drifting gently away from the still-gyrating whales.
Arabella pushed herself across the deck to where Lady Corey floated, looking rather stunned. “Are you injured?”
“I do not think so,” she said. “But Lord, child, what a ride.”
* * *
Quivering with fury, Fox slammed his cabin door, shutting the protesting Lady Corey outside and Arabella in. “You may listen through the keyhole if you wish,” he shouted through the door, “to satisfy the needs of propriety!”
When he turned back to Arabella, his face was black with anger. “I will have you flogged for this,” he said, and she was utterly convinced of his sincerity. “Thirty lashes. For a passenger to issue a direct order to the helm in the midst of action is not mere insubordination, it is … it is mutiny! Sedition!” He held up a hand, forestalling her protest. “Liddon is far from blameless in this, I grant you; his punishment will follow yours.”
“Flog me if you wish,” she said, though her trembling hands belied her brave words. “It will not change the fact that you were wrong, and I was right!” Then, thinking quickly, she added, “And neither Liddon nor I have done any thing in the least improper.”
To Fox’s fierce, incredulous look Arabella explained, “Liddon had done all he could. He had put the wheel as hard a-larboard as it would go, but it was not sufficient, and he clearly had no other ideas. I happened to be in a position, with the help of my mechanism, to make a suggestion. I may have made it a bit forcefully, perhaps, but you must admit that, under the circumstances, a bit of shouting is understandable. In any case, Liddon agreed with my suggestion, and ordered the men accordingly. But it was Liddon’s orders, properly given and duly executed by the men, which saved the ship!”
When she finished, both of them were breathing hard, their eyes locked above the captain’s navigational table. Despite the disarray in which she had left the cabin, she noted that her pin was still in place on the chart.
“You are entirely too clever, Miss Ashby,” he said at last through gritted teeth. “How long did it take you to concoct that?”
The fact was that the explanation had come to her just now, even as she spoke, but what she said was, “It is simply God’s own truth. It was Liddon who avoided the whales, as you ordered him to; I merely reminded him of a possible action which had slipped his mind.”
Fox shook his head, shut his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Setting that aside for the moment … what was it that you said about ‘you were wrong and I was right’?”
“That too,” she replied, her confidence growing, “is simply God’s own truth. Even you must admit that the events of the last hour show that my navigational calculations were correct: we were at the very outermost edge of the Simpson Current”—she tapped the pin—“and not in the middle of it, as your assessment showed.”
Fox glowered at the pin. “And where are we now, then?”
“At this moment? I do not know precisely. But give me three minutes and I will have your answer, to within half a league.”
“Three minutes?”
She swallowed, unnerved at his direct challenge to her casual assertion, and glanced out the window. “Approximately. Provided that Jupiter remains in view.”
Fox turned his back on her to stare out the window, broad shoulders gently straining at the fabric of his jacket as his breathing gradually calmed. When he returned his attention to Arabella, his face was more decently composed. “Very well, Miss Ashby,” he said. “I grant the adequacy of your”—he glanced at her mechanism with a skeptical eye—“device, though I do not accept that it makes you my equal in navigation.”
Despite his protestations, Arabella understood that she had achieved a substantial victory. “Of course not.” Then, with a small smile, she added, “Only my success in bringing us to Venus more swiftly than our current course will demonstrate that.”
To that assertion Fox quirked an eyebrow. “We have already sunk the Vanderveer.”
It was true that their last opportunity at that current had passed some weeks ago, but between bouts of construction on her mechanism Arabella had been studying the navigational charts. “There are other opportunities, for a bold navigator.”
“Bold, are we now, as well as clever?” He ran a finger along his chin. “You are a woman of parts, Miss Ashby.”
“More than you know, sir.”
For a moment more he studied her, and she felt rather like a prize huresh being considered for purchase … though whether for racing or for breeding was an open question. “I could—I should—still have you flogged for insubordination,” he said at last. “But in view of your explanation, and the favorable outcome of the event, I shall magnanimously forego your punishment.” Then, suddenly, he put out his hand. “Our wager continues.”
She took his hand … and then, to her surprise, he drew it to his lips and kissed it. “Sir!” she exclaimed in shock, pulling back her hand … though even as she did so, her lips curved into a treacherous smile.
“My apologies,” he said, making as courtly a bow as was possible in the confined cabin. “I shall not presume again.”
Arabella raised her chin slightly. “I trust you will not. And now, if you will excuse me, I must continue my navigational researches.”
“By all means.” And he bowed her out of the cabin.
* * *
“I do not understand why I do not simply strike him with a rope-end,” Arabella said. “He vexes me so.”
She and Lady Corey were in their tiny closet of a cabin, Arabella studying a book of navigational tables and Lady Corey knitting the decorative brim of a purse. Though there would have been more room if they positioned themselves head-to-toe, for the sake of Lady Corey’s sensibilities Arabella remained in the same orientation as the other woman.
“When my children were small,” Lady Corey said, “I noted that some of the boys would torment my girls by putting insects or sand-snakes down the backs of their dresses. And yet, somehow, it was those same boys who were the ones who later came courting.” She tapped the side of her nose. “Men are forthright and competitive, Miss Ashby. Those things which they do which seem so vexatious to us may be, in fact, expressions of interest … though the men would fervently deny any such interest, and may indeed be unaware of it themselves.” She paused to bind off
her work, favoring Arabella with a serious look. “Such interest should, perhaps, be exploited.”
Arabella closed her book. “I thought my chaperone was meant to shield me from such importune advances as his.”
“My dear, you misunderstand the chaperone’s full role. I am meant to guide you toward an advantageous match and away from disadvantageous entanglements.”
“I do not consider my fiancé a ‘disadvantageous entanglement,’ and I will thank you to do the same.”
Lady Corey sighed and set her knitting in her lap. “Miss Ashby, I know that your heart is set upon him, but I must encourage you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider this engagement. I do not merely consider myself your chaperone, but—after the many trials through which we have suffered together—something of a friend, and I hope that those feelings are reciprocated. And it is as a friend that I say to you that marriage to your Captain Singh would be a dreadful mistake.”
Arabella felt her jaw tighten, but strove to keep her tone civil. “I do respect you, Lady Corey, and I do feel kindly toward you, to some extent even friendly. But I do not count your disparagement of the man I love as a friendly gesture.” Even as Lady Corey drew breath to reply, Arabella continued to speak. “You spoke of the trials through which we have suffered together. Let me remind you that, apart from this recent episode with the wind-whales, Captain Singh was with both of us through every one of those trials, and with me for many more beforehand. Can you not understand the depths of my sentiments toward him?”
“Love,” Lady Corey replied with a severe mien, “is a luxury that women of our station can ill afford. You must consider your family—not only your brother and the rest of your household, but your children!”
“I cannot imagine any better father for my children than Captain Singh. He is calm, caring, and exceedingly intelligent.” Even as she spoke she felt her throat tighten; considering her captain’s many fine qualities only reminded her how very much she missed him, and how she feared for his safety.
Arabella and the Battle of Venus Page 8
