Arabella and the Battle of Venus

by David D. Levine

  Weary though she was, she did not retire immediately to her cabin, but instead floated up to the deck to see for herself the progress of the chase.

  The situation, grim though it was, seemed nearly ordinary. Though the pursuing French squadron had grown to six clearly visible ships, the officers and men on deck went about their business as they had done every day for the entirety of the voyage. There was, she supposed, little else to do. Cannon practice would not help—the French warships would not be intimidated by Touchstone’s eight little guns, and no amount of drill could raise the men’s level of expertise sufficiently to defeat an enemy so numerous and so heavily armed. Each of the six French men-of-war plainly showed twelve gun-ports, and additional brass swivel-guns gleamed from their decks.

  For a moment Arabella contemplated the French squadron, which seemed to fill half the sky, and tried to imagine some maneuver or stratagem which might evade them. But she did not need her greenwood box to tell her that no such escape was possible.

  It was with neither fear nor anger, only a sense of numb resignation, that she returned to the cabin—the cabin where Lady Corey still slept—and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  The thunder of cannon awoke her.

  It was not, in truth, all that loud.… It was a distant thunder, as she had heard from her bed in England one morning as a rain storm approached. But that sound had terrified her, portending as it did a pounding deluge of water from the sky—a thing which she, born on Mars, had never before experienced. The rain itself, when it finally arrived, had proved harmless enough … but this time, she was certain, the storm would not pass so uneventfully.

  Another boom of cannon sounded. This time it was followed by a low keening, one which dropped in pitch as it peaked in loudness—a sound she had heard on only one previous occasion in her life, yet one which raised chills at the back of her perspiring, overheated neck.

  It was the sound of cannonballs passing close by.

  A short while later the ever-present creaking of the pedals clattered to a halt, together with the slight rocking motion the turning pulsers imparted to the ship. In the unaccustomed still silence, Arabella heard voices—some far off, others quite near—calling commands she could not make out. There were no further cannon shots.

  With a heavy heart, Arabella drifted to Lady Corey’s hammock and shook her shoulder until she woke. “I am sorry to disturb you,” she said, “but I believe we may just have been captured.”

  * * *

  The mood on deck, once Arabella and Lady Corey had made themselves presentable, was somber but not completely despondent. “It could be worse,” Fox remarked as he watched the boat approaching from the French flagship, its air-sweeps sculling like a gull’s wings. “If we were a Navy vessel, Liddon and I would now be frantically destroying our code-books and other secret documents. But as a privateer, I know no more of the Navy’s plans than Napoleon himself!”

  Arabella drew him aside, out of Lady Corey’s hearing, and in a low voice asked him, “What is to become of us?”

  Fox sighed and stared off skyward—toward Mars—for a while before replying. “Touchstone … Touchstone is lost.” His voice faltered on that last word, and he blinked rapidly and turned away. Arabella, too, turned to the rail; she felt she should give him some privacy in his moment of distress. Then Fox cleared his throat, and she returned her gaze to his face. His eyes were bright, but steady. “As for our prize … frankly, I am uncertain. The plunder contract Renaudin signed is technically between his owners, as represented by him, and my owners, as represented by myself. It may be that, the agreement having already been sealed, the money will eventually be paid despite our capture.” He sighed again. “The officers and I will give our parole, of course, and become gentlemen of leisure—of enforced leisure—likely in some town on Venus. The men will become prisoners of war, but I and the other officers will do what we can to make their lives easier.” He reached and took Arabella’s hand, and she did not object. “You and Lady Corey, as non-combatants, will become what the French call détenus. In essence, you will be held for ransom, to ensure good treatment of French prisoners by the English. I am certain that you will be treated humanely. At some point you may even be ransomed, and return home. But for the rest of us … I am afraid it is the end of the war.”

  Arabella felt her own eyes sting. “I am so, so sorry, sir. Were it not for my foolish desire to rescue Captain Singh, we would none of us be here.”

  Fox squeezed her hand—she had not even noticed that he was still holding it—and peered with great sincerity into her eyes. “My dear Miss Ashby, you have nothing to apologize for. Were it not for you and your entirely commendable desire to rescue him, I would be at this moment stranded in Fort Augusta, shackled to an immovable mountain of debt by that charlatan Burke.” He straightened. “We may be made prisoner, we may suffer, but we yet live, and where there is life, there is hope.” He leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “And, besides, I believe we count among our number one who has given some consideration to the question of escape.” To her puzzled expression he clarified, “By which I mean yourself.”

  But that comment, no doubt meant to reassure, only made Arabella still more miserable. “I … I thank you for your confidence, sir, but my plans—to the extent I had them—depended upon being outside of the prison, and equipped with money, friends, and a ship with which to depart the planet.” She shook her head. “I must confess I had intended to assess the situation upon arrival and … and extemporize.”

  At that Fox actually smiled. “Well, then, we are in good hands. For I have seen how you ‘extemporize,’ and there are few whose considered plans I would prefer to your improvisations.”

  The conversation was interrupted by a cry of “Ohé du navire!” from the boat, followed by a heavily accented request for “permission to come aboard.”

  “Alas, I must go and treat with the French,” said Fox, bowing over her hand.

  “They seem polite enough, at least.”

  “That they do.” He released her hand with great reluctance. “All will be well, miss. I have every confidence.”

  “I am sure that it will,” she said, though her actual feelings were otherwise. “Thank you for your efforts on our behalf.”

  Fox bowed, turned from her, straightened his coat, and with a tap of his toe on the deck propelled himself to the rail, where the French officers were just descending from their boat.

  * * *

  The French were, indeed, polite enough, though rather brusque. Two French officers, their uniforms all brass and braid though they themselves were ill-shaven and rather malodorous, escorted Arabella and Lady Corey to their sweltering cabin and shut them up there. After that, the two women were reduced to speculation as to what transpired, based on what they could hear and the motions of the ship.

  Arabella pressed her ear to the door, glad for the first time that it was so thin and permeable to sound. There was a great deal of shouting, in French and in accented English. “The French have taken command of the ship, I think,” she told Lady Corey. “I believe our officers have been confined to their quarters.” At that moment the drum began to beat—rather faster than before—and the slap and clatter of the pedals soon followed.

  “What is happening now?” Lady Corey said, clearly struggling to keep the anxiety out of her voice as the ship’s motion made her drift toward the cabin’s aft bulkhead.

  “We are under way, obviously.” Arabella paused to think. “The French sent only one boat, so the men at the pedals must be ours, presumably under armed guard.” She drifted to the hull and peered through the scuttle, though it afforded little view at the best of times. Through it she could see only blue sky—but then a French man-of-war appeared, her pulsers spinning as she pulled away from Touchstone, followed by a second. “At least some of the French are leaving us.”

  “Where are we bound?”

  “To a prison-camp on Venus, I suppose.” Tears welled in her eyes,
blinding her, and this time she let them come. “After all this time … will I ever see him again?”

  Lady Corey patted Arabella’s hand. “Courage, my dear,” she said, though her voice quavered.

  III

  VENUS, 1815

  11

  PRISONERS

  After the ship’s plunging, pitching, rattling passage through Venus’s Horn—the area of tempestuous winds where the planetary atmosphere churned against the interplanetary atmosphere—Arabella and Lady Corey were permitted to come out on deck.

  “At least the passage was not too bad,” Lady Corey remarked as Arabella helped her to tighten her stays. The force of gravity had returned, which made the tiny cabin seem still more cramped and necessitated the use of stays to support Lady Corey’s substantial feminine characteristics. “I have heard tales of passengers being thrown about the cabin like dice in a cup.”

  “I suppose that is to be expected,” Arabella said. “The planet being smaller than Earth. Though her proximity to the Sun does add strength to the winds.” She tied off the laces with a neat bow, reflecting that for all her reading on navigation and tactics, she knew very little of the planet upon which they were about to land. “There.” She wiped her brow and returned her already-sodden handkerchief to her reticule. “I suppose we are presentable enough for the French.”

  “Better than they deserve.” Lady Corey sniffed, and adjusted her bonnet. “Come, let us look upon Venus.” She sighed. “Which I suppose is to be our home for the rest of the war.”

  “Unless we can escape,” Arabella replied in a low mutter, to prevent the French guard outside their door from hearing.

  As they exited the cabin—the guard gave them no courtesy, only acknowledging their appearance with a grunt—Arabella felt unaccountably as though she were entering a place she had never visited before. And as they passed through the ward-room and went up the companion ladder, this feeling only strengthened. Was it simply the knowledge that the dear Touchstone was now a French possession, reinforced by the presence of uniformed and unshaven French airmen on every deck? Or was it the reappearance of gravity? Though Venus’s attraction was not as great as Earth’s, for which Arabella was very grateful, it was greater than that of Mars, and the downward force certainly lent to the familiar surroundings a peculiar impression. Every step felt as though she were slogging through soft sand.

  The feeling of strangeness grew still stronger as they emerged on deck. Where for the last several months the Sun had shone down upon the deck through every bell of every watch, excepting the occasional storm, they now found themselves embedded in the unending clouds which shrouded Venus’s face. In every direction Arabella could see nothing but dim and dismal gray, and the warm dampness of the air lay upon her skin like a heavy, sodden blanket. Furthermore, the starboard, larboard, and mizzen masts had been unshipped and now lay stowed against the gunwales, leaving the hull clear for landing.

  A French officer, his breast and shoulders bedecked with great quantities of gold braid, met them as they were escorted onto the quarterdeck. “I welcome you to Venus, mesdames,” he said in strongly accented English. “I am Lieutenant Desjardins, in command of this vessel. I apologize for the view, but we shall emerge from the clouds shortly.” And, indeed, even as he spoke the enveloping fog began to thin and shred, gradually parting to reveal the land below.

  The sight, as it emerged, was not an encouraging one. Spread out below the ship lay an endless forest, or jungle, with nodding clumps of strange vegetation marching to the limits of view in every direction. The colors were predominantly dark greens, ranging from a dark bottle green to nearly black, with only occasional patches of tan and yellow to break the monotony. Here and there a glint of reflected light showed that water pooled at ground level. The whole presented an effect that was half jungle and half swamp, and Arabella could discern no buildings, canals, nor roads—no sign of civilization whatsoever.

  “How dreadful,” Lady Corey murmured, though for the benefit of the French her face was fixed in an expression of half-cheerful determination. Arabella could not but agree.

  As the ship continued her descent below the clouds, drifting along beneath her inflated envelope, Arabella began to make out individual plants—a mix of ferns and broad-leafed trees like gigantic aspidistra, rising above low swampy undergrowth. Suddenly a flash of movement caught her eye.

  It was a native—a Venusian aboriginal—looking very much like the illustration she had seen in the one book in her father’s library that treated upon Venus. He stood upon a rock in the midst of a pond, staring upward at the ship with distended and expressionless eyes. His skin was a pale green, his mouth a wide slash beneath which an inflated throat-sac worked, his limbs long and muscular; the whole effect was rather that of a man-sized frog, dressed in loose and flowing shirt and trousers which clung damply to his skin. His fingers and toes were broadly webbed, and a satchel made of some dark, rubbery-looking stuff hung at his hip.

  The two of them regarded each other for a moment—though Arabella was sure the native was only gazing at the ship floating above him, not herself in particular—before he suddenly doubled over and slipped into the water without a splash.

  “Did you see that?” Arabella said, tugging Lady Corey’s sleeve and pointing. “It was a Venusian!”

  “I did,” Lady Corey replied with cold indifference. “Disgusting.”

  Arabella peered into the murky pond’s depths, hoping to catch a glimpse of the native swimming—were their habitations beneath the water’s surface?—but the pond fell away behind the ship without any further signs of life appearing.

  The ship drifted still lower, offering a more detailed view of swamps, pools, trees, and lower vegetation. Once a large flying creature, with leathery wings and a long tail that ended in a spade-shaped fin, flapped lazily across a slowly flowing stream … and then something black and shining, all scales and teeth, leapt from the stream, returning to the water with a violent thrashing splash and leaving nothing where the flying thing had been.

  Shouts and commands from the quarterdeck. The rhythmic grunts from the men shoveling coal in the furnace-room belowdecks increased their tempo. Their labor brought a rush of heat which Arabella could feel on her already-flushed face, the balloon bulged, and the ship rose sluggishly, carried along by the fetid breeze over a small rocky hill. And on the other side of that hill spread a broad lake, whose dark, still waters reflected the gray bellies of the clouds above … and the buildings of a town on the far side!

  The town—no, on closer inspection it could perhaps be termed a city, for many of its buildings blended in with the trees around it and it was larger than it at first appeared—was plainly a port, for many masts swayed above vessels moored in the lake’s water. But though most, perhaps even all, of the ships were plainly aerial vessels, Arabella sought in vain for the massive smokestacks of the furnaces which every aerial port must have in order to effect the launch of an interplanetary ship. “Do you see any furnaces?” she asked Lady Corey.

  “Your eyes are better than mine, child.”

  Arabella’s lips tightened in concern. “I fear that this port may not be equipped for launch. Even if we should escape, we will be unable to depart the planet from here.” She peered at the ships more closely, trying to determine if they had all been landed here and abandoned, but, curiously, they all seemed to be in good running order, with fresh paint, clean white sails, and taut rigging.

  Another set of commands in French rang out, repeated and translated into English for the benefit of Touchstone’s crew, and a moment later came the rattle of great cables as the ship’s anchors, fore and aft, plummeted to the dark water below, each vanishing with a splash. The ship’s forward motion halted, and she hung swaying for a time until a gang of sweating Touchstones came out on deck—carefully overseen by four French airmen, each armed with a sword and a brace of pistols. The men, glowering at their French captors all the while, shipped the bars to the anchor-capstan, then bega
n to haul the ship downward against the diminishing force of her rapidly cooling balloon. As they pushed against the bars, walking in a circle around the capstan, they sang an air-shanty Arabella had never before heard, one whose lyrics were particularly rude and directed against the French. The guards seemed to take no notice, but whether it was pride or ignorance of English Arabella could not say.

  After many verses of insult to the virtue of French women, Touchstone reached the water. With a final command, the hot air was spilled from her balloon envelope, and with a whoosh, a smoky smell, and a splash, she settled into the lake’s black and swampy water.

  “Welcome to Venus,” Lady Corey muttered.

  * * *

  Now that Touchstone was truly landed, her envelope emptied and struck down on deck, there was no longer any possibility of escape from the planet and the officers were released from their cabins. “So this is Venus,” Fox said as he came out on deck, fanning himself with his hat. “I trust you ladies were well treated?”

  “We have no complaints,” Arabella admitted.

  “That was a terrible landing,” he tutted, casting a critical eye on the state of the rigging. “The French may have invented the balloon, but it is the English who have perfected its usage.”

  “Silence!” cried the French commander, and with pistol and bayonet his men herded the Touchstones into groups of twenty on the deck, paying no respect to divisions or rank. The officers and passengers were spared this indignity, being allowed to remain at liberty on the quarterdeck. But two French airmen stood at the heads of the ladders, pistols drawn and keeping a gimlet eye on them.

  Soon boats appeared, wide flat squarish things poled across the shallow lake by Venusian natives, each under the command of a French army officer whose red-and-blue uniform bore more brass buttons than Arabella had ever before seen in one place, including a row down each trouser leg. Each group of Touchstones was driven onto a boat, accompanied by an armed French airman, and poled away to the shore. The loaded boats floated very low in the water, and the men could easily swamp one simply by rushing to one side, but Arabella supposed that, even if the armed guard were not sufficient disincentive to do so, the fetid black water might be.