Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
ONE YEAR LATER
2
UP SHIP!
Pull up the gangways! Close the hatches! The cargo was all loaded and tied down in the holds; the last of the passengers were on board. There was a cry of “Up ship!” from the control car. The two-hundred-strong ground crew cast off the mooring lines, and with a great splash we were dumping water ballast, and the men and women on the airfield sent up a cheer, and we were rising now, the passengers swinging caps and handkerchiefs from the open windows, and the people down below waving back, and we were rising, the airfield already far below us, and the spires of Lionsgate City spreading out to the north, and we were rising into the dawn sky, sure and smooth as an angel.
I’d just finished a week’s shore leave. My first few nights at home, my mother had made a terrible fuss of me, cooking and baking my favorite things. We had all stayed up late, talking, until Sylvia and Isabel were sent off to bed, complaining loudly, for they had school the next morning. My little sisters had grown since I’d last seen them, shooting up like silver maples. They’d showered me with kisses when I gave them their presents. I always brought them things when I came home, since I most often missed their birthdays and sometimes Christmas too. Isabel got a didgeridoo from Australia, because she was musical and loved instruments of all sorts, and here was one she’d never heard of. For Sylvia, who fancied herself a lady of high fashion now she was pushing twelve, I brought home a beautiful tortoiseshell hairband I’d seen in the Grand Bazaar in Marrakesh. And for my mother, I’d bought, same as last time, a bottle of the Iberian perfume she loved so much. It was the scent my father had always brought home for her. My mother would never buy it for herself; she said it was a luxury we could not afford, but my father used to tell her everyone, no matter how poor, deserved at least one luxury. She had worn that scent as long as I could remember, and it was as much a part of her as her supple seamstress hands or her large, slightly mournful eyes.
I was always glad to come back home, but I never slept well on the ground. After a few days the small apartment would start to feel like a prison. My mother’s exhaustion and silent worry filled up the cramped rooms until I was afraid I’d suffocate. Worst of all, I would start missing my father so badly it was like a clenched fist behind my breastbone.
I never dreamed of him when I was landlocked, only when I was aboard the Aurora.
Aloft was the only place I could feel close to him, the only place I didn’t feel all broken. But I felt too guilty to tell this to my mother.
Now, airborne once more, I filled my lungs and felt some of the heaviness pass out of my chest and shoulders. There were a few good things about being on the ground, and the best was lifting off again. Nothing grander than feeling the strength and grace of the Aurora’s bone and muscle and sinew as she angled up ever so slightly and left the earth below.
Out the windows dozens of other airships were visible, some newly airborne like us, pointing toward all corners of the globe. There was the passenger liner Titania bound for Paris, and over there, the Arctic Star headed over the top of the world with scheduled stops in Yellowknife, Godthab, Sankt-Peterburg and Arkhangel. I glimpsed the regal Orient Express, just arrived from Constantinople, landing below us. Queued high in the sky were air freighters from the Far East, their silver skins blazing with the rising sun’s light, awaiting orders from the harbor master before they made their final approaches.
All the world met here, and there was nowhere you couldn’t go once aloft.
We ourselves were bound for the other side of the world—Sydney, Australia, a five days’ journey across the Pacificus. The past twenty-four hours had passed in a blur, for the entire crew was busy tending to the ship, refueling and reprovisioning her. Overnight we’d topped up our gas cells with hydrium and pumped water into our ballast and drinking tanks.
And the food! What we took on was quite something—and I should know for I helped lug it all on board: sixteen hundred pounds of potatoes, thirty-two hundred eggs, a thousand pounds of butter and cheese. All in all we loaded up close to twelve thousand pounds of food for the voyage, and when you’ve seen it spread out in the loading bay and hefted it up on your shoulders, you wouldn’t think an entire nation could eat so much food.
Now, here was the amazing thing. With all her provisions and cargo and gear and passengers and crew, the Aurora weighed more than two million pounds. She was a giant to be sure, nine hundred feet from stem to stern, fourteen stories high. But fill her up with hydrium, and it was like she weighed nothing at all. This morning, all it took were two men, one at the bow, one at the stern, to take hold of her and carry her out of the hangar and across the airfield to the mooring mast.
Easy as that.
First time I saw it, I could barely believe my eyes, for it seemed to defy every law of nature. And then all the Aurora had to do was dump a few hundred pounds of water and she was lighter than air.
There’s fancy math to explain all this, of course. It had to do with hydrium being the lightest gas in the world. Much lighter than helium and even lighter than hydrogen. But when you saw the Aurora, saw her floating and rising, you forgot all about the math and just stared.
Up ship!
No time for gawking out windows now. I was cabin boy, and there were a hundred twenty passengers on board and all of them needed settling. I was busy showing them to their cabins and staterooms, explaining how the sinks and toilets and showers worked, opening trunks and telling about meals and showtimes for our onboard cinema and piano recitals in the A-Deck starboard lounge.
“When do we set off?” one lady asked me.
“Ma’am,” I said, “we set off twenty minutes ago.”
She turned to the cabin window, amazed. “But I felt nothing!”
“That’s right, ma’am. She’s like riding a cloud.”
And then it was breakfast time, and everyone needed feeding.
Breakfast!
A maelstrom of noise and activity in the galley, all the electric elements blazing and the ranges like kilns. Platters of fresh bread and rolls and cinnamon buns. Sausages and bacon sputtering in the pans. Portobello mushrooms and tomatoes simmering under the grill. And the eggs! Not in a henhouse would you see more eggs than in our kitchen at breakfast time. Eggs served up any way you could want: poached, scrambled, over easy; eggs Benedict, omelettes.
If I hadn’t already eaten a rib-busting breakfast at four thirty this morning, the smell and sight of all this food would have had me running around like a mad dog, cramming my mouth.
Chef Vlad and his cooks and kitchen help had been up for hours, cutting peppers and tomatoes and mushrooms for the omelette fillings and making dough, for everything we served on board was fresh. Not like some of these cost-cutting liners you have now, where you practically have to bring your own provisions on board if you don’t want to starve halfway over the ocean.
The main kitchen was on A-Deck, and the bakery directly below it on B-Deck. The fresh rolls and croissants came up piping hot in the dumbwaiter, almost faster than we could serve them. Baz and Kristof were on duty with me in the first-class dining room. We’d worked together long enough so that you might have thought we were auditioning for the ballet. We swirled about one another as the ship sailed on and the passengers ate and clinked glasses and ordered more morning glories at table nine and laughed at the sheer delight of having a meal six hundred feet in the air.
Serving in the dining room was hardly my favorite part of being a cabin boy. But this morning, I smiled and served and yes ma’amed and no sired with the best of them, and I believe I even had an extra spring in my step—for I had high hopes that this was to be my last voyage as cabin boy.
There were rumors that Tom Bear, our assistant sailmaker, would be signing on with another ship at the end of this journey. Last year, after we’d rescued that hot air balloon, Captain Walken had told me I deserved a promotion, and as soon as there was a suitable position vacant, he would put me in it.
If Tom Bear was
Sailmaker!
This was my great chance.
If I could become junior sailmaker, then maybe one day I could become head sailmaker, then rudder man, watch officer—and one day, just maybe, captain of a ship like the Aurora.
But this was getting ahead of myself.
Soon I might be assistant sailmaker.
This morning, however, I was still cabin boy, and table two was wanting more pancakes and I had better go fetch them now. They were eating so furiously their forks were sparking against their knives. You’d think they were eating their last meal instead of sitting down to the first of many delicious meals aboard a luxury airship. If some of them were expecting a tilty meal, with their plates and forks slewing across the table, they were mistaken. The Aurora sailed without a bump or roll. You could stand a fountain pen on its end atop your table, and it would not fall once during the entire meal.
“They’re eating liked starved apes,” Baz muttered as he swished past me with more food.
“Haven’t they had enough yet?” he wondered a minute later when we passed again.
“Keep your hands well clear of their forks,” he warned me as we pirouetted round each other at the dumbwaiter. “I was nearly stabbed clean through. They’ll be eating the cutlery soon!”
“And us if we’re not quick enough,” I added. Baz guffawed then coughed to cover it up.
I was in a fine mood. Out the windows I saw the spires of Lionsgate Bridge, the dawn’s light seeping over their peaks and making the lions’ golden manes gleam. It would be an hour before we were over open sea, but my heart was already beating for that moment when I saw the endless horizon and I felt like anything was possible: the whole world unfurling before you.
“Look at that!” cried one of the passengers, pointing out the window.
I glanced over and saw an ornithopter passing us on the starboard side, its beating wings ablur as it banked sharply to cut across our bow. Now, this was a cheeky thing to do, and I couldn’t help shaking my head in disgust. What was the pilot about, darting in front of us like that? Ornithopters were ungainly looking contraptions, with their flapping feathered wings, and airshipmen tended to look down on them as a foolish business, as they did on all heavier-than-air craft. Mosquitoes, we called them, on account of their puny size and the noisy whine of their engines.
The ornithopter buzzed round again, and this time I spotted two passengers behind the pilot, all kitted out with their goggles and leather caps. Again they cut across our bow.
“What’re they up to?” I mumbled to Baz as he headed toward the kitchen with an armful of dirty plates.
“Taking pictures maybe.”
Sometimes you got photographers wanting photographs of the big luxury airships as they came in and out of harbor, and they’d hire ornithopters to take them up for a good shot. But I hadn’t seen anyone holding a camera.
I wanted to find out what was going on, and since breakfast was winding down, I thought this would be a good time to take coffee and cinnamon rolls to the bridge.
“Cover for me?” I asked Baz. “I want to find out what’s what.”
He nodded, curious as I was. Anyway, Baz was used to me disappearing to the control car, even when I was off duty. I loved watching the officers fly the ship, and there was an awful lot to learn. I strolled down to B-Deck and stopped off at the bakery to load up a tray. With the tray balanced in one hand, I hurried down the gangway to the keel catwalk and walked briskly toward the bow. There was a square hatchway in the floor with a ladder that led down into the control car. I took the rungs one-handed and didn’t spill a single drop of coffee.
The ladder brought me down into the radio room, at the rear of the control car. Its walls were covered with all manner of machinery, transmitters and receivers, lighted gauges and dials. I placed a mug of steaming coffee beside the wireless officer, Luc Bayard, who was pressing his earpiece against his head and scowling and scribbling a message onto his pad.
“Clarify please, Nimbus 638. You are requesting a landing?”
I put an almond croissant down beside the coffee, taking my time. Bayard glanced up at me and shook his head, making a loony roll of his eyes.
“For what purpose, Nimbus 638?” He scrawled a message onto his pad, but before I could read it he stood up, speaking into his headset before pulling it off. “Stand by please, Nimbus 638.”
“Excuse me, Matt,” he said, walking forward through a doorway into the navigation room. It was small, with a chart cabinet against one wall and a broad table against the other, where all manner of maps and instruments were spread out. Mr. Torbay was taking a reading from one of the compasses, and Mr. Grantham was leaning over the table, marking lines and notations as he updated our position on the chart of our new journey. I quickly put down rolls and mugs of coffee and hurried after Mr. Bayard as he made his way forward to the bridge. I didn’t want to miss anything. A landing, Mr. Bayard had said. I could only assume he was talking with the pesky ornithopter buzzing around us.
Through the final hatchway and I was suddenly on the bridge. It took up the entire front half of the control car, a huge glass cage with two-story windows giving a panoramic view of sky, land, and sea. I’d been here many times before, and it never failed to make my skin tingle. There was the rudder man at his wheel, and the elevator man at his. There was the gas control board and the ballast board and the engine room telegraph—I knew all the instruments and what they did, and imagined I could use them if given the chance. The bridge was a crowded place, and I stood well back, not wanting to get in the way. I started putting coffee down for the helmsmen and watch officers, taking my time and listening.
“What’s the news, Mr. Bayard?” Captain Walken asked, turning to the wireless officer.
“He’s requested a landing, sir.”
“What on earth for?” the captain demanded.
“He says he’s got one of our passengers. Two actually. A young lady and her chaperone. They missed the boarding.”
“Who?” The captain looked at the note Mr. Bayard handed him.
I watched the captain, wondering what he would say next. I’d never heard of such a request. If a passenger missed the ship, he was out of luck, simple as that. He had to wait for another vessel. But the captain just sniffed and gave a smile.
“Well, they must want passage badly enough, eh?” he said. His cheerfulness surprised me, since the landing would put us at least half an hour behind schedule. The captain was a punctual man and prided himself on his timely arrivals and departures.
“Prepare to head up, Mr. Wexler. We’ll keep our present altitude, thank you, Mr. Kahlo. Mr. Bayard, please tell the pilot he can make his approach when we’ve put our head to the wind. Then wire the harbor master and tell them we’ll be altering course to allow an aerial docking. The breeze is light; if he’s a pilot worth his salt, he should be able to make a landing first try.”
The captain caught sight of me and winked. “We’ve taken more difficult things on board, haven’t we, Mr. Cruse?”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a grin.
“Thank you for the refreshments, Mr. Cruse. Your timing is uncanny, as always. But perhaps you should go to the landing bay and attend to our latecomers when they board.”
“Of course, sir,” I said, delighted. Only once before had I seen an aerial landing, and it was no mean feat. I passed out the last of the coffees and pastries and left as the Aurora began her slow graceful turn. I stopped at the bakery, dropped off the tray, then hurried aft.
The landing bay was forward of the cargo holds, very near the ship’s midsection. Mostly it was used for extra storage, and there were plenty of crates and cases arranged around the walls. But the center of the bay was always kept clear in case we needed to allow for an aerial landing. When I arrived, the crew were just opening the bay doors in the floor. With alarming speed they split apart, and each long hal
Mr. Riddihoff pulled a lever, and, with a clanking whir, the docking trapeze began to lower from an overhead track in the bay’s ceiling. The metal trapeze dangled through the hatchway into open air. The ornithopter pilot would have to make his approach directly beneath the airship’s belly, cut speed so that he was almost in a stall, and hook his overhead landing gear over the docking trapeze at just the right moment.
“Must be pretty important passengers,” said Mr. Riddihoff, “for the captain to be going through all this hullabaloo.”
I looked down at the trapeze. It was a tiny place to hook a plane to. I hoped the pilot was experienced, but these harbor fliers were daredevils and used to more outlandish tricks than this.
The ornithopter’s drone grew louder. Crouching, I could just see it, behind the Aurora’s tail fins, coming in. It seemed to be hardly moving, wings scarcely beating now, and I thought he would make it first try. But when the ornithopter was just feet away from the docking trapeze, it shuddered and dipped, and I heard shrieks of alarm from the passengers as the ornithopter dropped away and banked sharply.
“Bit of a gust there,” said Mr. Riddihoff calmly.
“Bad luck,” I said. “Look, he’s coming round again.”
I had to admit, that ornithopter was a nimble thing, and seeing this one maneuver so smartly did impress me.
“Hope he gets it this time round,” said Mr. Riddihoff. “I’ve not had my breakfast.”
“I suggest the eggs Florentine,” I told him.