Malgus smiled, almost malicious. “Just as we cast off from Bermuda. One of the mooring masts collapsed, and there were fires in Hamilton port town. Captain Smallwood ordered us to press on instead of returning to render aid. Urgent business west and south.”
“Earthquake.” Hethor closed his eyes, listening, to see if he could hear the clatter of the world. The ship creaked, and his own breath and Malgus' both masked some of the sounds; but even here high in the air the movements of the world still echoed at the bottom of all the other noises, a fractional step removed from true silence.
And it sounded wrong.
“You hear it,” Malgus said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “You hear the changes.”
Frightened, Hethor opened his eyes. The old farmer Le Roy had told him to seek out Malgus with his story. He'd finally found the man out after some missteps, and Malgus had in turn effected his rescue from the pit of the candlemen. But after his experiences in the viceroy's court Hethor was in no wise eager to share his thoughts further. Something about Malgus, his manner or his intensity, moved Hethor to guard his tongue, albino toucan or not. “I don't know, sir,” he said. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Malgus' eyes narrowed. “Maybe you do and maybe you don't, sailor. I can't make you something you're not. But I don't want all your training to go to waste. Captain Smallwood has graciously permitted me to take you on in my service in order to properly maintain the instruments of navigation. You do that without embarrassing me, and I'll teach you how to use them.”
Lombardo had been right. It
did
matter to Hethor what he did, that he had work he understood and cared for. And navigation was essentially the art of observing God's clockwork in the heavens. This ⦠offer ⦠from Malgus
was another step toward fulfilling Gabriel's mission. “Thank you, sir.”
“Now go back to sleep,” said Malgus. “You won't be good for anything for a day or two yet. Not with that horrid back. The loblolly boy will be in later to see to your dressings. I daresay whoever sewed you up in Hamilton town knew his business well enough.”
Hethor didn't even know her name, but he was grateful to the woman.
TWO DAYS
later, Midshipman Evelyn de Troyes showed Hethor to the navigator's cupola. De Troyes was Malgus' assistantâapprentice in point of practice if not by lawâthough as a middie he had other duties as well.
“On the water,” said de Troyes, a small man with sundark skin and pale-streaked hair, “all the officers practice navigation. It's a more difficult art in the air. Though the captains and the mates are supposed to do it as well, in practice it's mostly us.”
He stopped talking as he and Hethor stood beneath the midmast. The “masts” were misnamed, in that they did not carry the sails, which were borne by flying spars reaching outward from the middle decks.
Bassett
's masts did not even correspond particularly to the masts of a sailing ship on the water. Rather, they were vertical members that were the primary structure anchoring the gasbag to the hull. As such they offered the easiest access to the interior of the great envelope. When he first boarded
Bassett
, Hethor hadn't been allowed anywhere near the midmast or the gasbag.
“Drop all your metal in the bin there,” said de Troyes. “No buckles nor blades nor flints nor nothing to strike a spark. Then up the ladder. You first, all the way to the top. Can't get lost on the way.”
“Me first?” Hethor unclipped his belt and took his flint and striker from his pocket. He grabbed the rubber-coated iron rungs.
“I want to watch you climb. If you have too much panic in you, we'll have to send you back to the deck division. Brass or no brass.”
Hethor climbed like his heart was in it. The stretch-and-reach of the ladder tugged at his wounded back hard enough to bring stinging tears to his eyes. Hethor ignored the pain.
I
must
please de Troyes enough to keep my post with Malgus,
Hethor told himself.
The midmast rose perhaps eight feet off the main deck before it passed within the canvas skin of the gasbag. There was a flap there, set in place with rope and wooden toggles, that closed off the interior. Hethor flipped the toggles free, let the flap drop, and climbed past.
The inside of the gasbag was dimly lit by a very few electricks strung along the midmast. Hethor hadn't even realized that
Bassett
had electricks. He wasn't sure how they would be powered. The midmast climbed upward at a point where four gas cells met. They were made of silk, stiffened with varnish and rubber, crisscrossed with a fine mesh. Everything reeked of stale air and tar.
It was like being surrounded by billowing sails, though there was no wind in here. In fact the interior was quite hot. The shadows were just as uncomfortable as the pools of light from the electricks. Even cramped by the proximity of the gas cells there was a sense of vastness to the space, though Hethor knew the gasbag wasn't much past a hundred feet in height and somewhat wider in cross-section. The quiet was eerie, too, just the slick noise of his hands and feet on the strangely soft rungs, and a very faint thumping like the slow beating of a giant heart.
“Hydrogen pumps,” said de Troyes behind him as they passed a narrow fore-and-aft catwalk at the midpoint of the climb. “Keeping the cells balanced and trimmed.”
“Ah.”
Soon enough the midmast came to the top of the gasbag. There was a wooden hatch set in the bottom of a small platform. Hethor paused to study the hatch. It swung down, which was unusual in that most hatches
swung outward to a deck. The hatch was smaller than normal as well, about two feet square. It was flanked by small gutta-percha or gum-elastic vents.
“Is there a wind problem up here?” he finally asked de Troyes.
“Good thinking, sailor. Now what can you tell me about those valves?”
“Ah ⦔ Hethor stared at them a moment. The vents or valves were designed to allow air to exit without manual intervention. They had no stopcocks or levers. “Gas,” he said. “Hydrogen. They let the hydrogen out.”
“Indeed. Bad air will kill you. Pay close attention on climbing. If you feel weak or faint, climb down immediately and summon the gas division duty watch.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After waiting a moment more for further instruction, Hethor undid the ropes securing the hatchâno metal latches up hereâand lowered it carefully. Leather hinges squeaked. Wind whistled past the opening, carrying the sharp fresh scent of clear air. As he looked up, squinting into the light, Hethor saw only watery gray clouds.
He scrambled up onto a platform about four feet wide and five long. The hatch was set almost in the middle. Unlike the main deck there was no railing to speak of here, but rather a built-up lip around the edge perhaps a foot tall, with a number of hooks set into it as well as a few stanchion braces. Hethor wasn't willing to stand upright in such an unprotected place, so he squatted on his heels.
The wind plucked at him as Hethor looked around to better understand the layout of the platform. The gasbag sloped away to his left and right, while a narrow plank catwalk, completely unrailed, marked the spine of the ship. The curve of the gasbag seemed to invite a dive, to slide slowly along it, moving faster and faster until one tumbled into the open air to fall to the sea belowâhow far? A thousand feet? Two?
Except for directly fore and aft Hethor found he had an
unobstructed view of the horizon. The height, with no railing or restraint around him, was unnerving, but not debilitating.
Back in New Haven he'd never imagined such things. Gabriel had indeed set him on a journey. This almost made the agony in his back worthwhile.
“We're gaining altitude,” said de Troyes, scrambling up onto the platform and sitting tailor fashion. “Trying to rise high enough to weather the coming storm. Down too low an airship can be driven into the water. Oh, and welcome to the navigator's rest.”
Hethor looked at the ragged, overcast sky, the darker clouds piled in the distance. “Is that southeast?” he asked.
“About right. What else can you tell me?”
They had brought no instruments. De Troyes was testing Hethor's education, his common sense, his powers of observation. How would Librarian Childress have looked at this place, at this sky, he wondered? “Hooks for tying us down when there's more wind,” he said, thinking through the realities of the position. “Stanchions for the instruments. I assume you have poles.”
“Staves, actually. Wouldn't do to pack a metal pole up through the gasbag.” De Troyes nudged the edge of the platform with his foot. “These planks open up to our lockers. Ropes, staves, even a few brass chains stowed in there. One of your jobs is to make sure everything needful's present and available at all times. Once in a while we lose a rope or something over the side.”
Once in a while we lose a navigator over the side
, Hethor thought.
“Anything else?” de Troyes asked.
“Equatorial Wall's that way.” Hethor pointed south before looking up. “If the sky were clear and the light just right, we could sight in on Earth's orbital tracks and work out our position. I assume you have books and tables for that.”
“You can hear midnight very well up here, too.”
Sidereal midnight, when the great brass teeth atop the
Equatorial Wall met and meshed with Earth's orbital track, clattering against the vast ring gear set in place around the sun by God himself. Hethor had used that moment for setting clocks back in New Haven, the precise timing of the world's turning, adjusting for longitude to arrive at the correct local hour. “And of course, you set your clocks by it up here, too.”
“Another duty of yours. Lieutenant Malgus has a boxed set of marine chronometers. You can carry it with a strap. Set one face to midnight based on your observations of sidereal time. Later we compare that face to the other face to establish longitude, how far we've traveled east or west.”
“Or to establish the error of the timepiece.”
“Clockmaker.” De Troyes managed to make it almost a curse and almost a blessing in the same breath.
“So I'm to climb up here for midnight?”
“And twice during daylight, to check the supplies and equipment. And whenever we have time to teach you something new.”
Hethor decided there could be no finer duty on
Bassett
than to climb the midmast to set the midnight hour.
THE STORM
broke on them that afternoon in a swirling fury, wrenching
Bassett
in every direction but forward for some hours. Rain drummed on the gasbag like all the tom-toms of the Iroquois while wind shrieked and howled among the shrouds. Hethor was back with the sailors of the deck division temporarily, securing cargo and equipment and watching for storm damage. It was worth his life to even take a few steps, but at least at altitude they did not have the roiling seas clearing the scuppers with each roll of the ship. Just more rain than he'd imagined possible, and a drop over the rail that no one could survive.
He held tight and did as he was ordered. The tempest died down just after sunset, the clouds skating away to
reveal a sullen moon sow-bellied on the barely visible thread of her track, and a few persistent stars.
“Don't worry,” Lombardo said as he patted Hethor on the shoulder at chow call. “When we hit a real storm, you'll know why air sailors never marry. Her Imperial Majesty doesn't want to pay all them bloody widows' pensions.” With a laugh, Lombardo sent Hethor back to de Troyes and Malgus.
That night after a long session on the main deck working with the boxed chronometers, de Troyes sent Hethor up the midmast on his own. “Fall off if you must,” the middie warned, “but don't lose the instruments.”
Hethor made the climb at five bells of the evening watch. He met one of the gas division among the cells, a fellow he didn't know who nodded in the electrick dim. Up, through the wooden hatch, and onto the observation platform. His whipped back hurt less and less, either with the passage of time or the joy of meaningful work.
The moon was waxing toward full, dangling on the thread of its tracks. The lamps of the stars were bright as ever. Sitting amid light and beauty, Hethor carefully tied the boxed chronometer to two of the hooks, then flipped the catches to open the lid. There were three dials just as de Troyes had shown him. One was set to Greenwich time. The second was set to the last properly measured reading. The third was his to adjust, though it still matched the second at the moment. Radium dials gleamed against ghostly white faces, while more radium dots marked the little knobs that would reset the time.
He wondered what mechanisms were within, whether this was of the new machine makes from Lancashire and the Germanies, or if an honest horologist had cast and cut the gears with a knowledgeable hand.
A few high clouds scattered pale smears across the heavens, but mostly the lamps of the stars were clear. This close to midnight, Earth's track gleamed above the southern horizon as their face of the world came to kiss the orbital ring. The moon's track crossed half the sky as
well, her offset to Earth's plane all the more obvious from this vantage. He closed his eyes and listened, the gentle damp breeze no distraction at all.
Bassett'
s engines thrummed somewhere far below. The hydrogen pumps cycled. He heard his breath, as always, and the creaking of the ropes and the booming of the canvas gasbag.