Skybreaker (14 page)

I sought out Slater’s eyes. He was too enthralled with the dance to notice. The gramophone’s needle righted itself and the music careened on, but I felt a second shudder pass through the ship. Had it been a bigger shake I would have known it was just a gust, but it was the very slyness of the movement that put me on alert.

“What’s wrong?” said Nadira, for I had stopped dancing.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Slater.

He shook his head.

“There’s something not right,” I said.

“Nothing’s amiss, Cruse. Don’t be a spoilsport.”

The door opened and Dorje approached Slater and spoke close to his ear. Slater gave a quick nod.

“Please excuse me,” he said. “Mr. Dalkey, Kami Sherpa.”

As they all left the lounge, I followed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as Slater strode aft along the keel catwalk. He scowled when he saw me.

“Go back to the lounge, please.”

“It’s the rudder, isn’t it.”

“It appears to be jammed. It’s not serious right now, but it will be when we need more turning power. I’m sending Dalkey and Kami out to deal with it.”

“I’ll go too,” I said.

“There’s no need.”

But there was for me. I had no doubt his two crewmen were competent. But I badly wanted to prove I wasn’t just a useless boy. It shouldn’t have mattered so much to me, but it did.

“I’ve no fear of heights,” I told him. “They might need an extra hand.”

“You’ll only slow us down.”

“I can handle myself on the ship’s back.”

“At twelve thousand feet?”

“I’ve worked at such heights,” I lied.

“Looking to impress Miss de Vries, are you?”

“She’s seen me do more difficult things than inspect a rudder.”

We’d reached an equipment locker, and Dalkey and Kami were already slipping on coats, strapping on tool belts.

“She’s certainly a fine young lady,” Slater said. “And a woman’s eye will always stray to the man of accomplishment and means.”

He said it with a lift of his eyebrow, and I knew he wanted me to think Kate was interested in him. And for all I knew, maybe she was.

“I’m happy to help you out,” Slater said. “Grab a coat. Gloves and goggles in there. Boots too. And get a safety harness on.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, reaching into the locker and suiting up.

“A word to the wise, though,” Slater said. “That Kate of yours, I look at her, and you know what I see? A pretty face and a heart of steel. She knows what she wants. She’ll take it, and I pity the poor wretch that stands in the way.”

“Try not to get in the way, then,” I told him. He gave a hearty laugh and clapped me on the shoulder.

My skin felt hot and my fingers trembled with anger as I clipped my harness around my chest. Hurriedly I climbed after Mr. Dalkey and Kami up the ladder to the crow’s nest. Slater’s words were nonsense, but they wormed their way into my brain. I was eager for the cold cleansing wind that would greet me on the ship’s back.

Out I went, pulling the goggles over my eyes. I glanced at the thermometer fixed to the domed hatch. The mercury hovered just above freezing. Bright sun reflected off the
Sagarmatha
’s silvered skin. In the fleece-lined coat I did not feel the cold, and the wind was lighter than I’d expected. Crouching, I clipped my line to the safety rail that ran along the ship’s spine. Ahead of me, Dalkey and Kami made their way back towards the upper tail fin, which rose ten feet above the hull.

I’d never been outside at such a height, and when I glanced down over the side, I saw glimpses of the Indian Ocean
through the clouds. It sparked in me no vertigo or feeling of danger. As always when I was aloft, the vista of sky and cloud seemed completely natural. This was more home to me than any place on earth.

The rudder was hinged at the rear of the fin, and to reach it we had to make our way single-file alongside the fin, then down the slope to the stern. Dalkey and Kami proceeded more cautiously now. I paid out my safety line as I went, my rubber-soled boots giving me sure footing.

Not far from the stern, I saw a long wire slapping against the hull, and my first thought was that something must have ripped free—a landing line, or worse, part of the rudder assembly. The wire lifted in the wind, wavered, and then lashed against the ship’s skin.

Dalkey waited till the wire was still, then drew closer, meaning to grab it and tie it off. Before he could lay hands on it, though, it snapped high in the air, circled wildly, and whipped Dalkey across the face and torso. Above the wind, I could hear Dalkey’s cry of pain. The blow brought him to his knees. He began to slide but grabbed hold of the rail with his hand. It was then I realized he had not secured his safety line.

Kami hurried forward to help his crewmate, but Dalkey was already rising to his feet and waving his hand to show he was all right. I caught sight of the livid welt running across the left side of his face.

“Your line!” I shouted out to him. “Fasten your safety line!”

He ignored me, or maybe he did not hear me above the wind. It was possible that Dalkey never used safety lines, so
confident was he of his skills. Intent on securing the loose wire, he stepped forward, hand outstretched.

Suddenly there was not one wire, but three.

They swirled briefly in the air, then, as if coordinating an attack, drew back like bullwhips and struck. Dalkey’s arm flew up to shield himself. One wire hit his back, the other his stomach. Dalkey’s coat and shirt exploded off him. Flames leapt from his eyes through the goggles, melting them. His body, as though viciously tugged by puppet strings, jerked ten feet in the air. It all happened in a single beat of my heart. Then Dalkey fell, past the ship’s stern, and was gone.

I realized with horror that he’d been electrocuted. The wires must be high voltage lines, severed somehow from the ship’s circuitry. But as they arched high in the air, near the rudder’s tip, I finally saw their source. These were not wires.

They were tentacles.

Billowing from behind the ship’s fin was an enormous squid-shaped creature. Its upper body was almost translucent, a rippling sac that could easily have been mistaken for a weather balloon were it not for the green and blue bundle of intestines contained in its gelatinous lower regions. Trailing from its undersides were countless whiplike tentacles, some of which had been snagged in the rudder’s hinged joint. The creature’s body swelled, puckered, swelled again, as though breathing, and its tentacles flexed and thrashed in vain against the ship, trying to free itself.

I shouted a warning at Kami, but he too had seen the creature and was frantically backing up. I moved as quickly as I
could, making room for his retreat, afraid of the full reach of those tentacles. No fewer than five were whipping around near the stern now. Two hovered overhead, their tips quivering, as if sniffing out prey.

“Look out!” I shouted.

Kami unhooked his safety line so he could move faster, and leapt. The tentacles struck in tandem, one lashing him across his lower legs, the other just missing. There was a crack as a spark of lightning leapt from Kami’s feet. Face twisted in pain, he crashed down, rolled, and began sliding off the ship’s back. His numb hands tried to grab hold of something but were too weak. I rushed for him as he went over the side, but was too late. Kami fell and landed hard on the ship’s horizontal fin. In his current state, I feared the wind would blow him off.

Immediately I started rappelling down after him. High above me, the airborne monster was still thrashing against the rudder, but I seemed beyond the range of its tentacles. For the first time I felt the thinner air at twelve thousand feet. I was breathing hard, and my muscles felt pulpy. I was only halfway down to Kami when I reached the end of my safety line. It would let me go no farther. I unhooked myself and left my line dangling. Carefully I started climbing down. I couldn’t have done it if Slater hadn’t caged his ship with alumiron filigree. It gave me good hand- and footholds. A blast of wind pushed hard at me and I pressed myself tight against the hull. When it let up I kept going. I got to the fin and crouched beside Kami. His eyes were open.

“Can you climb?” I asked him.

“I can’t feel my legs.”

I let out a long breath.

“I’m going to get a line on you, and then you can use your hands and I’ll pull from up top.”

He nodded wearily. I took the end of his safety line, clipped myself to it, and scaled the ship’s hull as fast as I dared. Halfway up I reached the dangling end of my own safety line, and clipped it to Kami’s. I now had a single line running from Kami to the safety rail on the ship’s back. Very cautiously, for I had nothing to stop me if I slipped, I kept climbing, watching the creature’s thrashing tentacles. I reached the ship’s back, exhausted. Double-checking the safety line, I looped the rope twice around a mooring winch.

I cranked, reeling Kami in. Luckily he was light. I kept one eye on the squidlike monster snagged in our rudder. I was still out of its range, but I was worried it might tear free at any moment. With both hands, I worked the winch, watching Kami’s painful progress. He tried to help pull himself up, but he was weak, and when I finally dragged him alongside me, I was soaked with sweat and shaking with fatigue.

I was wondering how best to get Kami back to the crow’s nest when Slater emerged from the hatch. He saw our huddled bodies and hurried towards us.

“What’s happened?” he bellowed into the wind. “Where’s Dalkey?”

“Overboard!” I shouted back. “There’s an animal caught in the rudder!”

“What in God’s name …” Slater said, staring at the writhing creature snagged behind the fin. Suddenly it elongated, and the gelatinous membrane around its lower regions gave a violent contraction. The tentacles thrashed in tandem, and all at once the creature soared up and was free, and was quickly left in our wake. I felt limp with relief.

“Let’s get him inside,” Slater said to me.

We each took a side and, crouched over, started carrying Kami towards the crow’s nest. We hadn’t taken five steps when I noticed, dead ahead, vague splotches of green and blue. I blinked, thinking I was seeing things, but my eyes were not lying: a whole colony of squid-shaped translucent sacs, puckered and undulating, was drifting straight for us.

“Look!” I shouted.

Slater saw them and we doubled our speed, desperate to reach the hatch. The creatures were nearly upon us, hastened by the wind. But I could see they were not just drifters: they had their own means of propulsion, opening and contracting their membranous aprons in sync with their tentacles. They jetted through the air at an odd slant, their long tentacles trailing far below them.

Staggering and breathless, we reached the hatch.

“Get in!” Slater shouted.

“Get Kami in first,” I said.

The first of the creatures sailed overhead now, its tentacles swishing past no more than ten feet overhead. I felt its wake, a warm humid wind, tinged with the scent of mangoes. More were coming, many sailing lower than the first.

Slater hoisted Kami onto his back and swung the two of them into the crow’s nest. There was no room for me until he started down the ladder. My heart raced. In my peripheral vision I saw something shift, and ducked as a great fleshy tentacle whipped past my face.

I jerked up to see one right above me. I glimpsed a beak, and beyond that, within its translucent innards, a complicated tangle of writhing guts and something half digested that had a bit of fur on it. One of its tentacles stroked the ship, lifted, and curled back for me.

I threw myself into the crow’s nest as the tentacle cracked against the open glass dome. I wanted to grab the hatch and slam it shut, but the tentacle was still there, lingering, its tip vibrating. It had only to reach down and it would have me. The stench of rotting food washed over me, making me gag.

I grabbed the speaking tube and shouted, “Shed five hundred feet, now!”

A second tentacle sliced past overhead and then hovered beside the first, as if conferring with it.

They shot down for me.

And the ship dropped, suddenly and swiftly, leaving them dangling in empty air.

Giddy with the sudden plunge, I watched these deadly floating creatures shrink into the distance, electricity sparking from their tentacles. I reached up, closed the domed hatch, and started down the ladder.

“Turn back, or go on,” Slater said. “That’s the decision I have to make.”

Assembled around the dining table later that evening, we were a grim lot. I had never seen a man die before me in such a way. Caught in my nostrils still was the horrifying smell of seared flesh and melted plastic from Mr. Dalkey’s goggles. In my worst nightmares I had never beheld such an awful thing.

“Kami is very lucky,” Dorje said. “He has mild burns on his legs and a small wound on his foot where the current passed through him. But the fire cauterized it instantly, so I do not think there is any risk of infection. Already he says he is regaining sensation in his legs.”

“If he needs a doctor’s attention, we should go back,” said Kate, looking around for support. Nadira stared at the table, silent. Kate’s eyes settled on me.

“She’s right,” I said, though the thought of giving up was terrible to me. We had come this far, and with such high hopes. I did not want to turn around and lose our chance at salvaging the
Hyperion
.

“What do you think, Dorje?” Slater asked.

“Kami insists he’s fine. He doesn’t want us to go back.”

“But do you think he needs to?”

Dorje paused. I knew that the Sherpas were proud and that they were fiercely protective of their reputations. Any sign of weakness was quick to be concealed, lest word spread and cost them future employment.

“I do not think a doctor will heal him any faster,” said Dorje.

Slater nodded, his face strained. “This adventure has already cost a man his life.”

“Mr. Dalkey is gone,” said Dorje. “Nothing will bring him back. But a good salvage will take care of his family’s needs and bring them some comfort.”

“Mr. Dalkey was married?” said Miss Simpkins.

“With three children,” Slater replied.