Airborn

  “I’ll cast off,” I said.

  I ducked out through the hatch and jumped onto the sand. The final stern line was cleated just behind the fin’s landing gear. It was a devil’s knot, untouched for so long that it had hardened and fused together, and my fingers plucked at it uselessly. I’d either have to cut it or untie the other end. It was a great sea serpent of a line and it would be an ordeal to saw through, even with the sharpest of knives. I hesitated only a second, then started running across the sand, following the line to the palm where it was tied.

  Halfway there I heard a shout and turned.

  They were coming.

  At the far end of the beach I saw the first of the pirates break from the thick of the forest and stride through the palms. The leader gave a shout, and then there were more of them, rushing for the Aurora’s bow. They’d be here in less than a minute.

  “Bruce!” I shouted. “Up ship!”

  I was at the tree now, pulling at the line to untie it. I saw Bruce poke his head out of the hatch, and look about in confusion.

  “Up ship!” I bellowed. “They’re coming! Just do it. Don’t wait for me!”

  There was a great splash, and then another and another, as the ballast tanks opened all along the ship’s belly and water hit the sand. My knot was not quite loose, and already the line was pulling hard as the ship began to rise. In another moment I would not be able to untie it. I put my whole body into it, and pulled one last time, and the line came free, whipping around the trunk.

  I sprinted back toward the Aurora. Across the beach the pirates were going full tilt toward her bow, yelling and waving and cursing. I was faster, but I knew I would not make it in time. The ship was rising slowly, her fin already several feet off the ground. Kate was leaning out the hatchway, calling to me. I lunged for the landing gear, missed, and sprawled to the sand. The ship sailed off without me.

  I heard Kate scream my name. The stern line slithered past my face, drawn up after the ship. I grabbed it tight and was lifted off the ground, swinging. Twining my legs around the rope, I climbed hand over hand toward the fin. When I reached the landing gear, Bruce’s hand was stretching down from the hatch. I grabbed hold and he hauled and I pushed, and eventually we got me inside.

  I stuck my head back out and saw the pirates below us, almost at the ship’s bow and rushing for the spider lines that still dangled to the sand. We weren’t rising fast enough.

  “Dump more!” I shouted and reached out for the ballast levers.

  “It’s not procedure!” shouted Bruce.

  “They’ll climb aboard!”

  I threw one lever after another and the ship’s bow angled up sharply, making us all stagger off balance. But how we rose! I’d never felt the Aurora lift so swiftly, and a wave of pure pleasure swept my body.

  I looked out through the hatch and saw the beach plunging away beneath us, the pirates becoming smaller and smaller. They were shouting and churning their arms. None of them had reached the spider lines in time.

  “Ha!” I shouted, shaking a fist at them. “We did it!”

  We were airborne now, and everything seemed possible again—even fighting pirates. I rushed back to the controls and rested my forehead gratefully against the ship’s bulkhead.

  “That’s my girl,” I said quietly. “We need those engines now,” I told Kate. I’d shown her how to do it before we launched. That was her job, and she was already at work, priming the Aurora’s four motor cars from the engine control panel. Usually the motors were started up manually by the machinists, but I’d seen the crew do it remotely during training exercises. It was no easy task.

  “We’re climbing too fast,” said Bruce. “We dumped too much ballast. I’m going to vent some gas.”

  My ears popped. I glanced at the altimeter. We were at six hundred fifty feet now and meeting some wind. I felt the ship starting to slew. But we still had no engines, and without engines we had no steerage.

  “Kate?” I said.

  “Venting in cells one, four, seven, and ten,” Bruce muttered aloud at the gas controls, talking himself through the procedure.

  “I’ve got the forward starboard engine going!” Kate said triumphantly, and I heard the distant whine of a propeller through the hatch.

  “Rev it up!” I grabbed the wheel and angled the elevators. The nose started coming down. We were leveling off. Quickly I moved to the rudder wheel. “I’m going to start turning her.”

  The ship was heavy with just one engine, and the wind was blowing against my turn. I was making no headway.

  “Forward port engine now!” Kate announced.

  “That’s more like it!” I said. “Good work! Those pirates must be peeing themselves now!”

  “We should get out of here,” Bruce said worriedly. “They’ll be coming soon.”

  “Not until I finish the turn,” I said.

  With two engines now, I could feel the ship starting to respond to the rudder. The important thing was to put as much distance as possible between us and the island, in case the pirates did try to take her back. As I turned the wheel I could hear the great steering chains moving above my head as the flaps angled ever so slightly. I saw the compass needle moving in its liquid globe and felt the ship swinging around in a slow, graceful arc. I turned the wheel a little more, went too far, and then took her back before straightening her out. It was a sloppy bit of steering, but I’d done it. I’d turned the Aurora one hundred eighty degrees. When I looked out the porthole, the island was behind us, and we were sailing away from her.

  “Both aft engines are running now!” Kate said, looking at me, her face flushed.

  “Terrific,” I said. Beneath my feet I felt the familiar vibration of the Aurora under full steam. I checked the altimeter. We were level now at eight hundred feet.

  “Now, let’s get out of here,” Bruce said. Our plan was to hide in the cargo hold until the sleeping elixir put the pirates out. We would wait half an hour and then carefully make our way forward, tie up the pirates, and free the crew.

  We went up the ladder and peered down the keel catwalk. No cloud cat. No pirates.

  “Maybe they’re already asleep,” Kate said.

  “They had wine too,” I said. “Vlad suggested a Chablis. That’s bound to make them sleepier.”

  “They’re coming,” said Bruce, and with a horrible jolt I saw them, two pirates, still just dark shapes three hundred feet in the distance, charging aft. They gave a shout. They seemed none too sleepy.

  That was our plan scuppered. I’d taken too long at the controls, and now we’d been spotted.

  “This way,” I said.

  We ran for a few terrifying moments straight toward them. I was fumbling with the keys in my pocket, knowing them by feel, for each had a unique shape to my fingertips. At the landing bay doors I slipped the key into the lock and swung the door wide.

  “In, in,” I said to Kate and Bruce. Bruce was slow; he could not run quickly. He would not be able to play this game for long. I locked the door after us. This was where Kate and Miss Simpkins had come aboard in their ornithopter—it seemed impossible it was just days ago. In the middle of the floor I saw the seam of the twin landing bay doors. All around were stacked enough crates and cargo and gear to provide shadows and hiding place aplenty.

  “Hide,” I told them. “Over there.”

  “What about you?” Kate asked.

  “I’ve got a bit of an idea,” I said.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s a bad idea,” I told her. “You two just hide. And stay quiet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  There was a banging at the door, and then the even more ominous jingling of keys. It would take them a few seconds to find the right one, but only a few.

  “Go,” I hissed to Kate and Bruce. They disappeared behind some high crates on the far side of the bay, and I backed up toward the hull, looking hurriedly at the controls clustered there. It was a mad, half-baked scheme I had, and I was afr
aid that just hearing myself say it to Kate would make me give up. I crouched down behind a row of crates. I fixed my eyes on the hatchway. I heard a key slip into the lock and turn.

  Slowly the hatch swung open, and the doorway was filled with the dark bulk of the two pirates. They came through cautiously, their pistols and eyes sweeping the room. They paused, then took a few steps in, and started toward where Kate and Bruce were hiding.

  With my fist I knocked against the deck and made a dull but clearly audible clang. I saw the two pirates turn.

  “Out where we can see you! Or we’ll have to flush you out!”

  They were both coming toward me. A few more footsteps.

  Come on, now. Come on, you great lumps. Walk!

  I kept my eyes on them and reached back with my hand for the lever.

  “I see him now!” said one of the pirates and let fly with his pistol. The bullet hit the metal floor and ricocheted about before whispering through the ship’s skin. There was a sharp, precise hiss of air.

  Keep coming, I told them in silence.

  They would kill me. They would kill us all. I did not like doing it, but I had no choice.

  They came closer, and I pulled the lever.

  The landing bay doors split apart with startling speed. The two pirates lurched in horror as the floor beneath them parted and the air sucked at their bodies. The first stumbled and plunged into open air, his screams quickly swallowed up by the sky. The second pirate grabbed hold of the edge of the moving bay door, but as it rolled flush with the ship’s underbelly, he was forced to let go, or have his hands severed. He let go and fell. I moved forward cautiously and looked down into the water. I saw their two dots, bobbing on the blue surface. I ran back to the controls and pulled the lever up. The bay doors rolled back together.

  “It’s all right!” I called out to Kate and Bruce. “They’re gone.”

  “Just stepped out for a moment, did they?” said Kate with a shaky laugh. Her face was very pale. “That was a clever plan.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure it would work.”

  “Well done, Cruse,” said Bruce.

  “That’s two down,” said Kate. “Six left.”

  Six was better than eight, but still too many.

  “What now?” Kate said.

  “We wait. Until the sleeping elixir kicks in.”

  “They didn’t seem too sleepy,” said Bruce.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  Anything could have gone wrong. “Maybe they didn’t eat the soup. Maybe it got too diluted, or maybe there wasn’t enough or they found out when they tasted it.” I didn’t like to think of that; I could imagine what they’d do to Vlad if they thought he was trying to drug them.

  “No, they ate it,” said Kate. “I could smell it on them as they came into the room. Couldn’t you?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “It’s extremely fishy.”

  “We just need to give it more time, then,” I said. “I say we wait.”

  “They’ll send more,” said Kate, “when your two skydivers don’t come back.”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “They can’t send too many,” Bruce pointed out. “They’ll need to keep some with the hostages.”

  They’d be nervous now, I realized. The ship was moving. There were people on board flying her. And their numbers were dwindling. I just hoped they didn’t start killing crew in panic. Why wasn’t the sleeping elixir working faster? I tried to calm myself. We’d just dumped two pirates into the drink—that was good. The ship was aloft and steaming away from the island at a steady clip. That was good. Now all we had to do was wait another fifteen minutes or so, and then I’d get back into the vents and see if our pirates were asleep. At which point I would hardly be needed, for, without guards, the captain and crew could quickly free themselves and truss up the pirates.

  I looked up suddenly.

  “What’s wrong?” said Kate.

  “Ship’s turning,” I said. I’d been afraid this would happen. “Szpirglas must be in the control car.”

  “I feel it now too,” said Bruce.

  The ship’s arc tightened. We were heading up into the wind. I needed no compass to know our course. “He’s taking us back to the island.”

  “He’ll be out cold soon,” said Kate.

  “If he ate the soup,” I said, then I remembered. “He doesn’t like fish! He said that when we ate with him. He wouldn’t have touched it!”

  “Can’t you switch back to the auxiliary control room?” Kate asked.

  “No, his controls override ours. We’ve got to stop him.”

  “Or stop the engines,” said Bruce.

  I looked at him, nodding.

  “Close off the fuel lines,” said Bruce. “We just need to get to the engine cars and shut the valves.”

  “And the wind will keep carrying us away from the island. Good.”

  It wasn’t ideal, to be blown along, powerless, but if the wind continued light, we wouldn’t have too rough a ride. It was far better than letting Szpirglas take us back to the island and his waiting crew of pirates.

  “Can you do the two aft cars?” I said to Bruce. I figured we had some time before Szpirglas sent anyone else to check on his first two pirates. “Kate and I will go forward for the others.”

  “Watch out for kitty,” said Bruce and hobbled aft along the keel catwalk. Kate and I went forward until we reached the lateral gangways down to the two engine cars.

  We started with the starboard. At the hull, I opened the hatch. Air swirled about us. A twelve-rung ladder led down through open air to the pod-shaped engine car. The ladder had only a railing on either side. It wasn’t caged. If you fell, you fell.

  “You want to wait up here?” I asked her.

  She shook her head, pushed past me, and started climbing down, sensibly hooking one arm round the railing. There was little actual wind, but the ship’s wind was considerable, as we were moving along at quite a clip. Kate’s tunic and harem pants were plastered against her. At the rear of the engine car, the four-bladed propeller whirled a pale brown circle in the air.

  I started down after her. She was waiting for me inside the din of the engine car, looking a little breathless but pleased with herself. The car was big enough to stand upright in and was mostly taken up with machinery. A huge motor spun the propeller shaft, which jutted out the open end of the car. I looked all about. There were a lot of cables and rubber hosing. Of all the parts of the ship, this was the one I was least familiar with. I hadn’t spent much time here. It was hideously noisy, for one thing, and the machinists didn’t really like sharing the cramped quarters with anyone else. It wasn’t what you’d call a social job. They wore leather helmets so they didn’t go deaf and crazy.

  Kate was watching me, which made me more flustered when I couldn’t figure out which was the fuel line. The noise made my brain feel about as useful as scrambled eggs.

  “It would be this one, I think,” she shouted, pointing. I looked at the hosing coming in through the roof of the car. It fed through the inside of one of the struts that connected the car to the main hull. Kate traced the line with her finger until she came to a circular tap. The shutoff valve.

  “I think you’re right,” I shouted gratefully. “Thank you.”

  I reached up and started turning. It took about ten full turns before it stopped. But the engine didn’t. Kate looked crestfallen.

  “There’ll still be enough fuel in the engine to keep it going awhile,” I said hopefully. “I just want to wait to make sure.”

  “I’ll go do the other one,” said Kate, and before I could stop her she was climbing out of the engine car, up toward the ship. I had to give it to her. She wasn’t one to sit idly by; she wanted a part of everything. I liked that about her.

  I watched to make sure she was safely inside, and then turned back to the propeller. It was still whirling as fast as before, but then it gave a cough, and its ghostly circle became darker as the prop
faltered and slowed. The pitch of the engine deepened; it was shutting down now for certain. Done!

  I hurried over to the ladder, grabbed the rungs and when I looked up, a pirate was standing above me in the hatchway. His pistol rose. The bullet shrieked off the metal railing. I pulled back inside. It was a trap; and I was a fool not to have seen it. Szpirglas must have known we’d come to the cars to shut the engines down.

  I peeped through a porthole and saw the pirate coming down the ladder. He came down face forward, one arm crooked round the railing, the other arm free so he could keep the gun trained on the engine car’s hatch. My heart was beating so quickly I thought I might pass out. That hatch was the only way out—

  Or maybe not. I looked out the open end of the engine car. The propeller was slowing, though still spinning vigorously as the motor starved for fuel. There was not much of a gap between the roof of the engine car and the spinning blade, a couple of feet maybe. I could see the shadow of the pirate growing in the hatchway; he was almost down the ladder now. I climbed up on the casing of the propeller shaft and started to haul myself up out onto the roof of the engine car. The propeller spun, inches from my head, sucking at my body. It wanted to pull me in and spit me out. On the roof there was not much to grab on to so I dug my fingernails into the metal seams and pulled and kicked with my legs, but not too much for I didn’t want them to get chopped off by the propeller. Below, I heard the pirate in the engine car, looking for me. It would not take him more than a few seconds to figure out where I’d gone. I dragged myself farther onto the roof and hurriedly brought my legs up, the propeller blades whistling past the soles of my bare feet. I was flat on my belly, no handholds, no railing. I started to slither, arms and legs spread for grip. The air pulled at me. The ladder was five feet away. I stood in a low crouch and jumped for it. I caught the rungs with my hands and started to climb like a crazed orangutan, my eyes fixed on the hatchway of the Aurora.

  I was reaching for the next rung when I was yanked down. My hands lost their grip and I slid, the rungs slamming against my ribs. I caught hold and turned and saw the pirate. He was at the base of the ladder—he had me by the ankle with one hand, and with the other was taking aim at my head. I let go and slid right down at him, kicking like a twister. I was lucky, and my foot caught his hand and knocked the pistol from his grip. I saw it go spinning toward the sea.