There was no shame in the position; I wasn’t so proud as to think it beneath me. But it was not what I wanted. What I wanted, with the intensity of all my dreams, was to one day fly the Aurora. To make her part the winds over the Mongolian steppes, soar over Antarctica, and weather the storms of Terra Nova. What I wanted was to take her airborne and keep her there forever.
Anyone interested in the ship’s tour was supposed to meet at the grand piano in the starboard lounge at half past ten. When I arrived, there was only one person waiting: Kate de Vries.
“Is the tour still on?” she asked. “I seem to be the only one.”
I glanced around at the passengers reclining in their chaise lounges, some reading newspapers and magazines, others asleep with the sun on their faces, too full of breakfast to stir. Maybe they’d traveled so often they’d taken the tour before. Most likely the great lumps had no curiosity about the amazing ship that carried their lazy carcasses across the world.
“Yes,” I said, “of course I’ll be offering the tour. Is Miss Simpkins—”
“She’s out cold,” said Kate with a small smile. “Right after breakfast she said she had a splitting headache and needed to lie down.”
“Very good, then.” I was not at all disappointed to be without her chaperone.
We waited a couple more minutes, but when no one else arrived, we set off, just the two of us. I can’t say my heart was in it this morning, after my conversation with the captain. Usually I liked nothing better than showing off my ship, but right now I felt like I had ball bearings in my stomach.
As always, I started with the A-Deck. The Aurora was running with the sun, leaving behind the coast of North America and heading out over the Pacificus. In a couple hours we’d lose sight of land altogether.
Light poured in the lounge’s windows as we strolled through the writing and reading room with its wicker furniture and ivy growing up trellises, little desks with blotters and inkwells and Aurora stationery. Past that was the first-class reception room where groups of people could gather at tables and order drinks and coffee before and after meals. The dining room was being reset for lunch, stewards clattering silverware and crystal as they arranged the place settings. All the dishware was emblazoned with the insignia of the Lunardi airship line. Baz gave me a wink as I passed.
I’d given the tour a hundred times, and the words streamed out automatically today: a smattering of history, technical details, and airship lore. Kate de Vries was a most appreciative audience, I must say. You could tell by her eyes and the angle of her chin that she was listening to every word.
“What a grand ship this is,” Kate said, and I liked her all the more.
I took her into the gymnasium with its exercise camels and rowing machines and a variety of other scarifying apparatus meant to strengthen one’s muscles. I can’t say it was used much. Most people were more interested in the eating, drinking, and smoking aspects of the ship. But here this morning were a couple of young men, dressed in their striped exercise kit, doing sit-ups and knee bends and grunting manly encouragements to each other as they pulled levers at various machines.
Farther along we came to the cinema. A small affair it was, to be sure, but not many airships had one. It seated fifty only, but we’d managed to procure a print of the Lumière triplets’ latest epic, Gilgamesh. I gestured to Kate to stick her head past the velvet curtain across the doorway. Ghostly light flickered over her face as she watched.
“I shall have to ask Miss Simpkins to accompany me to that later,” she said. “It seems very exciting.”
At the end of A-Deck was the smoking room. I opened the padded leather door and winced against the pall of cigar fumes.
“Would you care to step inside?” I asked.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“There are some very fine Depressionist paintings on display.”
“I can live without those,” she said.
I didn’t blame her. Despite the vigorous fans pumping the smoke outside, the room was unbearable. As for the paintings, I always felt they were a bit gloomy myself, with all their dingy scenes and singed colors. Perfect, in fact, for the room in which they hung.
I led her down the grand staircase to B-Deck. The lounges and reception rooms were much the same as the upper floor, though not quite as large or lavish. I showed her the bakery and pointed out the chief steward’s cabin as well as the crew’s and officers’ mess. And after that, I took the ring of keys from my pocket and unlocked the access door that led to the rest of the ship. For me this was the most interesting part of the tour, when you left the passenger quarters behind and got to see the real bone and sinew of the Aurora. Most people didn’t feel the same, though. They were always glad to get back to the comfy armchairs and the drinks trolley.
I led Kate along the keel catwalk, heading aft. Of course she’d come this way earlier this morning, but she wanted to take it all in again and have me explain everything. Her enthusiasm rekindled my own, and I pointed out the countless tanks of ballast and drinking water and Aruba fuel that were secured on either side of the catwalk, and the endless bundles of wires and cables and tubing that ran all throughout the Aurora like veins and arteries.
Kate stopped and stared up at the giant gas cells, the bottoms of which hung shimmering not twenty feet above our heads.
“They’re beautiful,” she exclaimed in delight. “What are they made of?”
“It’s called goldbeater’s skin.”
“What a wonderful name.”
“It’s membrane from cows’ intestines, actually. Specially treated to make it impermeable to gas.”
This didn’t seem to revolt her in the slightest. “It must have taken a great many cows,” she commented solemnly. “How many gas cells are there?”
“Twenty.”
“They really are huge.” She sniffed. “Is that mangoes?”
“You’ve got a good nose, miss. That’s the hydrium itself. You can always smell it very faintly, but if it gets any stronger, you know there’s a leak somewhere. In the control car, there’s a special board that tells you the pressure of all the gas cells. But the sailmakers’ noses are even more sensitive. They patrol the corridors and shafts twenty-four hours a day to make sure every square foot of sail is shipshape. Look.”
I pointed up through the web of support beams and bracing wires.
“That’s the axial catwalk up there—do you see it? It runs directly overhead the keel catwalk, right through the ship’s center, from her nose all the way back to her tail. The gas cells hang past it on both sides, like walls. It’s a bit like walking along a tunnel up there.”
Seventy-five feet above us, through the metal mesh of the catwalk floor, you could see the small silhouettes of a couple sailmakers. I wondered if it was Lunardi’s boy, up there learning his duties.
“And higher still?” Kate wanted to know.
“The gas cells go all the way up to the top, and there are vents to the outside, in case we need to lose some hydrium.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked, head tilted inquisitively.
“Well, either to lose some altitude or because we’re beyond pressure height.”
“What’s that?”
“Pressure height? Oh, the higher we get, the lower the outside air pressure, so beyond a certain height, the hydrium is at a higher pressure than the air.”
“Ah, so the hydrium would expand,” said Kate, understanding.
“Yes, which would rupture the gas cells, so we sometimes have to vent some.”
“And the outside of the ship, what’s it made of?”
“Fabric, stretched tight across the alumiron skeleton.”
“Fabric? That’s all?”
“Cotton actually. But it’s been specially treated so it’s waterproof and fireproof too.”
“That’s reassuring, I suppose. And where does that go?” she asked, pointing at a companion ladder.
“The axial catwalk,” I told her. “There’r
e three ladders that go up. And from there, you’ve got ladders to the crow’s nests, one fore, one aft.”
“Really?” she said, intrigued. “What a view that must be.”
“Especially on a clear night, with the stars and all.”
“You must know all their names by now.”
I laughed. “Maybe so.”
“Can we go up?”
“Afraid not, miss. It’s crew only up there.”
“Oh.” She seemed to sag a little. I wished I could have said yes.
“Are those the engines?” she asked, as the sound of propellers became louder.
I nodded. “You probably saw them when you boarded. There’s two on either side. I’ll show you.” I turned off the keel catwalk, down a lateral passageway that ended at a hatch in the ship’s hull. The hatch was open, revealing a rectangle of blue sky and sea. We came closer and looked out at the forward port engine car, a large metal pod suspended outside the ship by struts and wires. From the open back of the car whirled an enormous propeller. Like the other three that powered the Aurora, this car was about twenty-five feet long and ten high. A ladder led down to it from the Aurora’s hatchway. It had railings but no protective cage around it.
“Very noisy!” Kate shouted at me.
“Imagine working inside,” I hollered. “The machinists have special leather helmets to block the sound.”
I’d been inside several times, and it was not a job I ever coveted. It was cold, deafening, boring work, doing watch by the props. I could have told Kate more about the engines themselves, how they ran on Aruba fuel, what horsepower they were and how many rpms they were capable of, but I thought that might bore her.
“It looks like it could just snap off,” Kate remarked as we walked away from the noise of the engine car back to the keel catwalk.
“The engine cars are welded on,” I said with a shrug, “as much a part of the Aurora as what we’re standing on.”
“I won’t think about that too much,” she said. “It doesn’t bother you at all, does it! You seem born to this.”
“You’re right there,” I said. “I was born on an airship.”
I’d never been so familiar with a passenger before; I suppose it was because she was so young.
“You weren’t,” she said, delighted. “You’re pulling my leg!”
“I’m not,” I said proudly. “My parents came over from Europe during the Great Immigration. Not on a ship like this, mind you. A freighter it was, all of us crammed in one atop another. My mother was pregnant, but I wasn’t due for another month, so they thought it safe. But I came early, halfway over the Atlanticus.”
“Your poor mother,” Kate said. “Was she all right?”
“She was, lucky for her. And I was too. One of the other passengers was a midwife and another a medical student, and together they managed things. Tiny I was, light as a feather.”
“And you’ve been aloft ever since?” she said, those dark eyes on me, as if I was telling the most fabulous story from a fairy-tale book.
“Well, only the last three years, really. But I grew up hearing all about it from my father. When we got to North America, it was hard for him to find work. We went all the way across the country till we landed in Lionsgate City, and he got a job there with the Lunardi line, started out on one of their cargo ships.”
“Oh,” she said. “But he must’ve been away a great deal.”
“He was. But he wrote us, and on shore leave he would be home with us. And he’d tell stories.”
“Like what?” she asked.
I took a breath. “He went everywhere. Saw all the wonders of the world it seemed. All I could think about when he came home was how much I wished I could go away with him.”
“He must’ve been a good storyteller.”
“A grand one.”
“My parents weren’t much for stories,” Kate said. “I got all mine from books. And my grandfather. He told me stories when I was little, made-up ones when I was young and then real ones when I got older. He was a traveler too.”
“Your parents aren’t?”
“No. They gave me this trip as a birthday present. But they were both busy, so they sent Miss Simpkins along with me. Aren’t I lucky?” she said brightly.
“She seems very dedicated.”
“Yes, she’ll make a dictator a fine wife one day.”
I laughed.
“Mercifully, she does sleep a lot. The whole thing’s ridiculous anyway. Not that I needed a chaperone! What could happen to me on an airship? And I’m only in Sydney two weeks before I come back home.”
She didn’t sound altogether happy about these arrangements. We were making our way slowly back toward the ship’s bow and the passenger quarters. Neither of us seemed in any hurry for the tour to end.
“Tell me,” Kate asked, “at what altitude does the Aurora sail?”
“Varies, miss. Right now we’re cruising at six hundred fifty feet.”
“And will we keep to that for the entire crossing?”
“If the winds hold. We might climb higher if the currents are more favorable elsewhere.”
“How high?”
“As much as four thousand feet. But the captain likes to fly so the passengers have a view.”
How attentive her eyes were, taking this all in. It was rare I had such a keen listener, and I found it almost disconcerting.
“And our speed?”
“Seventy-five miles an hour when I last checked.”
She nodded absently, as if pulling open drawers in her mind, searching for something.
“Does the ship always follow the same route to Sydney? More or less?”
I nodded. “We’d shift only for the winds or storm fronts.”
I wondered if all these questions were brought on by fear of flying. I couldn’t quite believe that someone like her, with all her money, had never been on an airship before. Some people never do get used to their feet leaving earth.
“You needn’t worry, miss,” I said. “The Aurora’s as fine a ship as sails the skies. We’ve circled the globe a thousand times without mishap.”
“Oh,” she said, “no, I’m not worried. Just curious. But the ship’s course is essentially the same?”
“Well, it varies quite a lot, actually.” I liked to pore over the navigators’ maps during a crossing. Sometimes our course might resemble a series of zigzags as we rode the winds of high and low pressure systems and skirted storm fronts.
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Is there something particular you’re anxious to see, miss?” I said. I thought maybe she wanted to catch a glimpse of some volcanic island or maybe pods of whales.
She looked at the floor as she spoke. “Were you aboard the Aurora last year, about this time, when she rescued a damaged balloon?”
I stared at her, feeling unsettled, as if it were about to thunder.
“I spotted it on my watch.”
She touched my hand with hers. It was so cold a shiver went through me.
“You were the first to see it? From the crow’s nest?”
So I told her, and I must admit, I enjoyed telling her, feeling the thrill of it all over again as I explained how we came alongside and tried to winch the gondola in with the davit. How I had to swing across and hook it to the frame and cut the flight lines.
“You were the one who jumped aboard?”
I nodded.
“The cabin boy?”
I bristled a bit. “The captain asked me, so I did it. He knew I could do it.”
“You’re very brave, Mr. Matt Cruse.”
I felt my face warm. “Not brave, miss. It was no hardship for me. I have no fear of heights.”
“In the report, they just said it was ‘a crew member.’ They didn’t give your name.”
“You read about me in the newspaper?”
“No,” she said, “in the Sky Guard report.”
She paused long enough for me to wonder why on earth she would be gettin
g special reports from the Sky Guard.
“The man in the balloon,” she said, “was my grandfather.”
“Oh.” I now understood that feeling of thunder in my bones, like a weather change coming. Somehow I’d had a premonition of this, from the way her face was when she started asking about it. And I felt a bit of a dolt now, enjoying telling the story like it was a moving picture, wanting to impress her with my aerial stunts.
“I’m very sorry, miss.”
“Thank you,” she said, “for helping him.”
“I wished we’d found him sooner.”
“They said it was a heart attack.”
“That’s what Doc Halliday thought. When I first saw him he was unconscious, fallen on the floor of the gondola.” I hesitated, not knowing how much she wanted to hear, but she nodded. “Anyway, we got him inside and took him to the infirmary, and the doctor tended to him. He woke up for a bit.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Yes, but he seemed confused.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I guess he thought he’d seen something.” I heard the old man’s voice in my head, as I always did when I went back to it. Which was often. On my watch, gazing at the sky, I’d remember his words, the intensity in his eyes. “He asked me if I’d seen them too.”
She didn’t seem surprised by any of this, as if she was expecting it.
“And what did you tell him?”
“I lied and said yes. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. Some kind of winged creature, I gather. He said they were beautiful. Then he said”—I shivered a little bit, finally understanding now—“He said, ‘Kate would’ve loved them.’”
She nodded. Water spilled from her eyes.
“You’re his Kate,” I said foolishly.
“What else?” she said, wiping her face.