Skybreaker (22 page)

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing?”

“A key. Looks the same as Nadira’s. And this.” He tossed me a small notebook, slightly singed. “You’re the bookish type, Cruse. What is it?”

I opened the book at random. The page was filled with close lines of small, meticulous handwriting.

“Looks to be some kind of journal.”

“He puts his diary in the safe.” Hal cursed and gave the wrecked safe a kick. There was no more joviality in him. I put the journal into my rucksack.

A dreadful hissing sound once more filled Grunel’s stateroom, and even though I knew what it was, it still raised a rash of gooseflesh across my back and belly. The green flag sprang up from the message tube. I took out the capsule, unscrewed it. This time there was something inside, tightly
furled. Carefully I pulled out several sheets. They were blueprints, filled with complicated lines and notations. I caught sight of a large cylindrical shape, which looked like the telescope from Grunel’s workshop. But before I could make sense of it, Hal snatched the blueprints from my hands.

“More of his bloody silly inventions.”

He rolled the sheets up roughly and jammed them back into the capsule.

“Maybe a beard puller or an automatic nose picker, eh?”

“Hal, wait—”

He shoved it into the outgoing pneumatic tube and yanked the tasseled cord. The canister was sucked back into the system.

“That might’ve been useful!” I protested.

“If it doesn’t glitter, it’s not gold,” said Hal savagely. “Where’d you hide the goodies, eh?” he said to the blanketed form of Grunel. “No good hoarding it now, you old miser. Your best days are behind you.”

We heard footsteps and swung our lights to the doorway.

Dorje entered. “The girls are tired.”

“We’re not done here,” Hal said.

“We can continue tomorrow,” said Dorje. “We all need rest.”

Hal was about to say something, but then he just nodded. “You’re right. Let’s head back to the
Saga
.”

I
T WAS GOOD TO BE BACK
aboard the
Sagarmatha
. After the unearthly cold of the
Hyperion
, the dining room and lounge seemed almost tropically warm. At dinner we scarcely touched our food. We all looked haggard, and our appetites had shrivelled. My pants were already looser around my waist. And yet, I did not feel unwell. I dared not mention it, for fear Hal would think I was suffering from high-altitude delusions, but I felt restless and filled with energy. I wanted to get back to work aboard the
Hyperion
. I wanted my gold.

As a little treat after dinner, Hal released some tanked oxygen into the lounge. Slumped in a wingback chair, I stretched my feet towards the electric hearth. Any closer and they’d be set alight. Even the snow leopard’s fur had not prevented my toes and fingers from burning with cold by the end of our three hours aboard Grunel’s ship.

Just before we’d left, I’d convinced Hal to let me enter the captain’s cabin. On his roll-top desk I’d found the ship’s log, locked at the base of a small frozen waterfall. I’d managed to hack the journal free from the ice, and right now it was thawing in a roasting pan near the fire. That was Nadira’s idea. I just hoped the paper would not dissolve into an unreadable inky mess.

The evening was calm, and the two ships, tethered together, moved gently against the wind, steadied by the
Saga
’s engines.
We couldn’t have had more ideal conditions for the salvage. But my heart was not calm. I could not stop thinking of what Hal had said about taking a wife. Surely he had his sights set on Kate de Vries. Now, every time he opened his mouth, I half expected him to fall on one knee and propose to her. I don’t know what terrified me more, the idea of Hal marrying her, or me marrying her.

Miss Simpkins sewed. By now I’d have thought she’d sewed enough clothing for all of the Russian army. Nadira was watching the ship’s log, turning it every once in a while so it thawed evenly and did not get singed. Near the bar Hal and Dorje conferred softly, looking over the map that Dorje had diligently made during the exploration. Kate was busy taking pictures of her aerozoan egg, jotting notes. With every flash of her camera, a faint chemical haze drifted across the room. The quagga and dodo and yeti bones had been hauled up inside the
Sagarmatha
and were now safely stored in the ship’s hold. But it was the aerozoan that had all Kate’s attention at the moment.

In my lap was Grunel’s diary, my one bit of treasure to show for the day. I was amazed that Hal had not snatched it from me to read himself. Instead he told me to have a peek and let him know if there was anything useful. He hadn’t sounded very optimistic. He seemed to have a low opinion of Grunel and of writing in general.

Glancing at the diary’s first few pages, I almost agreed with him. It was not much like a diary, for there were no dates, and what few words there were he didn’t even bother
to write on the lines. They were scattered all around the page, among diagrams that made no sense to me. Quick stabs of ink, a flurry of odd symbols, and numbers everywhere. It was like trying to make sense of snowflakes in a storm.

“Haven’t you taken enough photos of that little oddity?” complained Miss Simpkins, waving away the vapours from Kate’s flashbulbs.

“It’s no more an oddity than you, Marjorie,” Kate replied, taking another photograph. “I want a record of what it looked like in its egg before I dissect it.”

“You’re going to cut it up?” Miss Simpkins asked.

“Into little pieces, yes. I can learn much more about it that way. Though, really, I’m better with mammals. There’s something much more primitive about this one.”

“You must be happy with all your new specimens,” I said to Kate, hoping to strike up a genial conversation.

“I could’ve had them all, if the
Sagarmatha
hadn’t been damaged.” She gave me a look, as though it were all my doing. She was getting as bad as Hal. Really, they were perfect for each other.

“At least you got something,” I told her. “I haven’t found so much as a penny.”

“There’s the old man’s watch,” Hal said, without looking up from his map.

“There was a picture inside it,” I said, remembering. I took it from my pocket and showed it to Kate. “Any idea who that is?”

She glanced at it. “His daughter.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. They have the same foreheads and noses. Anyway, I saw a photograph of her in a newspaper once.”

“This is the one he cut off without a penny?” I asked. “The one he wouldn’t talk to?”

She nodded.

I wondered if Grunel had made things right with her before he embarked on his final journey. She had clearly never left his thoughts.

“You know,” said Kate, “I think it’s rather low of you to sneak his personal belongings.”

“Isn’t that exactly why we all came?” said Nadira from the hearth. “To swipe his things?”

This stumped Kate for a moment. “Well, perhaps, but we don’t have to be grave robbers. I mean, honestly, the man’s pocket watch?”

For a moment I was speechless with indignation. Taking the watch wasn’t even my idea, but I wasn’t going to tattle on Hal.

“Grave robbing?” I said. “You’re the only one digging up bones.”

“That’s different,” Kate replied, with an imperious tilt of her chin. “That’s the pursuit of knowledge.”

I said nothing more. A fine, testy crew we were this evening. No doubt some of it was exhaustion, and the thin air of twenty thousand feet. But it seemed all too easy to irritate Kate these days.

“Even if I can’t salvage Grunel’s whole collection,” she said
to Hal, “I can try to catalogue it at least. Can I bring my small camera tomorrow?”

“By all means,” Hal replied distractedly.

“I think this is properly cooked now,” Nadira said from the electric hearth. She picked up the ship’s log. Its pages were warped and stiff and the entire book had swollen to twice its original size.

“Can you read it?” I asked.

She settled herself in a chair and turned back the cover to the first page. “It’s dated Edinburgh, 25th March. There’s some kind of loading register. Should I skip ahead?”

She was already turning the page.

“Wait,” I said. “Go back. What does it say for Aruba fuel?”

Nadira looked down the loading register and read the weight aloud. The
Hyperion
had left harbour carrying over four hundred thousand pounds of Aruba fuel.

“And what about water?” I asked.

“Which do you want? Radiator water? Trim ballast? Fresh water?”

“Fresh.”

“Thirty-five thousand kilos.”

I looked over at Hal and Dorje. They’d both been listening.

“He wasn’t moving to New Amsterdaam,” I said. “That’s obvious from the
Hyperion
’s chart. He was on some much longer journey.”

“Where?” Hal said. “You could sail five times around the world with all that fuel.”

“Maybe he planned to live aboard her.”

Hal sniffed, thinking the idea ludicrous.

“Look at the museum he made for himself,” I said, “and the workshop. Not even the
Aurora
had staterooms that luxurious. She’s no simple freighter. She’s a home.”

Hal shrugged, as if this wasn’t a very interesting or useful piece of information.

“Listen to this,” said Nadira.

“Well, he’s a complete nutter obviously,” Hal said. “But we already knew that from his inventions.”

“He most certainly wasn’t a nutter,” Kate objected. “He gave us some of the greatest inv—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Hal interrupted, “but what kind of man loads his life onto a ship and aims to disappear into the sky?”

I had no answer to that, so I began to turn slowly through Grunel’s diary. Page after page was covered by his odd notations. It seemed incredible they could make sense even to
him. His strings of numbers and symbols made my physics textbooks seem all simplicity.

Nadira read some more from the captain’s log:

When Nadira finished reading, I turned the page of Grunel’s diary and came upon a rare line of text, written in his small, meticulous hand.

“Here’s something,” I said, and read aloud:

“He was very paranoid,” Kate said, “I remember reading that.”

“Who’s B?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe someone trying to steal his ideas?” Nadira suggested.

“He was convinced everyone was out to steal his ideas,” Kate said.

“Another sign of lunacy,” Hal put in. For some reason he seemed irritated we were reading the journals. He listened impatiently, chewing at his lip, eyes straying to the far corners of the room.

“What was he working on, though?” I said. “There were dozens of things in his workshop.”

But automatically I thought of the enormous telescopelike machine. It alone bore no label. It had no name. Maybe if Hal hadn’t shoved the blueprints back into the tube, we’d have some idea what it was.

Nadira turned the swollen pages of the ship’s log. “It’s mostly just weather conditions now. Oh, here’s something.”

“We never did see Hendrickson,” I said to Hal. I thought it a bit strange, since we’d searched all the staterooms. Surely we should have seen him, especially since it was late at night when the
Hyperion
met her doom.

Hal just shrugged. “Maybe Grunel had him down in the kitchen making hot chocolate.”

“Sorry for interrupting,” I told Nadira. “Please keep going.”

I remembered the poor captain, frozen to the rudder wheel, the last beat of his heart far in the past. I wondered if he’d ever started to wish he’d declined the command of the
Hyperion
. A more unusual journey would have been hard to imagine. His task was only to keep the ship moving. In some ways, it sounded like the grandest of voyages, for I loved to be aloft more than anything, and always felt a vague sadness when I returned to earth. Having been born in the air, I often wondered what it would be like never to have to land.

“Well,” I said, “it seems Grunel meant to stay airborne until he finished his work.”

“It must have been something impressive,” Kate said, “for him to go into such seclusion.”

“It might be worth a lot of money,” I added.

Kate directed a withering look at me. “Is that the only value a thing can have? It might be an invention of huge scientific importance. We must find out what it is.”

“Doesn’t interest me,” said Hal.

“I wonder if he ever finished it,” I said.

“How long would all that fuel last?” Nadira wanted to know.

“He could’ve hitched a ride on a tailwind and hardly used any fuel at all,” I pointed out, “if staying aloft was his only goal.”

“What’s the date of the captain’s last entry?” Hal asked Nadira.

She flipped pages. “April 20th.”

“By then everyone assumed he’d already crashed,” Kate said. “They were expected to arrive in New Amsterdaam within four days of their departure. He was aloft much longer than anyone thought.”

“Read the last entry,” I asked Nadira.

For a moment, no one said anything, knowing these were the last words the captain’s hand ever wrote. I turned to the end of Grunel’s diary and began flipping backwards, until I came to his final entry. It was just a few handwritten lines, and I read it aloud.

“But the pirates, or B.—whoever it was—they never boarded,” Nadira said. “They never reached the ship.”

I nodded. “The
Hyperion
went into the storm and got caught in the downdraft.”

“Updraft, you mean,” said Hal.