George Martin - Old Mars

“Set all sails!” Kidd cried. “Brace all sharp on a larboard tack! Smartly now!” This stratagem could only succeed if they managed to press on all sail while the favorable wind continued.

The crew set to with a will, sheeting home one rain-lashed sail after another. With each new stretch of canvas, the ship rushed faster toward the open air.

The force of the gale on the crowd of sails also tumbled the ship to the side, heeling her so hard over to starboard that her keel pointed directly into the wind.

Kidd and Sexton clung hard to the whipstaff, but though the ship now lay entirely on her side, the Earth’s pull had grown so weak that no man fell overboard.

The patch of blue, now above the mainmast, grew larger and larger.

And then the ship rushed through it, tumbling up into blue and clear air. The storm fell away behind, a horrific ball of lightning-whipped black cloud.

“Thank God,” Kidd cried, “for able seamen!”

Kidd, Sexton, Edmonds, and the ship’s carpenter floated in the air off the ship’s starboard hull, each secured from drifting by a light line tied to an ankle. The storm lay three weeks behind them, but they’d passed within sight of many other such—great untidy knots of roiling cloud—and Kidd and Sexton had argued the whole time over how best to prepare for the next that could not be avoided.

The carpenter had chalked a large X on the hull, between the dried barnacles and shipworm holes. “This’d be the spot, Captain,” he said. “If’n you’re sure …”

Kidd wasn’t sure, not at all. He cast a baleful eye at Sexton. “This is madness. To cut holes in our own hull?”

Sexton glared right back. “It is the only way.”

For three weeks, the ship had been subject to the whims of the interplanetary atmosphere, tossed here and there by every changing breeze and tumbled every which way as it flew. Though they’d fastened down everything they could, the men still floated freely in the air, and the ship’s unpredictable turns and tumbles had resulted in many injuries and several men nearly lost overboard. Kidd had learned much about how to sail in this new world, but still the ship seemed to fight him at every turn.

Sexton had proposed a new sail plan of radical novelty. The mainmast and mizzenmasts would be unshipped and remounted forward on the lower hull, sticking down and out to form a great equal-armed Y with the foremast. According to Sexton’s theory, putting all sail forward in this way would cause the ship to present her stern to the prevailing wind rather than constantly heeling over; distributing the sails equally in the vertical plane would give them control over the ship’s direction and her orientation in the air. But no ship in history had ever had masts below the waterline!

“We’ll have to saw the masts from the keelson!” Kidd protested. “She’ll never be whole again!”

Sexton patted the air placatingly. “I promise this new design will balance the ship out,” he said. “If you can but make the masts secure in their new locations.”

Kidd and his men would have to work out an entirely new system of rigging to support the masts. But their spare cordage was limited, and it would have to work perfectly the first time: If the rigging proved inadequate to hold the sails against the pressure of wind, the remounted masts would tear the hull apart. He shook his head. “I don’t know if it can be done. Give me time, damn it! We can yet learn to sail her as she stands …”

“No. We’ve bickered enough.” Sexton crossed his arms on his chest and glared down his nose to where Kidd floated some feet closer to the hull. “We must gain better control of the ship, and quickly, or come the next storm we’ll wind up lost and tumbling, or broken to bits.”

Kidd strove to relax his clenched jaw. “Is that an order?”

“If I must.”

The two men held each other’s gaze for a long, tense moment. Edmonds and the carpenter looked on, their eyes darting from the captain to the philosopher and back.

Once, Kidd had been captain of his own fate. Now he found himself subordinate to a scraggy, wispy-bearded schoolboy, and he rankled at the diminution.

But still … Sexton’s ideas had gotten them this far. And if they could but complete their mission, the legend of Kidd-the-voyager-to-Mars might eclipse the slanderous lie of Kidd-the-pirate.

He bent down and looped the line from his ankle over his shoulders, cinching up the slack and leaning back to press his bare feet against the rough, barnacled hull. “Give me the axe,” he said to the carpenter. Then he hauled off and began chopping through the X.

If anyone was going to murder Kidd’s ship, it would be Kidd himself.

Mars shimmered in Kidd’s telescope, a great, dull, copper-colored sphere. Where the Earth had gleamed like glass, the sun shining off her clouds and oceans and lakes, Mars seemed lusterless as dry, unpolished wood. A dead world.

Snapping the telescope shut, Kidd gazed at the approaching planet with his unaided eye. Mars’s disc was already too big to cover with a thumb, and growing visibly day by day.

It should have been an exciting time.

The disaster had arrived imperceptibly, by stages. Mars Adventure had left London with food and water for three months, a month more than the longest possible round-trip voyage predicted by Sexton’s theories. The outbound voyage had taken nearly eight weeks, longer than expected, but once they had refitted the masts and sorted out the working of the ship in air, Sexton’s bizarre new sail plan worked beautifully. At the six-week mark, all hands had agreed to accept short rations and press on to Mars, expecting a quicker return trip.

When they’d broached the first empty water cask, they’d thought it just a fluke. But the second and the third dry cask began to raise alarms in Kidd’s mind. He and the quartermaster had gone into the hold and thumped every remaining barrel.

Nearly one-third were dry. Even on half rations, they’d surely die of thirst long before they reached London.

“Damn that Yale!” Kidd muttered, clenching the telescope in his hands as though it were the accursed chandler’s neck. But even more than Yale, Kidd cursed himself. Years hunting pirates, only to be betrayed and abandoned by his own backers, should have taught him better than to extend any trust beyond his own two hands.

Suddenly, Sexton’s hand clapped down upon Kidd’s shoulder, startling him out of his reverie. “Do not curse the chandler,” he said, entirely too brightly. “ ’Tis not his fault.”

“How so?” Kidd replied, struggling to regain his composure. “Either he cheated me—that is, the king—or else he is incompetent.”

Sexton shook his head. “I realized last night what the reason must be. Those casks were full when we loaded them, but they were built for Earthly climes. Have you not noticed how parched of moisture the atmosphere has become?”

“Aye …” Kidd licked chapped lips with a tongue dry as old leather. The air had been growing steadily colder and drier as Mars drew near.

“The air’s thirst first dries out the casks’ wood, then draws the water out through the seams between the staves. On our next voyage, we can line the casks with wax or lead to prevent this evaporation.”

“Next voyage?” Kidd laughed without amusement. “There’ll be no next voyage for us.” He cast his eyes out over the empty, cloudless air and the dead, dry planet below. “The sea may be an inhospitable mistress, but at least she offers the occasional island, with a spring or pond of freshwater. There are no islands in the air.”

“No islands, perhaps. But there are … canals.”