Stephen Baxter - Anti-Ice

Traveller floated once more before a blue-lit porthole (a different one, I noted, showing that the mysterious blue light had moved about the ship). I said loudly, “Sir Josiah, since you are responsible for our entrapment within this aerial brougham, I think you owe us some explanation of our condition.”

Traveller stood—or rather floated—quite at ease in the air, one hand resting on the sill of the port. From a pocket he extracted his small humidor, opened it and drew out a cigarette and—leaving the humidor dangling in mid-air!—struck a match, and soon the air was filled with tendrils of acrid gas. Traveller then mercifully stowed away the acrobatic humidor. “What is it that makes young men so damnably pompous? Our situation is obvious,” he said briskly.

I opened my mouth and would have replied intemperately, but Holden stepped in smoothly. “You must recall our unscientific vocations, sir; events are not always as self-explanatory to us as they are perhaps to you.”

“For example,” I said frostily, “perhaps you would be good enough to supply an explanation of this damnable mid-air floating. Is it some phenomenon connected with flight above the ground?”

Traveller rubbed the stub of human nose which remained between his eyes. “Good God, what do they teach in the schools these days? Is the work of Sir Isaac Newton a closed book?”

Stubbornly I said, “Please describe how the eminent Sir Isaac is arranging for you to float about in the air like a human dust-mote.”

“The Phaeton’s engines have been turned off,” Traveller said. “Perhaps you noticed a difference in the ambient noise.”

I was startled; for, until Sir Josiah pointed it out, I had not noticed the silence of the Cabin.

My heart leapt. “Then we are on the ground. But where?” I gazed out of the darkened windows—noting that the odd blue light had shifted once more, so that it shone through still another port. “It is night-time outside. Have we traveled to a region of darkness?” My mind raced; perhaps we were in North America or some other distant land—or what if we were stranded in some untrodden jungle? “But surely we have nothing to fear,” I said rapidly. “All we need do is climb down from the craft and seek out the nearest British Consul; no city on Earth is without representation, and comfort and aid will be provided—”

“Ned.” Holden looked at me steadily, although I noticed that his plump hands, still wrapped around the carpet, were trembling. “You must be still and try to understand. We are rather further from any Consulate than you imagine.”

Traveller spoke slowly and simply, as if to a child. “Let us take this one step at a time. The engines are still. But we are not on the ground. Surely that is obvious, even to a diplomat. Instead—without the rocket propulsion provided by the engines—the craft is falling freely. And we are falling within it; and so we float, as a marble would seem to float within a dropped box.” Sir Josiah continued with a long and complicated expansion of this concept, involving the lack of reaction forces between my backside and the chair I sat in…

But I had grasped the essential concept. We were falling.

A wave of panic swept over me and I grabbed at my restraints. “Then we are doomed, for we shall surely be dashed against the ground within moments!”

Traveller groaned theatrically and slapped at his thigh; and Holden said, “Ned, you don’t see it yet. We are in no danger of falling to the ground.”

I scratched my head. “Then I confess I am utterly at a loss, Holden.”

Traveller said slowly, “At the moment of the Albert’s launch—and the sabotage— Phaeton’s engines ignited. The craft rose into the air—and rose still higher, accelerating—and continued to rise, leaving the Earth far behind.”

I felt a chill course through my veins, and abruptly I felt faint, light-headed. “Then are we in the upper atmosphere?”

Traveller extinguished his cigarette in a tray built into the nearest seat, and extended an arm to me. “Ned, I think you should join me. Do you think you can do that?”

The thought of launching myself once more like some trampolinist filled me with dread; but I opened the buckles and pushed off the floating straps. I straightened up so that I floated in the air, and pushed with both hands against my seat. Like a log of wood I crossed the Cabin, fetching up at last against Traveller, whose strong hand propelled me to the porthole frame.

“Thank you, sir.”

The blue illumination picked out his battered, predatory profile. “Now if you will consider the view…”

I pulled my face close to the port. A globe hung suspended against a backdrop of stars, like some wonderful blue lantern; a third of it was in shadow, and lights twinkled in that darkness. On the bright side of the globe the familiar shapes of continents could be made out through a film of wispy cloud. A small, brilliant point of light came crawling around the globe’s far limb, evoking highlights from the ocean below.

This was, of course, the Earth, and the minuscule companion traversing patiently through its ninety- minute month was the Little Moon.

I felt Traveller’s hand on my shoulder. “Even the Empire seems diminutive from this distance, eh, Ned?”

“Are we still in the atmosphere?”

“I fear not. Beyond the hull of the Phaeton lies only the desert of space: airless, lightless—and some tens of degrees colder than hypothesized by Monsieur Fourier.”

“And are we still traveling away from the world?”

“We are.” Traveller extracted his notebook with some dexterity, using only the fingers of one hand, and checked calculations. “I have estimated our velocity by triangulating against known points on the globe below. My results are crude, of course, as I lack anything resembling the proper equipment—”

“Nevertheless,” Holden prompted.

“Nevertheless I have ascertained that we are falling away from the Earth at some five hundred miles per hour. And this is consistent with the time of some minutes during which the rockets thrust, driving us away from Earth at approximately twice the acceleration due to sea-level gravity.”

There was a sobbing behind me; I turned from the image of Earth. Pocket, still strapped into his chair, had buried his face in his hands; his shoulders shook and his thin hair fell about his fingers.

I explored my own feelings. So we were above the air. And it must be true after all that Traveller had journeyed this way before—not once, but many times. My mood of panic dissipated, to be replaced by a boyish sense of wonder.

Earth’s image shifted to my right, and I deduced that the ship must be rotating slowly. Through some trick of perspective the planet looked like a vast bowl, constructed of the finest china, but it was a bowl which held all the cities and peoples who had ever lived; and who could have guessed at such bewildering beauty?

I turned to Traveller and said, “I’ve no idea why, Sir Josiah, but I feel quite calm at present, and will feel calmer still when you ignite the Phaeton’s engines once more and return us to the ground.”

I could see kindliness and a mean impatience warring across Traveller’s scarred brow. “Ned, it was not I who launched the Phaeton in the first place.”

“It wasn’t? Then how—”

“The craft is directed from the Bridge. Do you not recall how I struggled to open the access hatch to the Bridge before the launch?”

I noticed now that the hatch in the ceiling remained locked, although it bore the scars of Traveller’s efforts to prize it open.

“Then who is responsible?”

“How can we know?” Traveller said.