Stephen Baxter: Anti-Ice

How my mind reeled with these perceptions! And how far I’d come from the simple lad who had boarded the Phaeton barely three months earlier!

My course of action, I found, was decided.

Scarcely a second had passed since my single syllable of protest. Without thinking further I turned on my heels and ran toward the covered form of the Phaeton. I heard Traveller’s call after me and his slow footsteps in pursuit, but the craft filled my attention.

I had to reach Paris—I had to confront Françoise, to save her if I could, to deflect the British bombs—and to do that I would travel there by the fastest means possible—at the controls of the Phaeton!

The Smoking Cabin had been lovingly restored. The various scuffs and rents left in the upholstered walls by our weeks of incarceration had all been invisibly repaired, and I offered up a quick, silent prayer that the craft’s motive systems were in as pristine a condition.

I scrambled up a rope ladder to the Bridge. For a moment I stood there returning the gaze of the serried ranks of instrument dials, as unsure as some barbarian entering a religious shrine.

But I shook away this mood and clambered without further delay into Traveller’s couch.

As the soft upholstery took my weight some hidden switch was activated, and the electric lamps within each instrument sparked to life. I fancied I heard a hissing, as pipes bore the increasing pressure of the ship’s various hydraulic systems.

Like some huge animal the craft was coming alive to my touch.

I lay in that couch and surveyed the instrument constellation with dismay. But I had seen Traveller fly this craft from the Moon to the Earth, and it had looked simple enough; surely I would have no trouble with a minor jaunt across the English Channel!

With renewed determination I turned to the control levers beside the couch. The levers terminated in handles of molded rubber which were a little too large for my hands. Fixed on the handles were light levers of steel; these, I recalled, controlled the ignition and force of the Phaeton’s rocket motors.

As my hands closed around the handles I felt sweat pool in my palms.

I squeezed at the steel levers.

The rockets shouted their awakening. A huge shuddering beset the craft.

“Ned!”

Traveller was climbing with some difficulty through the hatch from the Smoking Cabin. He had lost his hat and his hair lay in white sheets about his forehead. He was breathing hard and sweat trickled over his platinum nose; and the glare he fixed on me was as intense as sunlight.

“Don’t try to stop me, Traveller!”

“Ned.” Now he stood on the deck, towering over me. With a voice whose quietness defeated the racket of the motors he said: “Get out of my couch.”

“You told me what Gladstone’s plans are. As a decent Englishman I cannot stand by and allow such an atrocity to proceed unchallenged. I intend to fly to France and—”

“And what?” Now he leaned over me, the sweat pooling under his deep eyes. “What then, Ned? Will you use the Phaeton to swat Gladstone’s shells from the air? Think it through, damn it; what can you possibly achieve save your own death in the resulting holocaust?”

I stuck out my chin and said, “But at least I may be able to warn the authorities—”

“What authorities? Ned, at this moment nobody knows who the authorities are! And as for the Prussians—”

“At least the warning will be delivered. And I may rescue a few souls from the devastation which is to come, and so in turn recover a little of the lost honor of England.”

His mouth worked; then some of the anger seemed to seep out of him. “Ned, you’re a fool, but I suppose there are worse ways to throw away your life… And, of course, there is your Françoise.”

I glared, as if daring him to mock me. “Mademoiselle Michelet has become a symbol to me of all those unfortunates who have become caught up in this war. If she lives still aboard the stolen land liner I pledge to rescue her—or to die in the attempt!”

“Oh, you damn idiot. I’ll give you good odds that the blessed woman is precisely where she wants to be: that she’ll shoot you down as you approach her, with your face split into the grin of a fool.” He glared harder at me, and something of that hidden perceptiveness about folk which I’d discerned in him earlier shone through his stare. “Ah, but that doesn’t matter. Does it? It’s not the thought of the rescue that’s exercising you so. You have to know the truth about your Françoise—”

I resented this insight into my soul. “Leave me be, Traveller! I won’t be stopped.”

“Ned—” Traveller reached out uncertain hands. “You cannot fly the ship. You would destroy her even before gaining the air! Why, you did not even close the hatch before trying to launch the craft.”

“Traveller, don’t try to stop me!—I suggest you return to your friend the Prime Minister, and, in return for the money he has promised you, proceed to build him his Angels of Death.”

A frown lengthened the lines in his brow.

I felt a pang of shame, but I dismissed it. “Sir Josiah, I will grant you ten seconds to get off the craft. Then I leave for France.”

With a calmness that shone through his shouted words he replied: “I disregard your ten seconds. I have no intention of leaving the ship; I cannot allow you to destroy the Phaeton.”

“Then we are at an impasse. Must I eject you bodily?” He sighed deeply, buried his face for a moment in his cupped hands; then lifted his head to face me. “That will not be necessary, Ned; for I see you are determined to go. And therefore I have no option but to accompany you.”

“What?”

“I will fly the ship. Now, kindly vacate my couch so that we may proceed—”

I studied him with the deepest suspicion, but on his long face I could read only a new determination. “Traveller, why would you do that? Why should I not suspect you of some trickery?”

He visibly drew together some shreds of patience. “You may suspect what you like. I am not given to trickery, Ned; and I was quite sincere when I said that you will destroy this craft in seconds if you proceed unaided.”

“Then assist me. Tell me how to fly the Phaeton.”

“Impossible.” He counted the points on his long fingers. “It would take several days to impart even the basics of the flight control system design. Even,” he added without irony, “to the brightest student. Second. Consider the demands of piloting a flighted craft through the atmosphere. Ned, the Phaeton is not inherently stable; this means that—unless you want to blast straight up in the air, like our French colleague—the pilot must be constantly responsive to the attitude of his craft; otherwise she is just as likely to flip upside down and plummet with all the force of her motors straight into the ground. This is the only flying vessel in the world, and I am the only man with experience of such arts. Third. You will recall that the Phaeton is a prototype. She therefore has various quirks and peculiarities which only I can anticipate and control—”

“All right!” The strain of maintaining an even pressure on the rocket levers was turning my hands into crabs of tense muscles.

Then, unexpectedly, he grinned, his hair drifting from his scalp. “You ask why I will fly the ship. I do not want you to ruin my craft, boy; that is one clear objective. Other than that—

“Well, old Glad Eyes has made it clear enough that his rocket-shells will be built with or without my participation. Now you’ve forced me to think about it, if anti-ice is to be used again as a weapon of war, perhaps I should witness the consequences of my own actions, rather than read some inaccurate account in the Guardian three days later.