Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

First Officer Henson pulled a speaking tube from the wall.

On the bridge, his call was answered by Oscar Wilde, who said, “Captain Lawless, Mr. Henson is asking permission to open the external doors.”

Lawless was standing by the window with Sir Richard Francis Burton. They were watching al-fajr al-kaadhib , the zodiacal light, which was rising column-like in the western sky. He said, “Tell him permission is granted, Master Wilde.”

“Aye, sir,” the boy replied. He relayed the message down to the engine room.

Lawless stepped over to the helmsman and stood beside him, quietly ordering, “Steady as she goes, please, Mr. Wenham.”

“Aye-aye, sir, but-” Wenham hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I-um-I think-” The helmsman turned to Cedric Playfair, the navigator. “Shouldn't we still be over the Red Sea?”

“Yes,” Playfair answered, glancing at his instruments.

“Then why is there desert below us?”

Lawless and Playfair both looked up and saw what Wenham had spotted-that the vaguest glimmers of light were skimming not over water, but sand dunes.

“Impossible!” Playfair gasped.

Burton joined them and watched as the navigator checked over his console.

“The compass says we're travelling south-southeast,” Playfair muttered. “But if that were true, we'd be where we should be.” He tapped the instrument, then bent, opened a panel in the console, reached in, and felt about, muttering: “Maybe something is interfering with-hello! What's this?” He pulled out a small block of metal, and as he did so, the compass needle swung from SSE to SE.

“A magnet!” Burton observed.

“How the devil-?” Playfair exclaimed.

Lawless clenched his teeth and bunched his fists.

“But it shouldn't make any difference!” Francis Wenham objected. “That compass is just for reference. It isn't used to set the course.”

“He's right, sir,” Playfair put in. “Mr. Wenham follows the instrumentation on his own console. It indicates the degrees to port or starboard he should steer the ship to maintain the course I set. Taking into account the compensation I calculated, if he's followed his indicators exactly, we should be slap bang over the Red Sea.”

“And I have done,” Wenham noted.

“Compensation?” Burton asked.

“For the wind, sir,” Playfair replied.

Burton stepped back to the window. He turned and gestured for Oscar Wilde to join him.

“Yes, sir?” the boy asked.

“Can you find me some field glasses?”

“Right over here,” said Wilde, crossing to a wall cabinet and returning with a large-lensed brass device. Burton took it and raised it to his face, clipping its bracket over his head. He turned back to the window, and with the fingers of both hands rotated the focusing wheels on either side of the apparatus.

The land below was wreathed in darkness, with just the tips of dunes visible in the faint light of al-fajr al-kaadhib . The field glasses threw them into sharp relief.

“Captain Lawless,” Burton murmured, “I have a reasonably clear view of the sand dunes below us.”

“What of it, Sir Richard?”

“They are entirely motionless. There is no sand rippling across their surface or spraying from their peaks. In other words, the strong wind Mr. Playfair just mentioned is nonexistent, at least at ground level, and since we're flying low-”

“If I've been taking into account a wind that isn't actually blowing, it would certainly explain our position,” Playfair put in.

“Mr. Bingham!” Lawless roared, but when he turned to the meteorologist's position, he saw that it was unoccupied. “Where the devil is he?” he demanded.

“Mr. Bingham left the bridge some little time ago, so he did, sir,” said Oscar Wilde.

“Playfair, Wenham, get us back on course! Sir Richard, come with me. We have to find my meteorologist. He has some explaining to do!”

Some minutes later, they located Arthur Bingham in the engine room, standing with Daniel Gooch, Shyamji Bhatti, and Winford Doe near one of the open hull doors. Doe was unbuckling his harness.

“Hallo, Captain Burton, Captain Lawless!” Bhatti called as they approached.

Gooch turned and said, “Almost done, Captain. Mr. Champion is just putting the finishing touches to the last of our wayward engines.”

Lawless ignored the chief engineer and glared at the short, fat meteorologist. “You appear to have deserted your post without permission, Bingham.”

“I–I just came down to watch Mr. Gooch at-at work, sir,” Bingham responded.

“Worried he'd be blown off the pylon by the high winds, were you?”

Bingham took a couple of steps backward.

“Is there a problem?” Gooch asked.

Lawless's eyes flashed angrily. “There most certainly is!”

Bingham pulled a pistol from his pocket and brandished it at them. “Get back, all of you!”

“Bloody traitor!” Lawless snapped.

“Hey! Drop that!” Bhatti cried out.

Bingham swung the pistol toward the constable, then pointed it at Burton, then at Lawless. His lips thinned against his teeth and his eyes flashed threateningly.

Lawless said, “Why?”

“Because I have a wife and two children,” the meteorologist snarled. “And I also happen to have a tumour in my gut and not many months to live. A certain party has agreed to pay my family a large amount of money in return for the sacrifice I'm about to make.” He directed his gun back at the king's agent. “I wouldn't have to do it at all but for you, Burton. I followed you to Ilford and back and took a pot-shot at you.”

“You ruined a perfectly good hat.”

“It's a crying shame I didn't spoil the head it was adorning. If you'd have been decent enough to die then, this ship and its crew would have been spared.”

“You're not the only man Zeppelin hired to kill me,” Burton revealed. “The other was promised money and received instead the count's hands around his neck.”

“Ah, so you know my employer, then! But what do you mean?”

“My other would-be assassin was strangled to death, Bingham. Had you managed to put a bullet in me, I have little doubt that Zeppelin's associates would have then put one in you. As for money being paid to your family, you can forget it. The Prussians will feel no obligation to you once you're dead.”

“Shut your mouth!” Bingham yelled. His finger whitened on the trigger as he jerked his pistol back and forth between Burton, Lawless, and Bhatti.

“Give it up, man!” the latter advised. “Don't leave your family stained with the name of a traitor!”

The meteorologist backed away a step. “Not another word out of you!” he spat at Bhatti. “As for you, Burton, they want an end to your little jaunt to Africa, and this-” With his free hand, Bingham undid his tightly buttoned jacket and pulled it open. He wasn't the fat man they thought he was. He was a slim man made bulky by a vest fashioned from sticks of dynamite. “This will ensure they get what they want!”

“Hell's teeth!” Captain Lawless shouted. “Are you bloody insane, man?”

Bingham sneered nastily. “Blame your friend here, Lawless. He's left me with no choice but to eliminate you all.”

“You do have a choice,” Burton said. “Shoot me now and spare the ship.”

“No. I've overheard you and your companions enough to know that, now they're on their way to Africa, they'd continue your mission without you. This is it for all of you.”

He placed his left index finger over a button in the middle of his chest.

“Bingham! There are women and children on board!” Lawless bellowed.

“To protect my own woman, and my own children, I would do anything, even-”

Shyamji Bhatti suddenly threw himself at the meteorologist, thudded into him, and with his arms wrapped around the saboteur, allowed his momentum to send them both toppling out of the open hull door. There came a blinding flash from outside and a tremendous discharge. The floor swung upward and slapped into the side of Burton's head, stunning him and sending him sliding across its metal surface. Bells jangled in his ears. Through the clamour, as if from a far-off place, he heard someone yell: “We're going down!”