Arabella of Mars(32)

Heart pounding, she tightened her grip on the rope. She was already beginning to swing back. She would have one chance to grab it before it fell away forever, probably to knock senseless some innocent on the planet below.

Slowly, slowly, she swung toward the falling peg, even as it tumbled Earthward.

As she reached the bottom of her swing, she reached for the peg and missed. “D—n it!” she cried, astonishing herself.

But the peg was not yet completely out of reach. Not quite.

She reached out her hand … she stretched her entire body as far as she possibly could … she extended her fingers to the utmost …

… and she caught it!

Here above the falling-line, even a spindly-shanked landsman such as herself had enough strength to pull herself vertical with one arm.

By the time she righted herself, she had swung back to the mast, which she caught between her feet. From here it was a simple matter to jam the peg firmly in place.

She looked up to see more than two dozen heads peering over the rail at her, gazing down in astonishment.

“Will that be all, sir?” she called up to Kerrigan.

*

Once hauled back on deck and untied from the harness, Arabella received a clap on the shoulder from Faunt and a grudging nod of acknowledgement from Kerrigan. She and the other waisters were then put to work on the other side, swaying out the larboard mast. This time she had no difficulty with the fid.

When Arabella returned to the deck the second time, she found it a hive of activity, with men and ropes and lengths of wood and huge swaths of Venusian silk running every which way. Arabella was immediately thrown into the maelstrom, helping to drag and haul and carry whatever was needed to wherever it was needed.

The topmen and riggers busied themselves like spiders, leaping over the rail and scrambling out to the end of each new mast with hundreds of feet of line—called “stays” fore and aft, “shrouds” to either side—to hold each mast firmly in place. They then rigged yards and booms, timbers set at a right angle to each mast, and attached sails to each. Hundreds more feet of ropes of various thicknesses, lines and sheets and halyards, were added to keep the sails taut and control their position and attitude.

“What’s the great rush?” Arabella asked her messmate Hornsby as they lay gasping together during a brief lull. They’d been laboring without pause for hours and hours, though the sun had not budged in the sky.

In response Hornsby raised one weary arm and pointed silently forward.

Ahead and above lay a great curving bank of gray roiling cloud shot with lightning. Arabella had been so busy she’d failed to notice it before, but the ship was plainly heading directly toward it.

“She needs must be full rigged afore we round the Horn,” Hornsby said.

Arabella swallowed, then roused her aching body to haul yet more rope and sailcloth.





9

ROUNDING THE HORN

“Ye’ll be wanting this,” Faunt said, handing her a loop of line. The end of the line trailed away behind him.

Arabella made fast the line she’d been hauling on and took the loop, but then stared blankly at Faunt. In his other hand he held the loop ends of several more lines, and he moved with the high bounding lope of one whose weight has been reduced to no more than a few pounds. “It’s a safety line,” he said, annoyed. “Cinch it tight round yer ankle when yer on deck. And remember: one hand for the ship, one for yerself. Never let go with both hands when we’re rounding the Horn.” He waved ahead at the surging gray maelstrom of cloud that now loomed above, below, and far to either side. Only behind the ship could pure blue sky be seen, and a bit of the Earth so very far below.

She raised one foot, bouncing lightly off the deck as she did so, and began fitting the loop around her foot. “But I have a question,” she said before he could move away.

Faunt glared at her from beneath his profuse gray eyebrows.

“Why don’t we just go around that storm?”

“’Cause we’d never get to Mars without it, would we?” he thundered. But at her stricken expression, his voice softened a bit. “Look, ye need a good hard kick to get on yer way. The trick is to catch the right wind with all sails set, then strike ’em all down afore it changes. Else ye’ll just blunder about like a lubber, and take a year and a day to get to Mars.”

“That doesn’t sound easy.” How would she ever manage to understand all of this?

“Don’t be afeared. The cap’n’s the best.” Then his expression returned to its usual severity. “But every man jack must do his job. Now shake a leg.”

“Aye, aye.”

*

Arabella shivered miserably in her hammock while the ship twitched and shuddered in every direction around her. Despite her exhaustion after an endless day of labor—a literally endless day, in which the sun never budged in the sky—and despite the dark and humid warmth of the belowdecks space, she found herself unable to sleep: the motion of the ship, the snores of the airmen close-packed all around, and the strange sensations brought on by lack of gravity were all too distracting.

Though the state of free descent was not completely foreign to her, as she had experienced it once before on the trip from Mars to Earth, it was still disquieting: her head felt stuffy, as though she’d caught a cold, and there was a dizzy sensation of falling at all times. At least she was not afflicted by aerial nausea, as some of the other “new fish” were.