Arabella of Mars(36)

“Yes, Ashby.” The captain swiveled himself about, his body twisting in the air to face her, though he did not touch the wall or deck with either hands or feet. Arabella had grown far more comfortable with weightlessness, but this elegant demonstration of experience and skill brought home just how much more she had to learn. She hoped that some day she might move as handsomely as he. “Now that we have rounded the Horn, I have time and attention to devote to the education of the ship’s young gentlemen. And in that number, for certain purposes, I include yourself.”

“Thank you, sir.” She bowed in the air, which caused her to begin a tumble which she checked with a hand to the door frame.

The captain, to his eternal credit, appeared to take no notice of Arabella’s clumsiness. He moved to where Aadim, the clockwork navigator, sat fixed to his desk, facing out the same window. “Please come over here and observe these dials.”

Arabella pushed off from the door frame and drifted across the cabin, bringing herself to a halt beside the captain. For a moment she nearly brushed against his buff-clad shoulder, and the sudden effort of controlling her motion in the air to prevent that contact made her heart race.

Suddenly, with a soft creak and a whir of gears, the navigator’s head swiveled to face Arabella and inclined in a slight nod.

Arabella gaped in astonishment. “Did he just … notice me?”

“An interesting question.” The captain smiled. “Aadim is, in effect, the face of the ship. His mechanisms extend throughout Diana, from the forward anemometer beneath the figurehead to the rotational counter on the pulser drive shaft. Within this cabin he has several components that affect the actions of his head and eyes.” He gestured to a small, unobtrusive lens in a brass fitting on the bulkhead to his left. “Sunlight from the window falls upon that lens. When it is interrupted, the change in temperature causes a cam to shift, transmitting power to the shafts that turn the head.”

Arabella couldn’t look away from the green glass eyes that seemed to meet her own. “It’s rather … disquieting.”

At that a small line appeared between the captain’s bushy black brows. “I’m sorry you find it so.”

For some reason the captain’s disapproval, however mild, bit deeply at Arabella’s heart, and she quickly amended her position. “Well, it’s all a bit strange now. I am certain I shall become accustomed to it.”

The captain’s face betrayed no emotion. “I hope so.”

For a moment longer the automaton’s eyes remained still, then with a click and a whir the eyes and head swiveled back to face out the window. Arabella strove to focus her attention on the ingenuity of the mechanism rather than the somewhat disturbing effect the action had upon her sensibilities.

The captain pointed to one of the dials on the front face of the desk. “This dial indicates our current air speed, as determined by the anemometer I mentioned earlier.”

Arabella turned herself in the air for a better look at the dial. “Twenty knots?”

“Twenty-one, to be precise. But, of course, we are traveling much faster than that relative to the Earth.” He pointed to another dial.

“Seven and a half.… thousand knots?”

“Indeed. Would you care to speculate how the two figures are calculated, and why they differ?”

“Well … an anemometer measures the speed of wind, so this must measure the ship’s speed relative to the air mass we are passing through. But the other…” She frowned, concentrating. “The ship’s speed relative to Earth is largely determined by the speed of the air mass itself, but how to measure that?” She thought a bit more. “Could one determine the distance to Earth by measuring the angular distance between, say, London and Paris, as seen through the telescope?”

The captain shook his head, though he smiled—and that smile warmed Arabella’s heart far out of proportion to its slight extent. “An interesting guess, and not entirely incorrect.” He opened a cabinet, revealing several cylinders of gleaming brass. “These devices form part of the actual solution.” He removed one of the devices from the cabinet. It was a small brass telescope, perhaps ten inches long and an inch in diameter, attached by a swivel onto a wooden shaft about two feet long. He pointed out that the bottom end of the shaft was a brass fitting with a cross-shaped point. “This fits into one of several sockets in key locations throughout the ship.” Drifting across the cabin, he indicated a brass disk set into the deck with a matching cross-shaped hole in it. He inserted the pointed end of the telescope’s shaft into the hole, where it seated with a precise click, then swiveled the telescope back and forth. From this location, she noted, the telescope had a view of nearly half the sky through the broad stern window. “The horizontal angle, which we call lambda, is transmitted to Aadim through cables. The vertical angle, or phi, is measured on this scale here”—he pointed to a brass scale etched onto the telescope’s swivel—“and set by the operator through the dial next to the socket.”

Struggling to follow the demonstration, Arabella asked, “The angle between what and what?”

The captain grinned and held up one finger, then put his eye to the telescope and swiveled it back and forth for a time, first with large motions and then with careful, precise adjustments. “Observe,” he said then, and gestured Arabella to take his place.