Arabella of Mars(66)

The airman who had held her legs now moved toward Binion. “Really, Binion,” he said, “this ain’t what we signed on for. Taking from the Company’s one thing, but I’d rather make my way by dead reckoning than put an innocent girl to the lash.”

Binion’s pistol swiveled rapidly between Watson, Arabella, Gowse, and the second airman. “You’re all fools,” he declared in a low and deadly voice, though the pistol hand now shook so hard that all could plainly see it. “She’s no innocent! She had you all thinking she was a man! I’ll wager she’s been diddling the captain the whole time!”

“Now I’ve heard just about enough,” said Gowse, and lunged toward Binion.

Binion aimed the pistol at Gowse and drew back the hammer.

And Watson slammed into him from the side, the two midshipmen tumbling together in a sodden, spinning midair ball. The pistol fired, a thunderbolt of smoke and flame shooting off harmlessly upward.

A moment later Gowse joined the tumble, his massive arms pinioning Binion’s arms to his sides while Watson plucked the pistol from his fingers.

“Parker! Bates!” Binion cried. “Somebody suppress these insubordinates!”

Some of the mutineers immediately came to Binion’s aid. But others rose to oppose them, and though the two groups fought hand-to-hand for a time, the mutineers fought without conviction, and the number of men supporting Binion dwindled quickly. The mutiny soon began to lose its momentum, then collapsed completely.

Nonetheless, Binion continued to shriek commands in every direction until Gowse put a gag in his mouth.





16

PASSENGER

A knock came on the cabin door, a welcome distraction from her racing thoughts. She arranged herself in the tiny space to allow the door to open. “Yes?”

It was Watson. “M-Miss Ashby,” he stammered, “The captain requests your presence in his cabin.”

The response “Aye, aye,” tried to spring to her lips, along with a salute, but she pushed it down. “Certainly, Mr. Watson,” she replied.

After the officers had been freed and the mutineers sorted out, Arabella had been whisked away to the carpenter’s cabin—more like a closet—on the lower deck, so that she might clean herself up in privacy. Soon thereafter a dress had been obtained from somewhere, probably requisitioned from the cargo over Quinn’s strenuous objections, and conveyed to the cabin with the captain’s compliments.

Fitting herself into the dress in the tiny space had proved a considerable challenge.

The dress was quite fine, she supposed, though it was too short and the sleeves were entirely too tight. But after so many weeks in trousers, she found it nearly impossible to manage female costume in a state of free descent. The skirts billowed up and had constantly to be pushed down. On her previous trip from Mars to Earth, she had been given a sort of large garter to keep her skirt decently constrained at the bottom, but as no female passengers had been expected on this voyage Diana did not carry any thing in that line.

The other men—the men, she reminded herself—were more embarrassed by the sight of her legs than she was. They were the same legs as before. All of the men had seen those legs many, many times. Yet now that her sex had been revealed, the sight of them had suddenly become scandalous.

Watson knocked at the hatch of the great cabin, announced her presence, and was bidden by the captain to send her in. Watson opened the hatch and bowed her in, bending himself at the waist in midair as he gestured her to enter in a most gentlemanly way.

“Miss Ashby,” the captain said, and he too bowed.

The whole situation was so very strange to Arabella’s sensibilities that her eyes stung with tears. The great cabin, so familiar, compelled her to salute and snap a crisp “Reporting as ordered, sir.” But the captain’s deferential attitude seemed to demand a demure curtsy.

She did neither. She hung stupidly in the air and said, “You … you desired to see me, sir?”

She realized that her heart was pounding. Was it simple concern over the unknown reason for her summons to the great cabin?

Or was it fear … fear of what she might find in those dark, intelligent eyes of his?

Now that her sex had been revealed, would he think less of her, or dismiss her from his consideration entirely, as a mere girl? Or might, instead, the high esteem in which she believed he held her—in which she fervently hoped he held her—develop into another type of regard, one warmer and perhaps more intimate?

But the expression in those brown eyes did not address her concerns in either direction, showing nothing but polite respect. “Thank you for coming, Miss Ashby. Will you take tea?” He proffered the tray which she herself had prepared for him so many times, the little teapot fitted to its slots with its lid screwed on tight, a sweet biscuit held beneath the silver clip. She wondered who had laid it out for him in her absence.

The thought of Captain Singh preparing a tea tray for her, with his own hands, was too strange to contemplate.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, if only to be polite, though as she nibbled the biscuit she realized she was ravenous.

Even so, she found herself taking gentle, ladylike bites rather than wolfing the whole thing down as she would have done when she was Arthur Ashby. How quickly expectations can change one’s behavior, she thought.

“I called you in,” the captain said, “to thank you for your actions during the recent mutiny.”