Arabella of Mars(73)
But the manuals were designed to bring the ship to Fort Augusta, not to a khoresh-wood plantation some miles away.
It would be tricky to bring Diana round Mars’s Horn to that small node. But the more she studied the charts, the more necessary it seemed.
She could not be certain this entry point would work. But with the information available to her, it seemed the best choice.
“Very well,” she breathed. “We shall try it your way.”
Did Aadim’s painted eyebrow quirk slightly? Did his head incline, ever so gently, in acknowledgement? Or were those simply the accidental motions of a complex and temperamental machine?
Arabella met Aadim’s unblinking gaze for a long, uncertain moment. Then she shook her head and set about finding a sailing order through the turbulent Horn to the new entry point.
*
Of all the many strange feelings Arabella had experienced in the last few weeks, perhaps the strangest was when Captain Singh invited her to join him on the quarterdeck to observe the descent to Mars.
After many hours in the great cabin, calculating and recalculating the sailing order with Aadim and trying to remember the details of the drying-sheds for Stross—whose conduct toward her remained coldly civil, which pained her after the avuncular warmth he’d shown when she’d been captain’s boy—she’d felt the ship begin to shake and jerk as Diana entered the outermost fringes of Mars’s Horn, and had emerged to witness with her own eyes the navigational path she’d plotted so many times on Aadim’s desk.
The planet loomed below them now, no longer a globe ahead, but rather a vast red-gold dome that spread out to both sides beneath the ship’s keel. Already Arabella felt a slight but undeniable drift toward the deck as the planet’s gravitational attraction began to be felt.
“Miss Ashby,” the captain called, and she turned to see him standing—yes, standing, not floating—near the wheel on the quarterdeck above. “Please do join us here for the rounding of the Horn.”
She paused at the foot of the ladder. On her first aerial voyage the quarterdeck, whose name she had not even known, was a place she had never visited, nor even seen. Then, for the last two months and more, she’d been a mere captain’s boy, and entry into officers’ territory was a privilege granted but rarely and grudgingly. But now she was something other than what she had been—part passenger, part navigator, and entirely ex-airman—and apparently this new person was one to whom an invitation to the quarterdeck was extended as readily as an invitation to tea.
With mingled pride and trepidation she made her way up the ladder, an awkward action with her skirts swirling in the weak gravity. Soon she would have to relearn the old familiar habits of standing, walking, and climbing.
As she reached the deck she saw that the captain’s stance was artificial. He was braced to the deck by three leather straps which extended from a broad leather belt about his waist to brass rings set in the deck—rings she’d often cursed as she’d polished them. One of the midshipmen came over to her with a similar belt, which he handed to her with great embarrassment and averted eyes. If she’d been Arthur Ashby, she knew, he’d have buckled it about her waist with brusque dispatch—or, more likely, left her to manage her own safety line or simply to hang on to whatever rail or rigging might come to hand. She thanked the man as she took the belt, and swiftly cinched herself to the deck beside the captain. “How odd it feels,” she remarked, “to have pressure upon the soles of one’s feet again.”
“Indeed.” The captain smiled and flexed his toes, the polished boots squeaking. “But it would be even worse if your legs were weakened by unrelieved free descent. This is why I insist that every one on my ship, even officers and passengers, take his turn at the pedals.” He put his telescope to his eye, peering ahead at the cloudless air, then muttered a command to Richardson, who immediately called out a series of orders. Topmen scrambled up the rigging and began to adjust the sails.
Arabella flexed her own legs and toes, pressing against the leather straps, feeling the strength of her calves and thighs. She had been surprised when the captain had insisted that, even as a passenger, she must continue taking a shift at the pedals, and had been embarrassed by the great production this entailed, with screens being erected around her so that none would be forced to observe her flailing limbs. But now, with the downward pressure of her weight increasing, she found herself glad she had not protested the inconvenience. Perhaps if she and her mother and sisters had worked the pedals on the voyage from Mars to Earth, they would not have had to be carried from the ship upon arrival.
The captain was again gazing ahead through his telescope. “Horn ahead,” he called to Richardson, though Arabella could see nothing but empty air between Diana and the planet below.
“Are there no storm clouds, Captain?” Arabella asked.
He shook his head. “Not at Mars. The air is too dry. To observe the Horn’s outer edge you must look for scudding flotsam.” He handed her the telescope, but even with its aid her untrained eye saw nothing. Then, conversationally, he remarked, “And here it is.”
Suddenly a great jolt struck the ship. With a creaking of timber and a rattling of lines against yards, Diana slewed hard to larboard. If Arabella had not been strapped to the deck she would surely have been flung over the rail and into the sky in a trice. As it was she nearly lost the telescope, and immediately handed it back to the captain.