Magebane (10 page)

Anton ducked under the rope barrier, accompanied by a barrage of flashes from the imagers of the newssheet reporters gathered along one side. Anton knew most of them, since they'd all made the long journey from Wavehaven together, their stagecoaches accompanying the wagon hauling the Professor's airship over the rutted trails. In fact, several of them he knew from as long ago as that day in Hexton Down when, after weeks of work helping his new master assemble and test the airship, he had stood at Professor Carteri's side as he announced his grand plan to fly his airship over the top of the mysterious Anomaly in the heart of the Wild Land. The skepticism and outright derision that had followed had not deterred him. More importantly, it had not deterred the Academy of Natural Philosophy, which was funding the expedition.

“Are you ready to go now, Professor?” one of the reporters shouted.

“Hey, Anton, sure you want to go through with this?” yelled another, to the laughter of his colleagues.

Anton ignored them. The Professor had made it clear that any comments concerning the expedition should come from him alone . . . although Anton suspected the reporters had already garnered plenty of other comments from the people of Elkbone, who were relishing the excitement of having Professor Carteri and his amazing airship in their midst, but were convinced that once he flew over the Anomaly—if he even made it over—they'd never see him again.

He'll prove you all wrong
, Anton thought as he handed the telescope to the Professor.

“Thank you, Anton,” the Professor said gravely. “If you would be so good as to board and conduct the final preflight check, I'll just say a few words to the press.”

Anton nodded, and went up the wooden steps behind the professor to the platform the town had built for the launch, apparently using the plans they normally followed for constructing gallows. The airship, already afloat in the air but tethered to the same stout posts that formed the corners of the rope barrier, dipped slightly as he stepped aboard. He immediately began following the checklist he'd long since memorized, scrutinizing ropes for wear, counting sandbags, inspecting the large tank of compressed rock gas and the burner above it (only flickering at the moment, putting out just enough heat to keep the airship bobbing on its tethers) and the tiny steam engine, with its own tank of rock gas, that powered the propeller at the gondola's stern. He tapped the glass of the instruments on their wooden panel, then swung the tiller, the blocks squeaking, and glanced up to make sure the giant rudder on the back of the envelope swung properly. All the while, he was listening with half an ear to the Professor's speech . . .

“. . . since its discovery twenty years ago, the Anomaly has been the greatest scientific mystery of our age . . . until recently no way to investigate it, but with the advent of my airship . . . understand the dangers, but advancing human knowledge is worth any amount of risk . . . my thanks to the Academy for supporting this important expedition . . .” Anton had heard it all before.

He finished his checklist with a look in the stores cupboards in the bow and then went back to the gondola's door. The Professor knew to a tee how long the check took; he was just wrapping up. “ . . . we do not know what we will find. But that is precisely why we must make the attempt. Thank you.”

The Lord Mayor had made his speech
before
Anton had realized he'd been missing the telescope, and the Priest had already offered his blessing; knowing how the Professor felt about religion, Anton was almost surprised he'd accepted it—but then he thought of the reporters and understood.

The Professor's farewell said, he turned and climbed into the gondola with Anton. “About time we got away,” he said under his breath, and Anton smiled sheepishly.

The Professor closed and latched the gondola's door. “I'll take port, you take starboard,” he told Anton, and Anton crossed to the other side of the gondola to look down on the two beefy police constables in green uniforms standing ready at the posts on that side. “Untie!” the Professor shouted, and the constables undid the ropes from the posts, but kept a tight hold. The airship barely moved, the air in the envelope having cooled enough that it was on the verge of sinking. The Professor turned to the burner in the center of the gondola and opened a valve. Instantly the faint murmur of burning rock gas rose to a thunderous roar. Anton glanced up to see the enormous yellow flame shoot up into the envelope, then turn to blue, then turned his attention back to the two constables to make sure they didn't let go too early, the heat from the burner warming the back of his neck.

The crowd matched the roar of the gas with a roar of its own, mostly cheers, though there were a few jeers and catcalls in the mix as well. Until the Professor had shown up, most of the residents of Elkbone had never even
heard
of an airship, much less seen one, and more than a few of them didn't really believe it would fly.

Well, you're about to learn different
, Anton thought.

He could tell from the increasingly strained expressions of the constables that the heat was building rapidly in the envelope. The ropes drew taut. One constable staggered forward a few feet, and the gondola lurched upward at that corner.

“Hold fast!” Anton shouted. He glanced over his shoulder. The Professor was still watching the burner, but now at last he turned back to the other side of the gondola. He raised his hand. Anton raised his.

“Let go!” shouted the Professor, and chopped his hand down, Anton mimicking him an instant later.

The constables released the ropes. The airship began to rise, the roar of the crowd so loud in Anton's ears it felt almost as if the airship were riding sound rather than hot air into the sky. But the noise dwindled rapidly as they gained altitude. Anton hurried to the starboard bow and began hauling in and coiling the rope there, the Professor doing the same in the port stern. By the time all four ropes were aboard, they were five hundred feet in the air and beginning to drift to the east. Anton took a look over the side of the gondola and saw Elkbone, strung out in its little valley; then he looked up, across the rolling prairie, and saw their destination dead ahead.

From this distance, twenty miles or so out, the Anomaly looked like a fog bank: high, gray, crowned with clouds, impenetrable. They weren't nearly high enough to see over it, even if there was anything to see. What would they find on the other side? Anton wondered. Could they even
get
to the other side?

He glanced at the Professor, expecting him to order the engine started, but the Professor, looking over the side, said nothing for a moment. “There's little wind, but it's taking us in the right direction,” he said at last. “We'll drift, lad. Our fuel supply is limited and we'll want it for the return trip.”

Drift? Anton took a look over the side. They were moving, but very, very slowly. He could still see the crowd in the Elkbone Temple Square, waving. He took another look at the Anomaly. Four hours at this rate, he thought gloomily, sighed, and went to the bow to keep a lookout.

The morning passed slowly. The wind rose with the sun, but not very much. Elkbone dwindled out of sight behind them at last, hidden in its valley. The Anomaly grew closer. Periodically the Professor lit the burner, so that they continued to rise, until they were five thousand feet above the snow-covered prairie below. Anton, looking down, saw a huge herd of bison, oblivious to their silent presence, grazing peacefully.

But after three hours, the Professor, who had been examining the Anomaly ahead with the telescope Anton had belatedly delivered to the airship, abruptly straightened and closed the telescope with a snap. “I believe it's time to make steam, Anton.”

“Aye, aye, Professor!” Anton said. At last!

He hurried to the stern, and took the tiller, flipping the loop of rope that had been holding it centered off of the end. The Professor turned his attention to the steam engine. The boiler was hot, but like the envelope, needed more heat before it would do them any good. He cranked open valves, checked gauges, double-checked the boiler's safety valve, then waited stoically for the pressure to rise.

“Pressure's up,” he said after a few minutes. “Engage the gearshaft.”

Anton pushed a lever by his left hand. “Gearshaft engaged.”

“Quarter steam,” the Professor said.

“Quarter steam it is.” Anton pushed a second lever forward half as far as it would go. The little steam engine gave a gasp and began to puff . . . and behind Anton, the propeller began to spin, slowly at first, but rapidly picking up speed. As it did so, he felt air moving against his face for the first time. He pushed at the tiller, and the nose of the airship responded . . . sluggishly, but it responded. It would respond faster at a higher airspeed, but of course the Professor still wanted to preserve as much rock gas as possible.

“Our heading will be due east,” the Professor said. “I'll take the tiller once we are closer to the Anomaly, but for now, carry on. Keep us at five thousand feet.”

“Due east at five thousand it is,” acknowledge Anton. He didn't move the tiller; they'd been drifting due east the whole time. The altimeter showed them dipping below five thousand; he reached out for the burner control and gave the envelope a brief kick of flame.

“I believe we will make it half steam,” said the Professor.

“Half steam, aye,” Anton said. He pushed the throttle ahead another quarter. The puffing of the engine increased in tempo, the rhythmic whirring of the propeller grew louder, and the light breeze blowing past Anton's ears became a stiff one, and a cold one, at that. He reached up and undid the snaps holding the earflaps of his helmet, so they dropped over his ears, and then pulled his goggles down over his eyes.

Meanwhile the Professor had opened a compartment in the bow and pulled out a fine-grain imager, a huge black box with a lens on the front that he attached to a mount. He began taking pictures of the Anomaly as it drew nearer and nearer. Not that its appearance changed; it remained a towering bank of fog. It looked like they could sail right through it, but, of course, Anton knew better. Deep within that fog was the true Anomaly, an impenetrable black wall of nothingness, so cold that the unlucky discoverer of the Anomaly (a now-elderly gentlemen whom Anton had met in person during a trip with the Professor from Hexton Down to Summerfell to argue for more funding from the Academy) had lost not only his fingers but his whole hand and a large portion of his arm after reaching out and touching it.

Calculations based on the apparent curve of the Anomaly indicated it formed a circle some 1,800 miles in circumference, roughly six hundred in diameter, encompassing an area of more than 280,000 square miles (assuming it really was a circle; no one had yet penetrated far enough into the Wild Land from its mountainous eastern shore to encounter the Anomaly from that direction). Its height was uncertain, due to the fog and clouds associated with it, but was generally estimated to be between 13,000 and 18,000 feet.

Closer and closer drew the wall of fog. Periodically Anton lit the burner to keep them at five thousand feet. Mostly he watched the back of the Professor's head, waiting for the next order, and finally it came. “Slow to one quarter,” he said. “I think it is time to ascend.”

“Yes, Professor,” Anton said. He pulled back on the throttle. The Professor checked the gauge on the rock gas tank, frowning slightly, then shrugged and opened the main valve. The flame roared, and the airship began to rise through the cold prairie air.

Five thousand . . . six thousand . . . seven . . . eight . . . up and up they went, and still they could not see over the Anomaly. At nine thousand feet their rate of ascent slowed, and the Professor, frowning again at the rock gas tank, said, “I believe we will release ballast, Anton. If you would open the tank? One-quarter turn, I think; we don't want to ascend too quickly, and we'll want to save some ballast if we can.”

“Yes, Professor.” Anton bent down and turned a knob protruding through the floor of the gondola at his feet. The entire base of the gondola was a water tank—their water supply, should they need it. However, considering the entire prairie around them was covered with snow and ice, it seemed unlikely they would. The water also made ballast, and now, as Anton turned the valve, that ballast began to flow out of the bottom of the tank. The airship lurched, then rose much faster than before.

Ten thousand feet. Eleven thousand. Twelve, and they were slowing again. The water tank was empty, they were almost to the wall of fog marking the Anomaly, and still it rose above them, an impossible cliff of white, swirling vapor. Was it his imagination, or could he feel the chill from it even through his warm leather flying gear?

The Professor peered up into the fog. “I think we need another two to three thousand feet,” he said, his voice grim but determined. “Release ten sandbags, please, Anton.”

“Ten sandbags, aye,” said Anton. The sandbags festooned the outside of the gondola; one hundred in all, in five ranks of ten bags each, port and starboard. The cords holding them were rigged with quick release buckles at his end. He let the tiller go for a moment, took hold of the top buckles on each side, and pulled hard.

The ropes dropped from the side of the gondola, the sandbags slipping off them to plummet toward the prairie below . . . and the airship resumed climbing. Anton seized the tiller. “Head to port!” yelled the Professor above the constant roar of the burner. “Parallel until we get enough altitude!”

Anton pushed the tiller to port, but he knew they couldn't really fly parallel to the Anomaly, not with the prevailing westerly pushing them toward it. Of course the Professor knew that, too.
If he really thinks we're going to hit, he'll want to turn right into the wind and try to fight our way away from the wall
, Anton thought tensely.
I'll have to be ready to—