THIRTY-FOUR
The man stirred in his bunk. How long he’d been asleep, he wasn’t sure. Time passed strangely where he was, although maybe that was his imagination. Years of solitude, years of travel had taken their toll.
The signal was a constant pulsing tone, not loud enough to have woken him, just loud enough to have entered his dreams, the signal becoming a flashing blue light, the light of the gap between one universe and the next.
The man rubbed his good eye and pulled thick fingers through his white beard, and then he lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling of the ship as the tone continued.
Maybe this was a dream too. Maybe the signal was his imagination, an auditory hallucination. Maybe it was the outside tricking him. It had a habit of doing that; he’d discovered many places on his travels, some of which were cities, whole countries where life went on. Others were places that seemed to be alive themselves.
And they liked to trick him, make him see things, make him hear things. After years of this the man wasn’t sure what was real, not anymore. Maybe he’d died a long time ago, on that day when the ice was thick and the fog was deep, the day he’d stepped into it and left the world.
“Sir?”
The man jolted on the bunk, suddenly wide awake. He sat up too quickly, his hand pressing his forehead as the room spun. He waited a moment, then swallowed and glanced at the door to the flight deck. On the control panel in front of the pilot’s seat he could see one of the row of orange lights flashing in time with the tone.
A shadow moved around the flight deck.
“I have located the source,” said the voice.
“A signal? From the city?”
“I believe this is what you have been waiting for, sir.”
The man heart raced as he listened to the tone. He blinked. The signal was… wait, the signal was…
He looked back to the ceiling. “That’s not a regular transmission.”
The shadow moved, but the other voice said nothing.
The man swung himself from his bunk, the end of his wooden leg loud against the floor of the ship. He reached for his walking stick, and went to heave himself to a standing position, but then he paused, head cocked, looking at the floor and listening, listening.
“I recognize it. The signal, it’s–”
“I quite agree,” said the other voice.
The man pulled himself up and stumbled into the cockpit, using the pilot’s chair to kill his momentum as he dropped his walking stick and stared through the main window. Outside the fog was thinning; the lights of the city were faintly visible as a multicolored smudge of twinkling stars. The frame of the bridge was barely there, a smudge dissolving into the orangey-grey world.
The man gripped the top of the pilot’s seat and licked his lips. He was alone in the cockpit. He was alone in the entire ship.
He allowed himself a small smile.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
There was a pause, and then a second voice sounded from somewhere behind him. “I believe so.”
“So, he found his way back.”
“As you once predicted, sir. The arc of his transit returned him to the Empire State.”
The man nodded. “Like a comet in orbit around the sun.” Then he laughed, and swung himself around into the pilot’s seat. He smoothed down his mustache and beard, and glanced across the controls with his one good eye. He frowned, and lifted the eye patch that covered the other, and squinted. Satisfied, he let the eye patch flip back into place, and he clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
“I do believe we shall be in time for tea. Byron?”
“Yes, Captain Carson?”
“Trace the signal, and get a lock on its position. We shall collect them en route to Grand Central.”
“Confirmed. Tether release in five seconds.”
Captain Carson clapped his hands again and laughed. After all this time, they were going home.
The Age Atomic
Adam Christopher's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene
- The Steele Wolf