CHAPTER FIVE
THE MALTESE TOWER
T
he sound, which was a like a gargle meets a warble, only extremely loud, turned out to be The Spotted Custard’s version of a proximity alarm. It had been activated by a deckling in the crow’s nest. The young lad swung himself down to report that the Maltese Tower beacon was dead ahead in the murk of the aetherosphere. His glassicals – the far focus set handed out to any who manned the nest – amplified his watery eyes into huge blue orbs under the gaslight of the deck lanterns.
“Very good, young sir,” was Rue’s reply. “Now back up with you please, and let us know when we reach docking drop-down juncture.”
“Aye aye, Lady Captain.” The boy gave a floppy salute before pulling himself back up via a series of rope ladders ending with one long swinging run up the side of the balloon.
“Ah, to be young and agile again,” said Primrose.
“We were never that young,” replied Rue.
“More to the point, we were never that agile,” said Prim with a soft smile.
Rue huffed her agreement and turned to Percy, who had put away his book and resumed the helm the moment the alarm sounded. At least he had a sense of responsibility. “Prepare to drop out of aetherosphere as soon as we reach docking juncture point.”
“Yes, captain,” replied Percy, face a little drawn. “I had assumed.”
Rue spared a moment to worry that this job might be too much for even his arrogance. “Percy, have you ever docked a ship of this size?”
“Not exactly,” replied Percy.
“And what exactly does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“I’ve read about it.”
“Oh dear. Should I call Mr Lefoux up to take over from you?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll do perfectly well.” Percy’s face went from fearful to fiercely determined.
Pleased with herself for manipulating him properly, Rue said, “I’m sure you will.”
The crow’s nest hollered down, docking juncture spotted. Rue squinted into the swirling miasmic grey, not unlike London during the Great Pea Souper of 1887. Just ahead she thought she could make out… a lamp-post.
Or what looked like a lamp-post, except that it was only the top half of one and Rue knew that it only seemed small because they were still far away. In actual fact, the beacon was very large indeed. It was birdcage in shape and lit from within by a miasmic orange gas.
Rue ordered, “Deck hands pull in the mainsail, navigator prepare to drop out of aetherosphere on my mark.” She went to the speaking tube and bonged the boiler room.
“Yes?” barked a female voice.
“Greaser Phinkerlington?”
“You were expecting an opera girl?”
“Please prepare to engage the propeller.”
“We’re always prepared for that.” In an aside Rue was probably meant to hear, Aggie added, “Imbecile.”
Rue gritted her teeth and tried to think of sticky sweet buns. “Very good. Thank you for your efficiency.”
Before Aggie could add anything more snide, Rue replaced the tube.
“I could grow to hate that woman,” she said to Primrose.
Prim patted her back condescendingly. “You handled it well – bad language never won fair maiden.”
“Prim, dear, I don’t think that’s how the saying goes. Nor do I think Phinkerlington would like being called a fair maiden.”
Prim grinned. “Precisely my point.”
The decklings scrambled to bring in the sail. Rue watched, plotting how to run speed drills. Also, they’d benefit from one among them being put in charge of the others for the sake of efficiency – there seemed to be a lot of squabbling. One of the deckhands was supposed to have them under orders, but he seemed at a loss coping with an overabundance of youthful exuberance. An internal hierarchy might work to everyone’s advantage.
By the time the mainsail was down, they were almost upon the beacon.
“Professor Tunstell, three, two, one, mark,” Rue said, trying not to sound panicked.
The Spotted Custard sank as Percy activated the anti-puffer. Rue’s stomach went up into her throat. It was rather like bobbing on a large wave. They slid through the Charybdis currents easily this time, but unfortunately hit a strong current below that dragged the airship westward away from the beacon.
“Again, professor,” ordered Rue.
Down they bobbed a second time. And a third. And a fourth in quick succession. This was followed by a buffeting spin through another set of fiercer Charybdis currents. Then they were blessedly out. The aether mists cleared and they were floating down through a star-filled sky. Rue wondered, not for the first time, what the aetherosphere looked like from above. And what, in fact, the layer above the aetherosphere was made of – was it even breathable? She was not alone in this curiosity – aether scientists discussed the outersphere as if it were a desirable undiscovered country, and were always concocting new ways to go higher. So far, however, no one had managed to break through.
Percy cranked up the propeller, and The Spotted Custard farted excitedly. Slowly, they swung around to face their original direction of travel, and before them, under the silvered moon, was the upper docking section of the Maltese Tower, the beacon rising above into the aetherosphere.
Rue scurried to the front rail of the forecastle, looking out over the bowsprit at the Sixth Pinnacle of the Modern Age.
The Maltese Tower, one of the Eight Wonders of the British Empire, was as impressive as one might hope. It looked like nothing so much as an immense piece of elaborate cooking equipment – a massive circular oven pot with peepholes and windows and multiple spatulas sticking up and out, only facing the wrong way with their handles in. These spatulas made up the docking ports, a few already boasted dirigibles, ornithopers, and other airships, fresh into port, mooring ropes out. Some were under maintenance, while others were taking on helium, water, or coal. The tiny forms of dock workers scampered along the spatulas like ants along cake servers. The dock of the Maltese Tower resembled a shipyard, only miles up in the air. Not, of course, that Lady Prudence should have any idea what a shipyard looked like.
Rue wasn’t impressed because what made the Maltese Tower one of the Eight Wonders of the British Empire wasn’t its beacon, nor its docking port, but its bottom half.
For when one looked down, it was as if the Maltese Tower kept going for ever, braced and supported by scaffolding so colossal it required most of the island of Malta as its base. This part also looked like an endless stack of kitchen utensils. It was held up not by its own structure, but by hot-air balloons staged all along in a random pattern, balloons that were moved by the winds so that the whole tower swayed one way and then the other under the influence of various breezes. Like some underwater sea worm meets jumble sale.
It must be terribly troublesome in a storm, thought Rue.
The Maltese Tower seemed to have been built with any available material: fabric and net, wood and steel, a massive bicycle here, bits of boat there, very small houses, the occasional train carriage. Rue knew people lived and worked up and down the tower, an entire culture sustained by aetheric travel, but she was hard-pressed to think it wondrous.
Prim came to stand next to her. “Gracious me! It is hideous, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Rue was disposed to be optimistic. “If one squints, it might be called attractively biological. See those parts, dangling. They are like seed pods.”
“Presumably they’re actually habitations and workshops.”
Rue ignored her friend’s lack of romantic vision. “The balloons and air tanks there are like leaves stretching upward.”