*
And so it went with the second drogue and the third and the fourth and the fifth. After she handed the final drogue to Stross, who looked as weary as she felt, she could do no more than float nearly insensate near the quarterdeck. The final thrum and jerk, still an impact though no surprise, barely impinged upon her consciousness as she fell heavily against the bulkhead below her. Only a few remaining scraps of linen cushioned her fall. She didn’t care.
For the fifth time the ship swung through the air, hanging impossibly from a great bag of linen. The force on Arabella’s back grew, changed direction, then slacked away.
She opened her eyes. The cable stretching away to the final drogue now pointed well to starboard, no longer taut and straight but slack, a long gentle curve that grew more and more pronounced as the drogue at its end began to fold and tumble like a flower losing its bloom.
The air calmed. The ship drifted.
Diana floated, turning slowly, in the immense blue bowl of the air.
“Where’s that d____d cross-current?” cried Richardson from the quarterdeck.
Stross, floating beside the acting captain, turned to face Arabella, annoyance on his face warring with fear welling up from far below.
The other officers, and then the men, followed Stross’s gaze.
It seemed that every man on the ship was staring at Arabella. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “I—” she began, then choked off. “I checked the figures twice.…”
“We should never have trusted that godforsaken machine!” Richardson shouted. “Useless f____g thing! Now we’re stranded in midair!”
“At least we tried,” Stross said. The annoyance and fear in his face had faded, replaced by weary resignation.
“This is your fault!” Richardson shrieked, rounding on Stross.
“I don’t recall hearing any better suggestions from you!” Stross replied with considerable heat.
“We might’ve tried the pedals at least!”
So this is how it’s to end, Arabella thought. Drifting and bickering until we smash upon the Martian sand. She closed her eyes against the unpleasant sight and touched the locket at her throat. I’m sorry, Michael, I did what I could. Please don’t trust Simon.…
And then something changed.
It took her a moment to realize what had happened. The arguing had stopped. Even the muttering of the men had ceased, leaving a silence in which the gentle sough and creak of the rigging could plainly be heard.
Arabella opened her eyes.
Captain Singh hung in his cabin hatchway. Thin—oh, so painfully thin—with his skin still ashen and his head still bandaged, he floated with his night-shirt tail drifting above his bare feet and his hands gripping the coaming on either side. But though his face was sallow and drawn, his eyes were bright and alert.
She was so very, very happy to see him so that her breath caught in her throat. If only she could embrace him, to properly express her joy!
“Gentlemen,” the captain said, his voice no more than a whisper but plainly audible in the stillness, “what was all that banging-about just now?”
Stross swung himself over the quarterdeck rail, stopping himself with one foot on the deck exactly in front of the cabin. He drew himself up to attention in the air and saluted smartly. “We are attempting to intercept the asteroid Paeonia so as to make charcoal, sir. We have deployed drogues in order to reach a cross-current; however we are currently stranded.”
“Glass,” the captain whispered, and extended a hand. One of the midshipmen immediately appeared with a telescope.
The whole crew waited as he peered about in all directions.
“Observe, gentlemen,” he said, and pointed off the larboard beam.
Stross accepted the glass from the captain. Richardson and the other officers on the quarterdeck used their own instruments.
Then Stross laughed aloud. “Aha!” he cried, pointing. Other men with telescopes began to shout and cheer, clapping each other upon the back.
Arabella shaded her eyes and peered in the indicated direction. At first she saw nothing.
And then she realized what she was seeing.
Motion in the air. Scraps of cloud, tiny bits of drifting matter, even the shimmering air itself, all whipping past so rapidly the eye could barely perceive it.
The cross-current.
“To the pedals, lads!” Stross cried. “We’ll be set in that current in less than half an hour!”
But though the men streamed past her, laughing and jostling, toward the lower deck, Arabella forced her way through the crowd to the captain’s side. The surgeon was already there, peering into the captain’s eyes and feeling with his fingers for the pulse in his neck.