Elsa deflected his question with one of her own. “Could we find one of those valve gears to disassemble later? I’d fancy a closer look.”
“I don’t see why not. Of course, there is still a runaway train to deal with,” he said mildly. “Hurtling toward our untimely demise, and whatnot.”
“Oh. Quite right. We should probably do something about that.” The adrenaline was making her almost giddy. She thought for a moment. “Release the coupling that connects the locomotive to the passenger cars?”
“It’s under too much pressure. The couplings aren’t designed to be detached while the train’s in motion.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Well,” Leo said, still hanging upside down beside her, “I can see good news and bad news. The good news is it’s an older model and doesn’t have air brakes.”
“Air brakes?”
“A centralized braking system for the passenger cars that runs on compressed air, powered by the boiler. So the good news is we can disable the boiler without compromising the brakes.”
“Ah.” From this description, Elsa could foresee the bad news. “No centralized braking means we might need to repair the brakes in each passenger car individually, if they’ve all been tampered with.”
“Precisely.”
Elsa shimmied back inside the cab and stood, then waited for Leo to follow. “You get started on the brakes, and I’ll shut down the engine,” she told him.
Leo’s brows drew together, and instead of rushing to get to work, he stood his ground. “First, I want to hear you say it.”
“Ugh, we don’t have time for this!”
His serious gaze fell on her with all the heat of a spotlight. “You’re right—and we don’t have time for amateur mistakes, either. Elsa, I need to know if you’re up to this.”
She huffed her frustration, but she was cornered and she knew it. “Fine, fine! I’m a polymath, all right?”
He nodded, the tense stillness of his body melting into motion. “Very well, then. I’ll see if I can pry the flooring up so we can manually engage the locomotive brakes.”
“Excellent.”
Elsa took her lab book out of her belt pouch, handed it to the uninjured engineer, and instructed him to guard it with his life. That done, she dialed the necessary coordinates and opened a portal to her laboratory.
“Elsa! Where are you going?” Leo, who was kneeling by the place where the brake lever used to be attached, called over his shoulder.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to find the right tools by standing here and wishing hard enough,” she said, and stepped through the cold blankness of the portal.
Her laboratory seemed especially solid after the shivering, jouncing motion of the too-fast train. In the main room, the wooden floor panels did not even creak beneath her shoes. Empty worktables stood at the ready beneath a broad, blank window.
She walked through a doorway to her raw materials room, where she kept supplies of every element found on Earth and a few that weren’t. Vats of molten metal lined one wall, and chambers of chilled gases lined the other. She had powders and crystals and fluids, all meticulously organized. Whatever item she was looking for would always be positioned closest to the entrance for ease of access.
She pressed her eyelids closed and envisioned the element she needed. When she opened her eyes, there it was, right in front of her: the vat of liquid nitrogen.
*
Leo pried up the floor panels and scowled at the damage done to the brake controls. Heat radiated off the steel wall of the firebox, where the fuel burned, and the pulse hammering fast in his veins only flushed him further. No tools, no time, and he had to jury-rig a way to force the brakes to engage. Sure, fine, but it wouldn’t be enough if they couldn’t also cut the drive power. The muffled roar of coal combustion served as a constant, terrible reminder that the train was gaining speed instead of losing it.
Leo heard the soft whoosh of a portal reopening. “Finally,” he said, without turning away from the brake mechanism. “Where have you been?”
“Get the fire doors open,” Elsa’s voice said behind him.
Leo looked up. Elsa had a large brass canister strapped to her back, a tube snaking over her shoulder attaching it to the long contraption in her arms, which she held two-handed like a rifle. She was wearing thick leather elbow-length gloves and goggles atop her traveling attire. She looked magnificent—every inch the pazzerellona she was.
“What are you waiting for?” she yelled at him. “Open the firebox!”
Leo shot to his feet. The lever that should have controlled the firebox’s small metal doors was broken. He grabbed a detached lever off the floor and jammed it in the crack between the fire doors, prying them apart. Heat blasted out, singeing the fine hairs on the backs of his hands, and he darted aside.
Elsa aimed the contraption into the firebox and sprayed some kind of liquid at the glowing coals. The liquid hissed and boiled, filling the air with a cool, odorless steam. Leo found himself feeling short of breath.
“Crack that window!” Elsa shouted, and as soon as she’d emptied her canister into the firebox, she ran to the opposite side of the cabin to open the other window, too.
Relief washed over Leo, as rejuvenating as the fresh air breezing in through the narrow window frames. “We’re not gaining speed anymore, but we still need the brakes,” he said, turning away from the window to discover Elsa already kneeling beside the opening in the floor, evaluating how far along he’d gotten.
He moved to help her, but she waved him off. “I’ve got this one. See if you can get the passenger car brakes working again.”
Leo felt an unexpected flash of anger at her perfunctory dismissal, but now wasn’t the time to bicker about who was in charge. He made his way back to the passenger cars, checked the pulse of the unconscious porter who was supposed to be operating the brake, and then got down to work. This mechanism wasn’t as badly damaged as the locomotive’s brake system, which should have been a relief.
Instead, a sort of nauseous shame settled in Leo’s gut. The crisis was drawing to a close without him having done much of anything to resolve it.
*
Elsa’s rush of excitement was beginning to drain away, leaving her tired and irritable. The muscles in her shoulder were knotted up from carrying the weight of the nitrogen tank. She was filthy with coal dust and sweat, and wanted more than anything to sink into the cool, clear water of the bathing pool downstream from her village in Veldana. There was no end to the things she’d taken for granted about her home.
It was several minutes more before the train finally ground to a halt and Leo reappeared, sidestepping around the coal car. “Well, that ride was rather more diverting than I’d expected. What was in there, anyway?” he said, gesturing at the now-empty tank.