Harry Takes Off: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 1) Read online

  I prayed again, this time more fervently, as the Captain opened up the rear thrusters to full power and the Albatross leapt forwards. For a moment I believed the Captain had killed us, as all I could see was a blank sloping wall of riveted metal. Then there was an edge and a shadow. Then complete darkness as we slipped through the open hatch. I closed my eyes though it made little difference as we were in complete and utter darkness. I was dragged backwards by my restraints as the Captain opened the forward thrusters to eliminate our relative velocity, and we waited for the inevitable.

  Around us the metal leviathan continued to rotate. Inexorably, though we could not see it, the deck of the interior closed on us until the Albatross impacted the wall with great violence. The cabin was filled with the agonised screech of metal against metal, and we would have been thrown about had it not been for the restraints.

  Then there was silence.

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 09:00

  The interior lights, my analytical engine and various other devices aboard the Albatross were powered by the electric. The ship possessed the largest capacitors we could carry and still fly. These meant that, even without steam driving the electrical generators, there was sufficient power for a good number of hours.

  With our assistance, Dr Cholmondley had spent a great deal of time considering as many different eventualities as could be imagined, so that we could prepare for them. While we had all laughed at the possibility of sirens in the Void (Dr Cholmondley sensibly pointed out that, in space, their voices could not be heard), we had not entertained the notion of encountering another vessel since that was quite unthinkable. However it had been considered that, in the shadow of the Earth, we might find external lights to be of value.

  Thus it was the Captain threw the switches that channelled power to the powerful lanterns on the outer hull. And we climbed from our seats to examine our new environment through the thick porthole glass.

  I could not quite decide what was more disturbing: The fact that our Void-travelling ship was contained within another vessel of massive size, or that the interior of said vessel was so ordinary. If I had not felt the dreamlike state of constant falling, if I could not see out through the vast opening into the depths of the Void where the stars shone bright and hard, I would have sworn we were in the hold of a sea-going cargo vessel. Such as might have been built by the Brunel Company itself.

  What we saw were great riveted sheets of metal. Lines painted up on the walls marked off heights and distances. I say “the walls” but it was a few moments before I was able to get my bearings. It was the gantry running vertically up from our location and the ladders positioned horizontally that provided the necessary visual clues for proper orientation. We had come to rest at one end of the cargo hold, the hatch to the Void behind us and the real floor rising up on our port side.

  The external light revealed the reason for this derelict floating through space as, only a few yards from our position, the interior metal of the hold had been torn apart as if it were mere paper.

  I drew myself back from the porthole and looked to my right, at where our engineer was also examining the damage. I knew he had seen active service with some of the early ground-based Army walkers and flyers. The tales of horror told of their unreliable nature—with pressure tanks exploding and tearing their pilots to pieces as well as anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby—made me think he might have a better understanding of this situation.

  “What do you think, Mr Ram?” I asked.

  He looked back at me with his face as impassive as it ever was.

  “It received a strike from the outside,” he said. I wondered if he were looking at the same damage as I, and my disbelief must have been apparent—I cannot deny that my Beloved has often said that I am unable to hold a thought inside that does not reveal itself upon my face. “If it were an explosion in the interior the metal would be folded outwards.” At that moment the exterior lights went off.

  “We must conserve the power of the capacitors,” said the Captain from forward. “Also we cannot be certain the vessel is unmanned.”

  The thought that there might be someone alive aboard had not occurred to me. The vessel had had no lights, surely it must be deserted?

  “Which brings us to two conclusions with but a single resolution,” he continued. “If the ship is empty we must explore and determine its origin. If it is not empty, the crew may be in need of assistance and we are duty-bound to assist.”

  “They may be enemies,” I said.

  “Even so,” he replied.

  Another contingency that had been considered before our flight was that the Albatross might need external repair, for we had no idea what we might encounter on our journey. To satisfy this eventuality we had been equipped with suits that had been tested in our vacuum room, adapted from the costume worn by sea divers.

  The engineer broke the suits out of their closet while the Captain and I ensured that any loose objects—I recovered my pencil—were put away. I shut down Jezebel, while all other systems were either shut off or put into a quiescent state. We pulled on the Void-suits and went through the procedures that we had drilled a hundred times; we did not want to emulate the small creatures that Dr Cholmondley had exposed to vacuum.

  We ate a hearty meal before sealing our helmets into place, and Ishar started the pumps that drew the air from the cabin into the storage bottles. We would not be able to open the hatch until the pressure was low enough. Even when the pumps had extracted all the air they could the door remained firmly fixed in place. Ishar adjusted a valve near the door and vented the remaining atmosphere into the Void, and the door opened easily.

  In the manner of climbers we lashed ourselves in a line, the Captain at one end, Ishar Ram at the other and I between them. I allowed myself the momentary fancy of drifting away from the vessel with no means of returning, to die alone and cold when the oxygen ran out. A shiver went through me and I quickly brought myself back to reality.

  We each had an electric torch affixed to the helmet with batteries that would sustain them for a few hours. We carefully exited the cabin and floated out into darkness. Our torches created pools of light but beyond those was utter darkness. Our orbit was still on the night side of the planet and would be for a while longer.

  Having gathered on the outside of the Albatross we played out the line to ensure it was free of obstruction, while Ishar lashed himself to a metal cleat on the hull. The Captain drew close and we touched our helmets together; it was the only way to communicate as there was no atmosphere to carry sound waves.

  “Once we are in the interior we will stay tied together, and only when we are near open Void should we ensure that one end is tied down as now.”

  So saying he shook our hands, gathered himself in a crouch with his head pointed at the hole in the wall, and pushed himself off with a steady thrust. We followed him with our lights as he drifted dreamlike across the intervening space. He had judged his flight to perfection; he entered the ragged gap and disappeared from sight.

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 09:35

  It is difficult to put into words my sensations when it came to my turn to enter the black interior. While it is facile to suggest I “flew” across the gap, just as the Captain had done before me, it is not what I felt. It is another of those factors which one may comprehend in one’s mind and yet the truth of the experience is utterly different.

  The action of crouching while holding on tight–lest I simply float away from the fuselage of our vessel–was much as you might expect, with a feeling of excitement and anticipation. The sensation when I released my grip and pushed off is something one might experience if floating in the waters of Bath Spa, and were to thrust oneself away from the side. One feels the resistance of one’s body against the push but when one is in the Void the very moment one’s feet leave the surface everything changes: It becomes as if you alone are completely still and it is the rest of Creation that is in motion. Such is the sensation of weightlessness, if I might ma
ke so bold as to coin a term, when combined with Newton’s First Law.

  But to any observer, namely Ishar Ram and the Captain, I flew to the hole. The Captain’s helmet light was my guide. I believed my aim was true but, as I approached the hole, its lower edge rose up in front of me. As I was no longer part of the physical system that comprised the large vessel, it continued to rotate while I did not. I braced myself and pushed myself from the edge to enter the unfathomable blackness of the interior.

  My helmet light showed a passage running at an angle up and down, with a smaller hole blasted into the opposite wall. Clearly the projectile that struck the vessel was of considerable mass and velocity. Looking down the companionway I was overcome with a feeling of vertigo I had not experienced before, and I was grateful when the Captain took hold of my wrist before I fetched up against the opposite wall. I found a pipe running along the corridor and grasped it.

  A few moments later Ishar Ram floated through the gap at a sedate pace; he had no doubt observed the effect of the ship’s rotation and adjusted for it as he entered through the very centre of the hole.

  We took a few moments to discuss whether we should follow the path of destruction, or the corridor. My personal feeling was that I would rather move through the rooms exposed by the projectile, rather than remain in the upturned companionway which induced such discomfort in me. I disguised my sigh of relief as a slight cough when the Captain concurred. His logic was that the route opened up by the damage would reveal more of the interior more quickly than proceeding room to room.

  Let me take a moment to describe the damage wrought on the hull of this great vessel. The point of first entry, the tear through which we had just entered, was some fifteen feet across. The edges were pressed inward just as if it had been penetrated by a huge artillery shell, and the force of impact must have vaporised the majority of it. This spoke of inconceivably high temperatures, perhaps exceeding that of the Sun itself. The walls of the first corridor were indeed scorched and coated with a fine grain powder which I took for soot at first, but further examination suggested was an iron condensate.

  The penetration of the next wall had greater width than the entry wound. One can only imagine the fireball that erupted through the outer skin and then burned its way through. I paused for a moment to consider what would have happened to any person within this passageway at the moment of entry. One may be grateful they are unlikely to have even perceived their fate before it overcame and consumed them utterly.

  The story was similar in the next space we entered. Nothing remained in this room to suggest its function. One metal door in the “ceiling” stood ajar, but again the walls were coated with grains of metal and nothing else.

  The metal of the floor was melted in a deepening groove as the burning projectile had intersected the surface on its fiery trajectory through the vessel. The exit was only six feet across but had penetrated what would have been the junction of wall and floor. As a result we had three room options–the room directly below the one we were in, the room straight ahead, and the one diagonally down–a glance into each showed a similar story so we followed our original plan and tracked the course of the catastrophe.

  The projectile had penetrated the opposite wall in the next room but the gap was now only four feet across. We observed something unexpected: The torn edges of the metal were pointing back into the room we currently occupied. We consulted one another on this conundrum but could think of no explanation.

  We proceeded into the next room with more care, as the metal projected towards us and the gap was far smaller. We dared not risk rupturing our suits.

  This was the final room of devastation; the projectile had not forced an exit. I wondered for a moment whether it had somehow bounced and returned the way it had come, which might explain why the metal edges were turned in the wrong direction. It was a foolish notion.

  Other evidence presented itself, however, though there was no exit wound, every wall in the place revealed melted metal, indeed walls, floor and ceiling bulged outwards. In addition this room had been possessed of three doors, now just dark openings with the remains of steel doors hanging by torn hinges.

  The projectile had penetrated this far and exploded. Did that mean it was a weapon? That thought was a terrifying one: not only were we not the first men in the Void, was it possible the occupants of this vessel were at war with others?

  There was little more we could do here and our air supplies were not inexhaustible. We estimated our position to be near the far side of the vessel, and chose the door to the left in an effort to make our way to the prow where we supposed we would find the Bridge and perhaps be able to solve the mysteries of this strange vessel.

  The new companionway was scorched for a few yards but soon lost all indication of damage. It turned right and then left, which brought us face-to-face with the first member of the ship’s crew.

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 10:10

  Beyond the process of testing to ensure their integrity in a vacuum, and cautions in regard to the prevention of damage, little had been discussed about the avoidance of voiding one’s stomach into one’s vacuum suit in the presence of horrifying death.

  The nature of the event leading to this crewman’s death was easy to read. The remains of the door, from the room we had but recently vacated, had been driven with tremendous violence into the wall ahead of us. It was an outer wall and the door had hit it at an angle such that an edge of it had been driven through two sheets of steel. The temperature must have been tremendous as the door had been fused with the metal of the wall by the force of its impact. Its angle was such that its greater portion protruded inwards.

  By a quirk of terrible fate the crewman had been in the wrong place at the moment of impact and had been sandwiched between the door and the wall. One must assume the small mercy that his death had been so sudden that he did not see the end of his life when it came upon him.

  One half of his body, though grey and skeletal, was unmarked by his violent death. His undamaged left arm and leg were splayed out at unnatural angles. The remainder of his torso was hidden by the edge of the displaced door, but it was clear it could not be whole. If this had been the sum total of the damage I believe I would have had no trouble confining the contents of my stomach where it belonged.

  Where his extremities were largely undamaged, the flesh and muscle of his head had been ripped away and scorched. The bone of his skull casing was smashed inwards and remnants of desiccated brain matter hung from the remaining orifices of his head.

  My stomach heaved and I turned abruptly from the appalling sight. The idea of the inside of my suit being plastered with the contents of my stomach forced me to control the otherwise involuntary reactions.

  I felt a hand fall on my shoulder. No doubt it was meant as a comfort, but in the weightlessness of this strange and disorienting world, the net effect was to set me turning slowly head-over-heels. The twisting world disturbed my stomach even more. I reached out my hand and arrested my movement. Lying parallel to what had once been the floor.

  Finally I regained my composure and pushed myself into an upright position in relation to the others. At that moment the turning of the ship brought the puncture in the hull in line with the Sun. The corridor lit up with the intense brightness. And we were momentarily dazzled.

  As my eyes adjusted, I saw the Captain reach into his pocket and pull out his pistol. He raised it in my direction. The Captain was the only crew member permitted a firearm on the trip. The reasoning was simple enough: Men in trying conditions do not always behave with complete rationality. The Captain was the one with the most experience of flying, and of difficult situations. Therefore he was most likely the one to keep his head.

  I was forced to doubt this as the gun came up. Then Ishar grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him, past the Captain who kept his gun trained along the corridor behind me. I cursed myself for a fool once again.

  Ishar’s action caused me to spin around and I spotted th
e dark figure of a man further down the companionway. As we watched the figure seemed to rotate—though it was us turning with the ship—and one of his arms crumpled against the wall arresting his motion and causing him to rebound in another direction.

  The Captain moved forward, keeping his gun at the ready. We followed, drifting along the corridor towards the second body.

  This one was apparently undamaged but as dead as the first. His flesh, such as it was, was like parchment. If you have ever attended the unwrapping of an Egyptian mummy, you will know how he looked. His eye sockets contained the dust-remains of what must once have been his eyeballs. He had a head of dark hair and was possessed of a full beard.

  Seeing the body whole, I was able to take in more of the detail and noted his clothing resembled a uniform of some sort. It had mottled stains across it which, in a moment of revelation and revulsion, I realised had been left behind as his blood, and other bodily fluids, exited his body and evaporated. Dr Cholmondley’s experiments with various rodents in the artificial vacuum had demonstrated the effect.

  Our pressurised air containers would provide us with good air for another couple of hours but if we were to determine the origin and state of this vessel we must press on.

  We moved along the companionway. There were doors on our left at intervals and in our haste we chose to ignore them. The external wall had no portholes which I found unusual. Did these experienced Void travellers know of some particular and dangerous quality of the Void that meant they lived forever encased within metal walls? It was hard to merit, these were clearly men and we always want to see where we are. How could one travel the Void and not want to see the stars? It was another puzzle to add to the list.

  We were becoming adept at movement in weightlessness and traversed the remaining length of the companionway expeditiously. We had been unable to judge the size of the vessel from the outside and now, inside, it was clear its length was at least a quarter-mile: larger by far than most vessels, except perhaps one of Herr Zeppelin’s creations, and a good proportion of those were gas-bag.