20 Million Leagues Over the Sea Read Free Page B

human achievement, the TIAS Thunder
Child's Fury ."
    Moreau pulled a lever on the adjacent wall.
The deck plates hummed as a section of the wall rolled back and
revealed the dark space beyond.
    Gemma gasped. The ship was even larger than
she had imagined. The schematics had not prepared her for this;
they were just drawings and figures on paper. This beast was alive
and floating below her like some magnificent creature of the sea.
Enormous nozzles stretched out from either end of the ship,
extending its length. It resembled a gargantuan crab ready to crawl
sideways across the sky.
    "Why do we have nozzles on both ends?" she
asked. "I understand why they would be aft, but--"
    "But why forward? For braking. We have to
slow down at some point, so we can get into Mars' orbit. We'll
start using those on Braking Day, partway through the trip. We
figured that would be simpler than turning the ship around
mid-sail."
    She blinked at him.
    "It's just like a sailing vessel, where one
cannot just stop the ship like one stops a motor car. We're
spilling wind from the sails, except we're doing it with the
direction of thrust." The captain continued his story as she stared
out the viewport. "She's a real beaut, isn't she? Victory Class.
She's the first."
    "The only," muttered Pugh.
    A sea of rivets dotted its skin in straight
lines of steel barnacles, broken every so often by intersecting
circles of smaller nozzles. According to the schematics she had
seen, these were the maneuvering thrusters, used to nudge the ship
into new directions. The top of the ship was longer than the
Gatwick Racetrack. The airships that she had flown in were
enormous, but this behemoth dwarfed even them. It was a metallic
monster suspended against waves of stars. It felt odd to see it
just hanging in space, with neither ground nor water to support it.
Just seeing it made her forget for a moment why they were here in
this high and lonely place.
    There was a slight glow to her left. She
supposed that was the engine test that the captain had
mentioned.
    "Apex of human achievement?" Dr. Pugh
snorted. "Hardly. Apex of thievery, more like. We made it the
old-fashioned way. We stole it."
    "We made use of the spoils of war!" Captain
Moreau replied. "They invaded us. It was ours by rights."
    "Bah. Theft!"
    "Reverse Engineering!"
    "How is it that we are not falling back to
Earth?" Gemma interrupted.
    Dr. Pugh snorted at the question and mumbled
something about the current state of women in the natural
philosophies.
    The captain's voice swelled with pride as he
answered. "Believe it or not, Miss Llewellyn, we are falling! We
are moving fast enough sideways at the same time that we end up
staying in place. It feels like we are standing still, but we are
moving at an incredible rate of speed. We feel the pull of Earth
beneath us as she seeks to pull us back into her embrace. That
keeps the station from drifting away. The movement keeps us in
place and prevents our falling. It is a perfect balance." He gave
her a long searching look, and then he turned his gaze to the ship
below them. "We are in orbit, my lady. Even when we are standing
completely still, we are moving faster than humans have ever moved
before. We are so high in the sky that we should be floating inside
the station. Do you know how it is that you can stand on the
floor?"
    "More purloined technology," Dr. Pugh
growled. "We know how to build it, but we don't understand the
physics that makes it work."
    The captain waved him off. "Gravity plates.
They are on the ship, too."
    "Thank the good Lord for that," Dr. Pugh
replied. "If the ladies' skirts went flying up during tea, the
Cultural Officer would be quite put out."
    "The wireless transistors in our suit helmets
were all ours," the captain countered. "We managed to shrink those
down all on our own." He smiled down at Gemma. "So, what do you
think?"
    "She is ... unbelievable," Gemma stammered.
Her voice was a hair above a whisper as she watched the glow of the
test