Skybreaker Read Free

away.
    “Say again, Mr. Sloan!” Captain Tritus barked impatiently into the mouthpiece.
    “It’s definitely some kind of vessel.”
    The captain removed his hat, grabbed his spyglass, and stuck his head out a side window. Wind blasted at his hair, though I noticed it scarcely moved, being so well greased to his skull. He pulled his head back in with a curse.
    “Can’t see a damn thing.” He took up the mouthpiece. “Not been drinking I hope, Mr. Sloan!” he bellowed, and it was not a joke. “Don’t lose sight of it now, we’re coming about!” He turned to Mr. Schultz. “Angle us up eight degrees or so. Let’s see if we can spot Mr. Sloan’s ghost ship.”
    The Flotsam turned, and Mr. Domville and I were busy for the next few minutes, updating the chart, which now resembled the scribblings of a lunatic. I felt our nose pitching up as the elevator flaps pushed our tail lower. It was an ungainly angle, and one that strained both engines and fins, but it would give the captain a better vantage point.
    “We’re aimed right at her now, Captain!” I heard Sloan say over the speaking tube. I wanted to rush forward and peer through the windows, but I could not leave my station. Captain Tritus scanned the skies with his spyglass.
    “Zeus’s throne,” he muttered, and I must say, a cold tingle swept my arms and neck. “Something’s up there. Cruse, try to raise her on the wireless!”
    Since there was no proper wireless officer aboard the Flotsam, the task fell to the assistant navigator—me. I hurried to the ancient radio beside the chart table, hoping I’d remember what to do with the bewildering array of knobsand switches. I pulled the headphones over my ears and lifted the microphone. The radio was already tuned to the universal airship frequency.
    “This is Flotsam, hailing vessel heading south southwest from bearing 90°28” longitude by 9°32” latitude. Please reply.”
    When I heard nothing, I bumped up the wattage and tried twice more, without success.
    “Nothing, sir,” I told Captain Tritus.
    “Try the distress frequency.”
    Rapidly I turned the needle to the proper location and listened. Soft static whispered over my headphones.
    “There’s nothing coming in, sir.”
    “Not surprised,” muttered Mr. Domville. “At that height, unless they had tanked oxygen, they’d all be unconscious.”
    He was right. All the flight manuals said that at altitudes over sixteen thousand feet, supplemental oxygen was mandatory. And the cold would be something else altogether, far below freezing. What had happened to drive her so high? I wondered if her engines had failed, or maybe she’d jettisoned too much ballast, and the storm’s updraft had lifted her to this deadly height—a fate that easily could have been ours.
    “Her propellers aren’t even turning,” Captain Tritus remarked, spyglass to his eye. “What a wreck! She’s older than the pyramids. Can’t make out her name …” He pulled the mouthpiece close. “Mr. Sloan, have you got her name yet?”
    “It’s …” There was a lengthy pause. “Captain, I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s the
Hyperion
.”
    Without a word Captain Tritus dropped the mouthpiece and once more lifted the spyglass to his eye. For a long time he stared.
    There could be no one in the Control Car who hadn’t heard of the
Hyperion
. She was a ship of legend, like the
Marie Céleste
, or the
Colossus
—vessels that had set out from harbour and never reached their destinations. The
Hyperion
was rumoured to be carrying great wealth. She may have crashed, or been pillaged by pirates. But no wreckage was ever found. Over the years sky sailors sometimes claimed to have spotted her, always fleetingly and from afar, and usually on foggy nights. Before I was born there was a famous photograph that was supposed to be of the
Hyperion
sighted over the Irish Sea. My father had shown it to me in a book. It was later exposed as a fake. She was a ghost ship—a good