The Dark Design (45 page)

Firebrass would not like to take the vessel near the pressure height. An unexpectedly warm layer of air could cause the hydrogen in the cells to expand even more, thus making the ship more buoyant than was safe. Under those conditions, the
Parseval
would rise swiftly. The pilot would have to act swiftly, pointing the vessel’s nose down and also tilting the propellers to give a downward drive. If this maneuver failed, the gas, expanding under the lessened atmospheric pressure, would stretch the cell walls to the rupture point.

Even if the ship got through this situation, its loss of valved-off gas would mean that it would become heavy. The only way to lighten the ship would be to discharge ballast. If too much ballast was dropped, the
Parseval
would be too buoyant.

Firebrass said, “If it’s like this all the way around, we’re screwed. But Joe said…”

He stood for a moment, thinking, watching the dark, ominous mass gradually swell. Below them the Valley wriggled snakily, eternally covered with fog in this cold area. They had long ago passed the last of the double line of grailstones. Yet the radar and the infrared equipment showed that thick, high vegetation grew on the hills. One more mystery. How could trees flourish in the cold mists?

Firebrass said, “Take her down to 3050 meters, Cyrano. I want to get a good look at the headwaters.”

By “look” he meant a radar view. No one could see through the massive, boiling clouds covering the mighty hole at the base of the mountains. But radar showed a colossal exit for The River, an opening 4.9 kilometers or a little over 3 miles wide. The highest point of the arch was 3.5 kilometers.

The mighty flood rushed straight for 3 kilometers, then tumbled over the edge of a cliff and fell straight for 915 meters, over 3000 feet.

“Joe may have been exaggerating when he said you could float the moon on The River where it comes out of the cave,” Firebrass said, “but it is impressive!”

“Yes,” Cyrano said, “it is indeed grand. But the air here is almighty rough.”

Firebrass ordered the
Parseval
to a higher altitude and on a course which would parallel the mountain at a distance of 12 kilometers. Cyrano had to crab the dirigible and swivel the propellers to keep from being blown south, and it crept alongside the towering range.

Meanwhile, the radio operator tried to get into contact with the
Mark Twain.

“Keep it up,” Firebrass said. “Sam’ll want to know how we’re doing. And I’m interested in finding out how the
Minerva
made out.”

To the others he said, “I’m looking for that gap in the mountains. There has to be one. Joe said the sun momentarily flashed through a hole or what he thought was a hole. He couldn’t see the break, but since the sun never gets more than halfway up the horizon here, it couldn’t shine inside the sea unless there’s a break that starts at ground level.

Jill wondered why They would have erected such a mighty barrier only to leave an opening.

At 15:05, radar reported that there was a break in the verticality. Now the airship was over mountains outside the main wall. These mountains were not the continuous process surrounding the sea but were peaks, some of which reached 3040 meters. Then, as they came closer to the break, they saw that between the lesser mountains and the wall was an immense valley.

“A veritable Grand Canyon, as you have described it to me,” Cyrano said. “A colossal chasm. No one could get down its walls unless he used a rope 610 meters long. Nor could he ever get up the other wall. It is of the same altitude and its sides are as smooth as my mistress’ bottom.”

On the other side of the lesser mountains reared the mountain that walled The River. If a man could get over the nearer height and out of the Valley, he would then have to cross a rugged precipitous range for 81 kilometers or over 50 miles. After which, he would be confronted by the uncrossable valley.

“
Ginnungagap,
” Jill said.

“What?” Firebrass said.

“From Norse mythology. The primal abyss in which Ymir, the first of created life, the ancestor of the evil race of giants, was born.”

Firebrass snorted, and said, “Next you’ll be telling me that the sea is populated by demons.”

Firebrass looked cool enough, but she thought that this was a facade. Unless he had superhuman nerves, his body was under stress, the juices of the adrenals pouring out, his blood pressure up. Was he also thinking, as she was, that a much more experienced pilot should be at the controls? The Frenchman’s judgment and reflexes were probably swifter than anybody else’s. They had been tested scores of times in simulated emergencies during training. But—he just did not have thousands of hours of airship travel under Terrestrial, that is, swiftly changing, conditions. So far, the voyage had been uneventful. But the polar environment was unknown, and passing over these mountains might bring the ship into sudden unexpected forces. Not might. Would.

Here at the top of the world, the sun’s rays were weaker and thus it was colder. The River emptied into the polar sea on the other side of the circular range where it gave up the heat remaining after thousands of kilometers of wandering through the arctic region. The contact of cold air with warm waters caused the fog reported by Joe Miller. Even so, the air was relatively colder than that outside the mountains. The high-pressure cold air inside the ring of mountains would flow outward. Joe had described the wind that howled through the passes.

She wanted desperately to ask Firebrass to replace Cyrano with her. Or with Anna or Barry Thorn, the only other persons with much experience. Both were, objectively considered, as good as she. But she wanted to be in control. Only then would she feel at ease. Or as much at ease as the situation allowed.

Firebrass might have been of the same opinion. If so, he was not going to act on it, just as she was not going to express it. An unwritten, in fact, unspoken, code prevented that. It was Cyrano’s watch. To order him to give it up for a more qualified pilot would humiliate him. It would show a lack of confidence, make him seem to be less a “man.”

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The entire mission and one hundred lives were at stake.

Despite which, she would have said nothing even if she had thought she might be needed. Like the others, she was bound by the code. Never mind how antisurvival it was. She could not shame Cyrano. Besides, for her to suggest that he be replaced would shame her, too.

Now they were opposite the gap. It was not the V-shaped notch they had expected. It was a perfect circle cut into the mountain wall, a hole 3 kilometers across and 1000 meters above the base. From it sped clouds, driven by a wind which, if they could have heard it, would be “howling.” Cyrano was forced to point the dirigible directly into the hole to keep it from being blown southward. Even so, with motors operating at top speed, the
Parseval
could advance into it at only 16km/h or less than 10 mph.

“What a wind!” Firebrass said. He hesitated. The air flowing down from the top of the mountain would add its force to that streaming through the hole. And the pilot would have to rely on radar to sense the nearness of the sides of the hole.

“If the mountains aren’t any thicker than they are along The River,” Firebrass said, “we can get through the hole faster than a dog through a hoop. However…”

He bit down on his cigar, then said through clenched teeth, “Let’s take her through the gates of hell!”

Convergence of paths through chance fascinated Peter Frigate.

Pure chance had brought his
in potentio
into
essems.

His father was born and brought up in Terre Haute, Indiana; his mother, in Galena, Kansas. Not much chance for them to get together and beget Peter Jairus Frigate, right? Especially in 1918 when people did not travel much. But his grandfather, the handsome, affluent, gambling, womanizing, boozing William Frigate, was forced to take a business trip to Kansas City, Missouri. He thought his eldest son, James, should learn the details of handling his various interests throughout the Midwest. So he took the twenty-year-old along. Instead of driving in the new Packard, they took the train.

Peter’s mother was in Kansas City, living with her German relatives while she attended a business school. The Hoosier and the Jayhawk had never heard of each other. They had nothing in common except being human and living in the Midwest, an area larger than many European countries.

And so, one hot afternoon, his mother-to-be had gone to a drugstore for a sandwich and a milk shake. His father-to-be had gotten bored listening to a business conference between his father and a farm machinery manufacturer. When lunch hour came, the two older men had headed for a saloon. James, not wanting to start boozing so early, had gone into the drugstore. Here he was greeted by the pleasant odors of ice cream and vanilla extract and chocolate, the swishing of two big overhead fans, a view of the long marble counter, magazines on a rack, and three pretty girls sitting on wire chairs around a small marble-topped table. He eyed them, as would any man, young or old. He sat down and ordered a chocolate soda and a ham sandwich, then he decided he’d look the magazine rack over. He leafed through some magazines and a paperback fantasy about time travel. He didn’t care much about such romances. He’d tried H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Frank Reade, Jr. but his hard Hoosier head rejected such implausibilities.

On the way back, just as he passed the table at which the three giggling girls sat, he had to leap to one side to avoid a glassful of Coke. One of the girls, waving her hand while telling a story, had knocked it off. If he hadn’t been so agile, his pants leg would have been soaked. As it was, his shoe was stained.

The girl apologized. James told her that there was nothing to be concerned about. He introduced himself and asked if he could sit with them. The girls were eager to talk to a good-looking young man from the faraway state of Indiana. One thing led to another. Before the girls had gone back to the nearby school, he had arranged a date with “Teddy” Griffiths. She was the quietest of the trio and not quite the best looking, but there was something about the slim girl with the Teutonic features, the Indian-straight, Indian-black hair, and large dark-brown eyes that attracted him.

Elective affinity, Peter Frigate called it, not above borrowing a phrase from Goethe.

Courting in those days was not as free and easy as in Peter’s day. James had to go to the Kaiser residence on Locust Street, a long trip by streetcar, and be introduced to her uncle and aunt. Then they sat on the front porch with the old folks, eating homemade ice cream and cookies. About eight o’clock, he and Teddy went for a walk around the block, talking of this and that. On returning, he thanked her relatives for their hospitality and said good-bye to Teddy without kissing her. But they corresponded, and, two months later, James made another trip, this time in one of his father’s cars. And this time they did a little spooning, mostly in the back row of the local movie house.

On his third trip, he married Teddy. They left immediately after the wedding to take the train to Terre Haute. James was fond of telling his eldest son that he should have named him Pullman. “You were conceived on a train, Pete, so I thought it would be nice if your name commemorated that event, but your mother wouldn’t have it.”

Peter didn’t know whether or not to believe his father. He was such a kidder. Besides, he couldn’t see his mother arguing with his father. James was a little man, but he was a bantam rooster who ruled the roost, a domestic Napoleon.

This was the concatenation of events that had slid Peter Jairus Frigate from potentiality into existence. If old William had not decided to take his son along to Kansas City, if James had not been more tempted by a soda than by beer, if the girl hadn’t happened to knock over the Coke, there would have been no Peter Jairus Frigate. At least, not the individual now bearing that name. And if his father had had a wet dream the night before or had used a contraceptive on the wedding night, he, Peter, would not have been born. Or if there had been no mating, if it had been put off for some reason, the egg would have drifted off and out and into a menstruation pad.

What was there about that one spermatozoan, one in 300,000,000, that had enabled it to beat all the others out in the race to the egg?

May the best wriggler win. And so it had been. But it had been close, too close for comfort when he thought about it.

And then there was the horde of his brothers and sisters
in potentio,
unhoarded. They had died, arriving too late or not at all. A waste of flesh and spirit. Had any of the sperm had the potentiality for his imagination and writing talent? Or were those in the egg? Or were they in the fusion of sperm and egg, a combination of genes only possible in that one sperm and that one egg? His three brothers had no creative and little passive imagination; his sister had a passive imagination, she liked fantasy and science fiction, but she had no inclination to write. What had made the difference?

Environment couldn’t explain it. The others had been exposed to the same influences as he. His father had purchased that library of little red pseudoleather-bound books, what in hell was its name? It was a very popular home library in his childhood. But they hadn’t been fascinated by the stories in them. They hadn’t fallen in love with Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler in
A Scandal in Bohemia,
or sympathized with the monster in
Frankenstein,
or battled before the walls of Troy with Achilles, or suffered with Odysseus in his wanderings, or descended the icy depths to seek out Grendel with Beowulf, or journeyed with the Time Traveller of Wells, or visited those wild weird stars of Olive Schneider, or escaped from the Mohegans with Natty Bumppo. Nor had they been interested in the other books his parents bought him,
Pilgrim’s Progress, Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, The Arabian Nights,
and
Gulliver’s Travels.
Nor had they prospected at the little library branch, where he first dug the gold of Frank Baum, Hans Andersen, Andrew Lang, Jack London, A. Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, and H. Rider Haggard. And don’t forget the lesser, the silver, ore: Irving Crump, A.G. Henty, Roy Rockwood, Oliver Curwood, Jeffrey Farnol, Robert Service, Anthony Hope, and A. Hyatt Verrill. After all, in his personal pantheon, the Neanderthal, Og, and Rudolph Rassendyll ranked almost with Tarzan, John Carter of Barsoom, Dorothy Gale of Oz, Odysseus, Holmes and Challenger, Jim Hawkins, Ayesha, Allan Quatermain and Umslopogaas.