Skybreaker Read online

  “It’s very zingy,” I agreed.

  “Anyway, that’s why I picked the Jewels Verne. I was hoping you’d see me as I came in to land. You did see me, didn’t you?”

  “Everyone did. You caused quite a stir.”

  “Those trapeze landings are very tricky, you know!”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Are you impressed?” she asked.

  “Very.”

  Though, truth be told, I didn’t know exactly how I felt. Flying wasn’t just a hobby for me, it was something personal, all wound up in my bones and veins. It was my thing, and I wasn’t at all sure I liked sharing it with Kate. Especially since she was brilliant at so many other things.

  “I just thought it might come in handy,” Kate said. “Seeing as I intend to lead a life of dazzling adventure.”

  “When did you manage to take lessons?” I asked her.

  “Well, I have no classes at the Sorbonne on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so I thought I’d put the time to good use.”

  “Who’s been teaching you?” I demanded, suddenly suspicious.

  “A charming young gentleman called Philippe, as it turns out.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. He’s an instructor at a small flight school in the Bois de Bolougne. He had impeccable references, I might add. And he’s so kind. He’s offered to give me some extra lessons for half his usual price.”

  “I’m sure he has.” I didn’t like this at all. This Philippe probably had seen more of her than I had over the past few months.

  “I guess Miss Simpkins was there the whole time,” I said hopefully.

  “Fortunately, these ornithopters only seat two. Marjorie had to wait in the lounge, which was quite all right by her.”

  I couldn’t imagine that Kate’s parents approved of her learning to fly, and said so.

  Kate gave a Mona Lisa smile.

  “Ah,” I said, “of course. They don’t know. But didn’t Miss Simpkins tell them?”

  “Marjorie and I have a wonderful arrangement now,” Kate said, unable to hide her delight. “A while back she had a bit of a romance. With a real bounder actually.”

  “A bounder?”

  “Yes, one who bounds. Away. A rascal, you know. But Marjorie fancied him, and they had a bit of a fling. Anyway, I turned a blind eye to that, and in return she now turns a blind eye to some of my little projects.”

  “It sounds like there’s a lot of blindness going around,” I said.

  “It’s very convenient. And we get to have lunch just the two of us.” She squeezed some lemon juice on a large piece of smoked salmon. “This is quite a spread, Matt. I’ve never seen a waiter more attentive.”

  “Well, it seems they’ve…heard of me.” I shook my head humbly. “You know, my little adventure aboard the Aurora, and all.”

  “It was my adventure, too,” she said, rather put out.

  “Ah, but you didn’t defeat Vikram Szpirglas in single-handed combat on the ship’s tail fin, did you.”

  “You told me he slipped.”

  “Well, I gave him a good shove.”

  “Hmm.” She narrowed her nostrils for a moment—an old trick of hers when she wanted to put someone in their place—but then she smiled. “I missed you these two weeks. So, how was your training tour? You’re back early.”

  “Ah, well, there’s a story to that.”

  “Was the ship as horrible as you thought it would be?”

  “Much worse.” I smiled. I’d been dying to tell her all about my ill-fated flight aboard the Flotsam.

  “Can’t wait,” she said. “And I have some exciting news too!”

  “Well, you go first,” I said, practicing gentlemanly restraint. “You sure?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I didn’t actually think she’d take me up on it, but she did. She reached inside her aviatrix jacket and took out a folded newspaper.

  “You haven’t seen today’s Global Tribune, have you?” When I shook my head she opened the newspaper and lay it flat on the table. In amazement and dismay I stared at the headline:

  HYPERION SIGHTED

  Beneath it, an artist had drawn a rendition of the famous ghost ship.

  I’d been scooped.

  “Apparently,” Kate said, “some cargo ship spotted it over the Indian Ocean. Isn’t that fabulous?”

  I grabbed the paper. Someone aboard the Flotsam must have sold the story to the newspapers for quick money. Captain Tritus would be furious; he’d told his crew to keep it secret, for he intended to salvage the Hyperion as soon as his ship was repaired. Given the Flotsam’s condition, that wouldn’t be any time soon.

  “I remember my grandfather telling me about the Hyperion,” Kate said. “Have you heard of her?”

  “I saw her,” I said, still reading.

  “What?”

  “I was on that cargo ship.”

  Kate snatched the paper away from me.

  “The Flotsam,” I told her. “That was my training ship.”

  “No!”

  Immediately I felt better, just looking at the astonishment on her face.

  “You saw the Hyperion?”

  I nodded, took a slow sip of my champagne, and put the glass down carefully, savoring the moment. Here I was, dining in the fanciest restaurant in Paris, drinking the finest champagne in the world, and, best of all, seated across from a dazzling young lady, who was hanging on my every word.

  “I was going to tell you right away, but you said you had exciting news.”

  “You should’ve just told me to put a cork in it.”

  “I’ll remember that next time.”

  Between us, we’d pretty much finished off the salmon and the salad. The waiter whisked away our plates, and I’d scarcely taken three breaths before new ones were set before us.

  “Arctic char,” Kate said in delight.

  I looked over her shoulder to see Chef Vlad peeping out through the doorway. He smiled, gave a little wave, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “Tell me everything,” Kate commanded, and set to her meal.

  In between bites of my delicious duck, I told her the whole story, glad that we were seated a ways off from the other diners. I didn’t want anyone else hearing. Every time the waiter came near to see how we were doing, Kate dismissed him with a little imperious wave. She was a very satisfying audience, I must say, her big brown eyes never straying from me as I spoke. Halfway through my story she took my hand under the table, and the unexpected warm touch of her sent a hot rush through the hidden parts of my body. I stumbled over my words.

  “Keep going,” she said impatiently.

  “Sorry. You just distracted me.”

  “Should I let go?” she whispered.

  “No, I like it.”

  I continued on, and during the most dangerous and exciting bits, I felt her squeeze my hand hard.

  “Gosh,” she said when I’d finished. “How terrible about Mr. Domville.”

  “When I left Ceylon, he was still in the hospital.”

  For a moment she said nothing. “But it’s really up there. The Hyperion.”

  “Way up there.”

  She leaned forward. “Do you know what’s aboard?”

  “Gold, they say.”

  “Oh, yes, gold,” she said dismissively. “But do you know what else?”

  “Lots of very frosty corpses.”

  “Possibly. But listen. The Hyperion was owned by Theodore Grunel.”

  “The inventor, I know.”

  “Not just any inventor! He built most of the great bridges in the world. Plus the underground railways of Europe. Oh, and the tunnels beneath the Strait of Gibraltar and the English Channel.”

  “The internal combustion engine was his too,” I said.

  “I was just getting to that. It made him immensely wealthy. And after that he invented all sorts of other things. He was brilliant, but very, very odd, by all accounts. Lots of strange habits. Didn’t like people much. He ha
d a son and daughter, and didn’t get along with them at all, especially the girl. She married someone he didn’t approve of apparently, and they never spoke again. Cut her off completely. Anyway, that’s not important. When he got older he became more and more reclusive. He would take long mysterious journeys. No one really knew what he was doing anymore. Then one day he disappeared. He left behind a statement announcing he was leaving Edinburgh and moving to America. Just like that. He’d had his own special ship built in secret, to carry all his belongings. He’d handpicked the captain and all the crew. They say that ship was carrying his entire life, everything he owned!”

  She looked at me triumphantly.

  “So there’s also some very nice furniture aboard,” I said.

  “He wasn’t just an inventor. He was also an avid collector. He had one of the most extensive collections of taxidermy in the world.” She paused, and lowered her voice. “He had specimens he never showed to the public.”

  My skin crawled. “Like what?”

  “No one knows. Some people say he had animals that had been extinct for centuries, or creatures everyone thought were imaginary. And it’s all up there in the Hyperion. The entire ship is like a floating zoological museum—a museum that’s never been seen before.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I don’t give two hoots about the gold! But wouldn’t I like to see his bestiary! Why don’t we get her?”

  I gave a laugh. “Just like that?”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s too high. She can’t be reached.”

  “Just because you failed.”

  “If we’d gone any higher, we’d all have died.”

  “Well, there’s got to be some way.”

  Kate was not one to let a little trifle like death stop her. Looking at her eyes, I could tell she was serious, and with some alarm, I started to feel her gravitational pull.

  “She’s drifting at around twenty thousand feet,” I said. “It’s freezing cold up there, and that’s not the worst of it. The air’s too thin to breathe. At that altitude, the gas cells explode and the engines fail.”

  “Because the air pressure’s so low, is that right?”

  I nodded, impressed. “The internal combustion engine wasn’t designed to work at those heights.”

  “What about turbocharging?” she suggested casually.

  I looked at her carefully. “Now you’re scaring me. You’ve been thinking about this already, haven’t you!”

  “A girl’s permitted to think, isn’t she, Mr. Cruse?”

  “Why do I have the terrible feeling you’ve already made plans, and I’m just getting mangled into them?”

  “But it is possible, about the engines, isn’t it?”

  “Theoretically, yes. If you pumped air into the engines, to keep them at sea-level pressure, they could operate at any altitude. Or you could just pressurize the entire engine car.”

  Kate nodded innocently. “Just something I read about. A type of ship called a skybreaker.”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go encouraging her.

  “So you’ve heard of them?” she asked.

  “Well, we’ve talked about them in class. I think only a few have ever been made, and most are still in the experimental stage. There are lots of problems with them. It’s not just the engines. At high altitude your hydrium expands so much you’d have to vent huge amounts of it. And if you vent too much, you lose all your lift, and then you’re finished. It almost happened to us in the Flotsam.”

  Kate nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure some clever fellow could solve that problem.”

  “There’s not much point,” I said, and then started thinking about it a little more. “Although…you would be above the weather, which means you wouldn’t have to fly around it when it’s bad. And the thinner air means less resistance, so you’d go faster on less fuel.”

  Kate was beaming at me.

  “But this is all hypothetical,” I hurried on. “As far as I know no one’s gotten to that stage yet.”

  “I get the feeling you don’t really want the Hyperion.”

  “No sense yearning after what we can’t have.”

  “I think that’s precisely the whole point of life,” Kate insisted.

  “Well, I’d find some other impossible dream that’s safer. Anyway, say you did find a proper skybreaker. Not many captains would be willing to risk their lives on something so dangerous.”

  “Oh, come on! If there was treasure waiting for them?”

  “Rumored, not proven.”

  “Grunel was one of the richest men in Europa.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Matt, how many people would have the Hyperion’s coordinates?”

  “Mr. Domville, if he recovers. Tritus might remember them, but probably only a general idea. Same with the bridge crew. The chart was completely ruined by water. I saw it when we landed. You couldn’t read a thing.”

  “You remember, though,” she said.

  I nodded. “But it doesn’t matter. The Hyperion is drifting. She’s carried along by the winds at twenty thousand feet. I saw her almost three days ago. Who’s to say where she is now?”

  This did seem to stump her. “But you have a rough idea of her direction and speed?”

  “Very, very rough. The winds change all the time. She could be anywhere over the globe by now.”

  “Your whole attitude is very defeatist,” Kate said.

  “Not defeatist. Honest. I just like my goals a bit more attainable.”

  “How frightfully practical of you.”

  For a few minutes we ate in silence. The champagne didn’t taste as fizzy as before.

  “You know, I’m rather peeved with you,” she said.

  “I can see that!”

  “On quite a different matter, actually. I’ve heard there’s a ball at the Airship Academy next weekend.”

  I’d been hoping she wouldn’t find out. “Yes…”

  “Were you planning on going?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Because if you were going, and didn’t invite me, I might be a little miffed.”

  “Miffed?”

  “Put out. Upset. Angry, even.”

  “If I were going, there’s no one else in the world I’d rather invite.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. Her expression was a mixture of longing and expectation—and something else: mischief. “Gosh, I haven’t been to a ball in ages!”

  It was a formal affair, the Autumn Ball, with mandatory black tie for the gentlemen. There was a sumptuous dinner in the grand hall, and afterward, dancing. Aboard the Aurora, I’d spent years around ladies and gentlemen in all their best finery, but I’d been serving them. I couldn’t imagine being one of them. I wouldn’t fit in, just like I didn’t fit in here in the Jewels Verne. Most of my fellow students at the Academy were older than me by at least a year, and many of them were from very wealthy families. Half the time I felt I should be serving them drinks.

  “Why don’t you want to go?” Kate asked.

  I was too embarrassed to tell her how expensive the tickets were, and that I could ill afford them—or the cost of renting a dinner jacket for that matter.

  “Would Miss Simpkins even let you go with the likes of me?” I asked.

  “The blind eye, remember.”

  “This might take two blind eyes.”

  “I’ll get her a cane.”

  “I don’t know how to dance,” I admitted, which was true enough.

  “Ah. I could help you out there. If I were invited, that is.”

  I took a breath. “Miss de Vries, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the Autumn Ball?”

  “I think I’m busy that evening, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Only joking.” She couldn’t stop herself laughing. “I’d love to come. Thank you very much. Lovely. That’s that settled.”

  “I’m glad you can tick that off your list,” I said, grinning.

  “There’s
still the Hyperion.”

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

  “Someone’s going to get her. Why not us? Grunel’s collection should be brought back to earth and put in a museum.”

  “A museum named after you, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t understand why you’re not more interested, Matt. You’d get awfully rich!”

  I wondered if she wanted me rich, but said nothing.

  “I must fly,” she said, looking at her wristwatch. “I’ll be late for class as it is.”

  “How much champagne have you had?”

  “Just the one glass. I’m very responsible, I’ll have you know. I’d offer you a lift, but it’s only a single-seater.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “It’s just a quick walk along the river for me.”

  “You don’t trust my flying, do you?”

  “I just don’t care for ornithopters.”

  “Have you flown in one before?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Widen your horizons, Mr. Cruse.”

  “You’re quite right.”

  I stood and pulled out her chair.

  “You’re sure about the bill,” she said softly.

  “It’s all taken care of,” I assured her.

  We made our way to the elevator. The maitre d’ smiled weakly as we passed.

  “Merci beaucoup, monsieur,” I said to him. “My compliments to the chef.”

  We asked the elevator man to take us down to the ornithopter hangar. Stepping out, I could see the docking trapezes and great pulleys and tracks that moved the feathered craft to their berths and back to the launch position at the platform’s edge.

  “Mine’s the lovely coppery one, over there,” Kate told the harbor master proudly.

  “Very good, Miss de Vries. We’ll move it into position for you. Won’t be a moment.”

  There were few people about, and I took Kate’s hand and drew her into a hidden corner. I pressed her against the girders and kissed her. Her mouth felt a little hard at first, for I’d taken her by surprise, but then it softened into mine. For a few delicious moments we were back in the island forest where I’d first kissed her, and tasted her lips and tears mingled. I wanted all of her, all at once, every scent and surface of her. I wanted to bottle her like ambrosia.

  “A kiss like that,” Kate said when we finally drew apart, “is usually followed by a proposal of marriage.”