20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (23 page)

"Just a moment, if you please, Mr. Rathbone.
Let's get Mr. Cervantes squared away first."

Corpsmen surged through the door behind
Rathbone, who moved against the wall to allow them to bring in a
stretcher. They carefully rolled the injured man onto it and lifted
him from the floor. One of the corpsmen took over Christophe's
pressure point, and the others that were not holding up the
stretcher were pouring styptic powder on the myriad wounds. They
moved him in a slow scrum towards the door.

"Hold on, Miguel," Christophe said to his
friend's still form. "Hold on, old sport. The
Fury
needs
you!"

To Dr. Hansard he said, "Please keep me
informed. Do you think we should get Father Alfieri?"

The surgeon shuffled along with his corpsmen,
careful to avoid jostling his charge. "Oh, heavens, I hope not. But
you might send someone for him to come down. His presence would be
a comfort to Cervantes, at any rate. I'd keep this off the speaking
tubes for the moment, until we know something."

"I'll be glad to fetch him," Rathbone
volunteered.

Christophe nodded at both of them, feeling
unsteady as he heard the sand crunch beneath his feet. At least
with Miguel around, he had some vestige of his days at sea with
him. He could feel that tenuous thread slipping away. Biting his
lip, he wished he could lend his friend some of his own
strength.

When the surgeon's crew was gone, Christophe
turned to the waiting wireless officer, who could not tear his gaze
away from the blackened walls of the Chamber and the bits of jagged
metal embedded in them.

"We need to report this incident back to the
Admiralty," Christophe said. "Please send a message to Thorvaldson
that we have had an incident with the heat ray test."

Rathbone swept the scene once more with his
gaze and arched a wary eyebrow. "An
incident
, sir?"

"Yes, a severe incident, Mr. Rathbone." His
reply was rather harsher than he had intended. "Tell him that a
full report will follow by the end of the day. No more than that,
Rathbone. We need to assess what happened here and make sure what
we say is accurate. And tell no one else, yet, of what you've seen.
I need to address the crew myself on that account. Except for
Father Alfieri, of course. Just tell him that Cervantes is injured
and that his presence is needed in sick bay. The doctor will fill
him in on the rest. Make sure no one else hears you. Dismissed, Mr.
Rathbone."

"Aye Aye, Captain," Rathbone replied with
another sharp salute. He turned on his heel and left the
Chamber.

Pugh and Christophe were alone in the filthy,
smoky room, with the acrid smell of electrical fire and burnt skin
lingering about them.

Christophe thought his voice would shatter
into a million pieces. "What will we do without him? He's the best
sailor on the ship. He always kept a cool head at the wheel. There
were icicles on his nose when we rounded Cape Horn, and he didn't
even blink! Even the winds of the Furious Fifties couldn't drive
him from his post." He paced across the small chamber. He caught
himself against an unshredded strip of console when he encountered
a sandless pool of blood and nearly lost his balance.

"Blast it all, Elias!" Christophe said,
pounding his fist on the console and snarling. "What absolute
bollocks! If only the Martians were pirates on the Spanish Main! We
wouldn't need a bloody heat ray. I could use a cutlass and a musket
or a good cannon or two. A pox on space travel!"

"Time to captain up, Christophe," Pugh said,
after giving him a moment to catch his breath. "Keep busy. Before
you write your report for headquarters, even before you run to sick
bay, make arrangements for the fire buckets to be refilled straight
away, especially the sodium bicarbonate, in case the fires flare up
again. I do hope we brought enough, if this is any indication of
what is to come. Someone needs to be on watch in here in case it
does flare up, or in case--"

"In case someone decides to come back and try
again? Do you think it was sabotage, then?" Christophe asked in a
low voice, futilely attempting to brush the sand off his hands and
casting a furtive glance at the still-open door. "Admiral
Thorvaldson was concerned that we might have agents aboard, but I
had hoped he was just paranoid. Who would do such a thing? They
would endanger themselves as well as the ship."

"Do you think someone may have wanted to harm
Miguel in particular?"

"How could they be sure it would be him at
that very moment? Besides, the men respect him. And he liked
everyone except--"

He stopped, not wanting to speak the name
that came to his lips.

"Except?"

"He was concerned about Miss Llewellyn. Not
about anything specific, but you know how suspicious he is
sometimes. I can't believe it, though. She's no killer. I'd stake
my life on it."

Alarm crossed the elderly scientist's face.
He pursed his lips before he said, "I'm not sure of anything yet. I
need to have someone take a closer look at the gubbins here before
we start clapping people in irons. But not until the fire buckets
are refilled. That fire might flare up again, and I would hate to
be the one on the business end of it. At the same time, I would say
that on the surface, this is no great surprise. Honestly, they
never really understood the entire workings of the Martian version
of the ray, no matter how many times old Abbie translated what we
found. Even Maggie couldn't get it to work, if you recall. I warned
them, but they wouldn't listen. I can't lay the blame on the gun
crews or Cervantes. Or you, for that matter, son. There is a high
price to be paid, though, for trying to wage war with stolen
weapons."

"And Miguel paid it."

A surge of fury pulsed through him. He knew
it was time to take charge, no matter what was happening with his
first mate. His jaw clenched tightly with anger, but his thoughts
were clearing.

"I feel responsible, Elias. As skipper of
this ship, I agreed that we should launch now. We needed the heat
ray to defend ourselves in case we met any resistance. The launch
window was closing. At the next opposition, we'd be out of solar
minimum, and we'd have had a much greater chance of repeating the
disaster of the lunar voyage. I didn't want to lose anyone else
that way." He took a deep breath and felt a veil fall between him
and the gnawing anxiety over his first mate. "We need some kind of
contingency plan for ship to ship fighting in case we cannot repair
it. We don't want to be caught with our trousers down if Martians
meet us halfway. Those G-bombs aren't guided missiles. They're
useless unless we're in orbit. What does the Cohort have that we
might use in its stead?"

Pugh ruminated for a moment. "I need to talk
to Hui. Perhaps it's time his pet project took centre stage. I need
to discuss it with Maggie, as well, then compose the right message
for the boys back home, after we've dealt with the more immediate
issues." Pugh chewed on his lip. "Do you think Old Nicky still has
that volume of Tennyson you gave him last Christmas?"

"I gave you both one," Christophe replied,
puzzled.

"Precisely, my boy," Pugh said with a
mysterious smile. "Buck up. We will see this through."

"One last thing," Christophe said. "Maggie
will need to know. About Cervantes, I mean. I don't know how to
tell her." Despair struggled to get through his shield of
captainship again. "She'll be distraught."

Pugh said in a low whisper, "She may know
already. You manage things up here, Captain. I'll handle Maggie.
I'll have some of the Cohort go over the scene here. We'll meet in
your Ready Room as soon as possible to report our findings. We both
have work to do." He loped out of the chamber. "Don't forget the
fire buckets, son," he called over his shoulder. Pugh's voice faded
as he moved down the corridor. "Rathbone, hold the lift for me,
there's a good lad!"

Christophe stared down at his hands. He tried
to curl his fingers, but they were too stiff from the mixture of
sand and blood drying on them.

Captain
, he thought to himself,
wondering if he really deserved that title, after all.

~~~~

Gemma

Gemma could smell the chamber before she
reached it. The stink of burnt flesh and the iron of spilt blood
were unmistakable. She had been in enough laboratories over the
past few years to know a horrific accident when she smelt it.

As they approached the entrance, the captain
emerged. He was so changed that Gemma thought she was looking at a
different man. The brash countenance and the sharpness of his eyes
had vanished; in their place was the saddest face she had ever
seen. A bloodstained scarecrow had replaced the bright blue jay
that just a few days ago had told her to have no fear. Deep lines
furrowed either side of the frown scraped across his face. It was
as if a heavy mist had veiled the sun. She looked from his face to
his hands, where he clutched a towel stiff with drying crimson. She
would much rather see the rakish captain than this wretched
fellow.

"Miss Llewellyn, Dr. Pugh," he said, greeting
them with a curt nod. His sad eyes widened a little at the sight of
Gemma. He looked at her in confusion, then at Dr. Pugh. His voice
was so diminished that her heart ached in a way it hadn't since she
had lost Philippa.

"Will Dr. Hui be joining you?" asked the
captain.

"In a bit," Dr. Pugh replied.

"Very well. We've refilled the fire buckets,
and I've confirmed that the speaking tubes are in working order.
Should I stay, in case--"

"We should be fine, Captain," Pugh replied.
"I know you have other duties that require your attention. I'll be
by later to present our findings." The elderly scientist leaned
closer to the young man and whispered the rest. Gemma's keen
hearing still picked up his next words: "I've asked Knopf to send a
tray up to your Ready Room. Keep up your strength, son."

Son
? Gemma thought as he took his
leave of them and made his way down the corridor at a funereal
pace.

She noted once more how both men had the same
tall, lean frame. She
was
supposed to watch the captain,
after all, in addition to finding Orion. She was not convinced that
they were unrelated -- either the captain and Orion, or the captain
and Dr. Pugh. Humboldt's theory that Pugh had "found" an orphaned
Moreau seemed less and less likely to her.

As she observed the captain's slow gait, she
wasn't sure if she felt irritation or dismay, or equal parts of
both. The world spoke of him as Arthur returned, or even Nemo,
risen from the grave and taking the
Nautilus
to the stars.
She chided herself for reading too many of Aronnax's notes. The
real Nemo was more likely to kick the Oberths up a notch, slide
right past Mars, and leave the teeming masses of humanity behind.
In that case, they had better hope that the captain was not Nemo
returned. There was small chance of that, anyway. Moreau was
nothing like him... except perhaps his reaction to the current
situation. Nemo may not have been a man of the people, but he had
had a deep attachment to his crew.

She considered that for a moment.
Wouldn't
it be ironic
, she thought,
if they had resurrected Nemo, but
ended up with all the wrong bits
?

Dr. Pugh led her through the door, and she
shook her head free of such flights of fancy. Even though she was
not exactly a novice to grisly situations, she still grimaced at
the sight. Before Dr. Pugh could address her again, her eyes swept
the chamber: blackened and scarred walls, bits of metal and gears
spread hither and yon, and a dried mud of more blood and sand on
the floor, with a dusting of pink-stained powder over it all.

Dr. Pugh secured the door and leaned upon it,
his giant praying mantis-like arms folded against his brown jacket.
"Please, please tell me that you had nothing to do with this.
Please tell me that this was not your mission."

She shook her head. "No. Mrs. Brightman is in
the habit of appropriating technology, Dr. Pugh. Not destroying
it."

"You must admit, Miss Llewellyn, that the
entire idea of this mission breaks all the normal Brightman
protocols."

"I assure you, this was not my doing. I did
not know where this chamber was until now. And what possible
motivation would I have to do so? It would put me in as much danger
as the rest of you. Are you certain it was not just an
accident?"

"That is what I am trying to ascertain. With
Petunia, you never know.
You
might only steal science, but
she
is certainly not above sacrificing one of her Girls to
avenge herself. Hell hath no fury like the scorned Belladonna of
Guildford." He held a hand up to stop the obvious question that
sprang to her lips. "Oh, not now, not now. I did not think it was
you, but I had to ask. I've already spoken with the Gun Control
lads, and they don't recall seeing you in this area at any point.
They'd remember the swishing of skirts, of that I'm certain." He
took a deep breath, then released it. "What a relief. I did not
want to think that my brightest student--"

"What do you need, Dr. Pugh?"

"I need you to role-play for me, Gemma. I
need for you to turn your Brightman Eye to a higher purpose. If it
had been your mission to fool about with the heat ray, why would
you do it?"

"Most likely I'd locate information to send
back. Notes, drawings, schematics, that sort of thing. A photograph
or two of what was behind the panel, if I could manage it."

"Would you need flash powder, still?"

"Yes."

"Hmmm. Do we see any evidence of it? Perhaps
someone else in your Peculiar Occupation was at work here?"

The spectre of a possible Watcher arose once
more in her mind.