Airship City

Chapter 11

The lift reached the bottom of the Core, and Joseph emerged, some of his determination having evaporated on the ride down. He looked uncertainly at the corridors leading off the circular floor, trying to decide which one he had come down when he had arrived, but they all looked the same. He supposed that it didn't really matter which one he took, as he wasn't trying to get back to H-1 in any event. He had a vague plan of getting onto the main deck, and trying to talk to some of the aircrew. He thought that as long as he steered clear of the Core, no-one would recognise him. He picked a corridor entrance at random, and set off.

It rapidly became clear that he had not chosen well. Instead of the relatively wide and straight corridors that Betty had led them through, he found himself in a maze-like warren of short, tight companionways interspersed with larger spaces that were filled with hissing, clanking machinery and pipes. It seemed he had stumbled into some sort of engineering area, and there was no obvious route through it. He decided to return to the Core and try a different corridor.

But retracing his steps was more easily thought of than carried out. He couldn't remember all of the twists and turns that he had taken, and after half an hour of traipsing up and down the narrow corridors, the noise of the machines making it hard to think, he had to admit that he was lost.

He had passed two or three boiler-suited engineers during his travels, who bustled past him with scarcely a glance, but now there was no-one to be seen. He tried to fight down a rising sense of panic as he walked, with ever-increasing pace, around corner after corner, never seeing anything but another short corridor. Just before he actually started running, he forced himself to stop, and take calming breaths.

There must be a way out of this maze. He carried on breathing deeply, and looked slowly around him. Up until that point he had not paid much attention to any of the corridors themselves, being focused only on where they would lead to. But now he noticed that there was a door on the left hand side of the one he was in, with a small round window in it. He peered through the wired glass, and saw steps leading downwards. Pushing the door open, he descended the steps.

On the next level, the little window in the door leading out of the stairwell showed a great bustle of people moving past it. He emerged into a wide and very busy thoroughfare. As he stared at the passing crowd, he was bumped by a short fat man in a chef's uniform. The man glared at him in irritation, and Joseph stepped back against the wall, only to block the progress of a thin-faced woman in a business suit. She pushed past him, shaking her head. Joseph shrank against the wall, feeling bewildered. He would need to get going if he was to avoid being a permanent roadblock. But which way should he go?

After a moment, it came to him. If Aeropolis was a floating city, these narrow corridors were her streets, or at least some of her streets. When he was trying to find his way in a city, he used street names, and sometimes signs with arrows pointing towards things, such as the signs in the City pointing towards St Paul’s, or the Tower.

On the wall opposite, above the heads of the throng, he could actually see some sort of sign. He turned cautiously, looking up, and saw the same thing painted on the wall above his head. Unfortunately he couldn't make much sense of it. There were letters, and numbers, and arrows, but it might as well have been in a foreign language for all the meaning it conveyed to him. Joseph’s shoulders slumped, the panic rising again. He felt trapped in the warren of tunnels. I have to get out!

He fought the panic down with an effort, trying to think calmly and logically. Obviously this part of Aeropolis was not exactly like a city; it was more like a very large ship. The people who lived and worked on it must use these coded signs so that they could find their way precisely. Vague directions like "this way to the main deck” would be pretty useless; the deck was huge. You would need to find your way to a particular part of it for the signs to be useful.