Airship City

Chapter 28

After wandering around aimlessly for a while, he remembered that his mother would be at work by now. As long as he went out again well before she was due back, he would in fact be able to go home. So he did so.

Letting himself into the house was a strange feeling. He was never home at this time on a weekday, and the whole atmosphere of the house was unfamiliar. It almost seemed to him that it resented being disturbed from its normal quiet routine by his presence. He tried to dismiss the thought, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

Flopping down on the bed, he tried to read, but his thoughts kept returning to his dire work situation, and it was impossible to concentrate. He threw the book down with a sigh, and cast about for something to distract him. He suddenly remembered his meeting with Monmouth the day before, and leaned over and pulled the package out from under his bed. He hefted it in his hand, wondering what was in it. This was clearly no test envelope; there must be something inside that Monmouth badly wanted to get onto Aeropolis. But what?

He shook the package, and it seemed he could hear a slight clinking sound. He squeezed it here and there, but whatever it contained was obviously well-padded, and felt quite solid. He was dying to know what was in it. Part of him knew it was just a distraction that his mind had seized on, but he didn’t care. He started to look carefully at the string binding, trying to work out if it was possible to slip the strings off without disturbing the wax seal, so that he could unfold some of the paper cover.

After about ten minutes of careful manipulation, he managed to get the string on one side slid off, allowing him to start unfolding the paper. He did it very carefully so as not to tear it, trying to remember how it was folded so that he could fold it back again the same way.

Whatever was inside the package was wrapped in some heavy brown sack-cloth. He managed to tease a fold of it outwards until he found an edge. Peering down through the folds, he saw the glint of metal.

By carefully widening the gap he was able to grasp the end of a fat metal tube, which he used to slide the whole thing out into his hand. It was about the size of a cigar tube, but much heavier, made of some dull silver metal. One end appeared to be some sort of cap, about two inches long, with a burred grip at its base. He carefully twisted the grip, and was able to unscrew the cap and remove it. Beneath the cap the end of the tube tapered into a sharp metal spike, with a series of round holes that ran all the way around the tube just below the base of the spike. A ring of wicked barbs encircled the tube above the screw thread that the cap engaged with; it looked as if the removal of the cap allowed them to spring away from the barrel of the tube, so that their ends pointed downwards. Joseph replaced the cap, noticing how it pushed the barbs back against the barrel again.

The other end had a sort of dial on it, with numbered graduations engraved on the tube, and a knurled knob above them. A red line painted on the knob was lined up with the letter S engraved just before the number zero on the dial, which ran up to the number thirty in multiples of five.

Joseph had absolutely no idea what it was. He had hoped to find something that identified Vanross, some incriminating document, but this meant nothing to him. If he went to Hughes with this, there was no telling what his reaction might be. Joseph might end up making things a lot worse for himself.

There seemed to be about half-a-dozen of the strange tubes in the package, and nothing else. He tightened the cap on the one he had removed, and carefully slid it back into place. He decided not to try re-wrapping the package just yet; there was time to do it before Friday, and perhaps he would need to look at them again, if something occurred to him in the meanwhile. So he replaced the package under his bed as it was.

The opening of the package had been a welcome distraction, but now that it was over the weight of his problems fell heavily on him again, and he sighed miserably. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even eleven yet. The day stretched out before him, empty and uninviting. What was he going to do with himself?