Airship City

Chapter 40

As he dangled from a rope below the airship, hundreds of feet above the earth, with Aeropolis being left rapidly behind, Joseph had to fight down the panic. Part of him was shouting angrily at himself for being a complete idiot, while another part was convinced he was going to die. He glanced downwards, at the green patchwork quilt of the home counties far below, and was hit by a wave of vertigo. He resolved to never do that again, and forced his gaze upwards, to his lifeline extending away above him, terminating at the airship, and he knew that his only hope was to climb.

Hand over hand he inched painfully up the rope, until his muscles burned and his shoulders ached with the strain. He discovered after a while that if he pressed his shoes together with the thick rope between them, he was able to get some traction, and with the aid of his leg muscles he made much better progress. Soon enough he was at the level of the gondola windows, and he saw, through them, Vanross and Monmouth and Rasmussen, all sitting together in the cockpit.

The sight filled him with anger. He suddenly wanted them to see him, so that they would know that they hadn’t escaped, that he was still chasing them. His anger burned inside him, but even as his mind tried to come up with a way to get their attention, a cold realisation of how pathetic he would look came upon him. What could he do to them, dangling out here on the end of a rope? All they would have to do was remain aloft for a few hours, and he would fall, unable to cling on any longer.

But perhaps they had planned a long flight anyway? They were presumably fleeing Britain. A vision of falling into the cold dark water of the English Channel popped into his head, and he shuddered. Maybe if they see me, they’ll find some way to bring me in. Being captured was preferable to dying. He wrapped one arm around the rope and began desperately fumbling in his jacket pockets with the other, looking for something that he could throw to get their attention. He had found nothing, and was feeling the panic starting to rise again, when his fingers closed around the first of the detonators that Harry had removed. He had slipped it into his pocket before he went after Ione and Vanross, and forgotten about it completely.

An idea came to him. He would just need something else. His questing fingers closed around a heavy brass object, and he realised that he still had the hotel key on its heavy fob in his pocket. Then he knew exactly what he was going to do. 

He removed the key fob from his pocket, and threw it as hard as he could at the nearest gondola window. It smashed straight through and disappeared, leaving a jagged hole. After a few moments, Vanross appeared behind the window. He looked at the hole, then bent down, and came up holding the key fob, astonishment on his face. He looked up through the hole, straight at Joseph.

Joseph waved.

Vanross disappeared, and returned a moment later with Monmouth. The two of them stared out at Joseph. He took the detonator from his pocket, and showed it to them. Then he pointed up at the gas bag above his head.

Monmouth’s expression turned from astonishment to fear, but Vanross flew into a rage, and began yelling obscenities, although Joseph could only hear them faintly over the engine noise. He smiled. Their reactions confirmed what he had already suspected: an airship as poorly maintained as the Lotus Flower would not have helium in her gas cells. It was hydrogen above him. He put the detonator into his pocket, and resumed his climb.

A few minutes later he was at the very top of the rope, where it was connected to a steel ring which projected out through the envelope from an internal rib. The fabric of the envelope was in reach. Wrapping his left arm around the rope again, Joseph carefully removed the detonator from his pocket, held it up, and then removed the cap, which was quite tricky to do one-handed. There was a heart-stopping moment when he almost dropped the detonator, but he snatched it up before it fell beyond his reach.

After collecting his wits, he took a firm grip on the detonator and drove it into the fabric above his head. The spike penetrated easily, and once he had pushed the body far enough in, the barbs caught in the weave, holding it firmly in place.

He glanced down at the gondola again. Monmouth must have been observing him with a pair of field glasses, because he dropped them as he disappeared from view. Moments later, Joseph felt his stomach lurch as the airship began a rapid descent. This steepened into a dive, and the green and pleasant land below was suddenly rushing up to meet them.

Joseph willed his aching fingers to hold on just a bit longer, as the patchwork quilt of fields and hedges loomed larger and larger. Rasmussen was apparently aiming for a large parklike expanse of soft rolling ground, surrounded by woods, and the Lotus Flower came shooting in over a low hill, engines screaming, and made the hardest landing Joseph had ever experienced. The impact jolted him from his rope, and he fell heavily onto soft grass. He rolled immediately to his feet and began to run away from the stricken airship. When he reached the tree line, he stopped, and turned back to see what was happening.

Vanross was staggering across the grass, blood streaming across his face from a head wound. Monmouth stood with his back to Joseph, apparently remonstrating with Rasmussen, who seemed to be trying to jump up from the ground to reach the detonator. After a few moments, Monmouth gave up, and turned to trudge after Vanross. Seconds later, the gas envelope exploded with a deafening report, knocking Monmouth and Vanross flat, and leaving Joseph’s ears ringing. When he looked up again, the airship was nothing but a blackened skeleton of girders on top of a smouldering gondola, scraps of envelope clinging to it here and there, burning fiercely. A thick column of dark smoke was rising lazily into the afternoon sky.

The deep bass notes of heavy aero engines made Joseph turn to look behind him, just as two airships breasted the hill and skimmed down over the treetops. Ropes unfurled from their gondolas and uniformed troopers rappelled down to land on the valley floor. Joseph recognised their leader. He watched Clive Thornton jog over to where Monmouth and Vanross lay, and then he turned, and slipped away into the woods.