Beneath The Endless Sky

When The Siren Sings Of Fair Blue

Asides from the captain, Anita Hoffman was the most dangerous person Leslie had ever met.

It wasn't the kind of danger you could see coming. Anita downed her second cocktail — absinthe diluted in champagne — and took a socket wrench out of the tool-kit tied to her leg under her dress. To most people, Leslie rolling up his sleeves was more intimidating.

But there was a twinkle in Anita's eyes. A mischievousness, but to such an absurd degree it had become a sort of madness. Her fingers were wiggling, even on the hand holding the wrench, and she was whispering under her breath. "Reverse the pressure by flooding the relief valve and blocking it off, then run it through the propeller gears," she said, her thoughts incoherent only because they rushed along in a blur.

"Kinda wish I knew this plan of yours," Leslie said.

"Oh, it's simple. I turn that machine there," Anita said, and she pointed at the device in the middle of the room. The hand making the gesture wasn't still, but it wasn't jittery. Her wrist had her hand making a rhythmic ticking motion, at what Leslie suspected was exactly two ticks per second. "Into a proper airship's propeller, left in an enclosed space. Should be enough to get these fools to invite the constabulary in."

"Are you sure this is safe?" Leslie asked.

"I'm sure it's not," Anita replied, yanking up her dress to open her tool pouch again. She pulled out another socket wrench, set it on the bar, and put a pair of goggles on. "Did I remember earmuffs?"

"Just be careful with that dress," Leslie said, as he slid off the bar and stretched. He then extended his arm, inviting her to accompany him. "I'd rather like to take you dancing again."

"Mister Madrigan, you say the sweetest things," Anita replied, wrapping both her arms around his, and practically letting him carry her across the floor towards the machine.

Actually, he was carrying her. He didn't notice at first, but he couldn't hear the tapping of her shoes against the wood. He glanced behind him, to see her feet in the air, trailing in their wake. Leslie grinned, as her dress and hair billowed behind them. There was a lot of fun to be had in the weak pull of the far skies.

They drew close, weaving through the crowd until they drew near Tiberius and an assistant, explaining the particulars of their device. "It's a self-contained unit, all you need to do is hook it onto the ship you want to pull into the sky. The fuel is gravity-fed, so that it will slow down and eventually stop the higher it flies. And it will even land itself, increasing in power the closer it gets to the ground," Tiberius explained excitedly.

"Yes, it's our gravity-fed fuel injector apparatus," the assistant said, and Leslie had to reassess the assistant's importance. The man's shabby dress at a formal event wasn't quite the same as the wait staff, his was older and smelled faintly of coal smoke. And his hands had soot and grease stains, much like Anita after working a shift in the engine room. He was likely the project's lead engineer.

"That's a very fancy way of describing putting coal into a funnel," Anita said, putting her feet down and stepping past Leslie. She stumbled sideways, and giggled, catching herself only because the weak pull of Drummond's Spite was very forgiving.

"Are you drunk, madam?" Tiberius asked.

"Happily," Anita countered. "But your fuel-injector has a problem. There's no way the thing could work out here. The pull's too weak for the slide to drop fuel into the furnace."

"Well, it's not really meant to work on a small island," the engineer said. "Takeoff from the weak pull of a place like this isn't the challenge this machine is meant to solve."