Solid Air Rips the Sails
ONE EVENING, at the very tail-end of winter and after a day of hard sky-sailing, the air turned solid. The sky-ship Rainrunner bumped and bucked, and its topsail tore, caught on a corner of the air. Then the balloon—the swollen balloon of hot air that every sky-ship needs to stay up there amongst the clouds—rebounded from an invisible wall. That shook the ship and rocked its hull so much that everyone was thrown to the decks or slammed into the sides. Captain Fleet, a tall, exceptionally thin man (there are no fat crew members on a serious sky-ship, because every ounce makes a difference) fell headlong into the bosun who was clinging to the wheel. In no time at all the captain was back on his feet, adjusting his hat to a less jaunty angle, and issuing orders. He called for the sails to be struck, and the forward balloon ropes to be tightened. He ordered the men on deck to tie themselves to the masts with safety-lines, and to make a note of the names of the two who had, unfortunately, gone tumbling overboard on the first impact, so that their personal belongings could be thrown over after them, to help lighten the load now that they were no longer needed.
The ship rolled and yawed as it scraped along the unyielding air. Spars snapped off like twigs as they bumped along it. One or two clumps of solid air broke away and tumbled across the deck, skittling the crew and tugging at the ropes. One sailor, knocked to his back and gasping with the weight of the thing on top, slid right across the deck until he lay at the feet of Captain Fleet. His face was squashed into a flat shape where the air pressed down on him. Captain Fleet threw his shoulder into the blurry space and heaved with all his skinny might. The block of air rolled aside, and the sailor underneath it scrambled to his feet, drawing in huge breaths and saying “Thank you, Cap’n” again and again, until the captain, still struggling to control his ship, had to say, “Please, my good man, don’t mention it.”
Then the bow of the sky-ship tipped downwards, and started to roll under the weird obstruction, breaking off the tops of the masts and ripping the flags that caught on its sharper corners. There were shouts as the crew slid from side to side of the smooth wooden deck, sometimes squashed and sometimes pushed. A whole section of the rigging got caught, and Captain Fleet set his men about it with their cork-handled knives, to cut it loose and free the ship. He had them haul on the vent-lines to expel the hot air from the balloon, and make the vessel lurch downwards.
“Work the bellows!” he called to the stove-room beneath his feet. “We’re going to need a shot of hot air extremely soon.” He clung to the wheel as they rushed downwards towards the jagged, snowy rocks on the floor of the mountain pass beneath them. When the icy air started to squeeze tears from his sky-blue eyes, he gave the order: “Fill the bag!” Hot air belched into the balloon and the stay-lines twanged with sudden tension. The balloon filled abruptly, and the ship pulled out of its giddying dive.
Everyone fell over again, including Captain Fleet. But as the sky-sailors clambered back to their feet—barefoot, in fact, because the weight of boot-nails on sky-ships is prohibitive—they knew they were clear. They craned their heads to look at the piece of sky that had behaved so strangely: but there was nothing to see, except, perhaps, a slight blurring at the edges, if you knew where to look. It had been frightening, to be sure, but it was also weird; and sailors like nothing better than surviving something strange in order to tell tales about it, afterwards.
Then the anchor-boy gave a shout, “Ware away!” because while everyone else was looking up, he had chanced to look forward, and he had seen the side of the mountain rushing towards them. “Ware away! The mountain!”
Captain Fleet didn’t need to call an order—the bosun was already spinning the wheel as fast as ever he could, and the rudder-fins were straining with the turn. But it was too late and yet again everyone went tumbling across the deck. The ship thumped against the glittering, icy mountainside. For a moment Captain Fleet thought they had made it, and bounced safely off. But the Rainrunner had been pulled and pushed one plank too far by its collision with the solid air, and, with a creak that sounded not entirely unlike a sigh, its hull split and the ship started to break apart.
“Let out the heat!” called Captain Fleet, trying to lower the broken ship onto the slope as gently as physics might allow. But the balloon was already venting and collapsing as the hot air rushed out of it. Ropes and spars fell downwards, bringing with them sails and the remaining sections of mast. The ship managed three or four sharp and ugly bounces before it rolled over onto its broken back, and wedged itself solidly between two rocks jutting up out of the snow. An odd percussion played out for a few seconds, as broken woodwork fell all around. Then, like a blanket being draped over a sleeping child, the empty skin of the balloon drifted down, gently covering everything up.
. . . continues
The Knot-Shop Man © Beholder / David Whiteland 2009