---Chapter 8
The dimension travelers slept all night and late into the morning. When they awoke, it was to a sense of urgency and action. They had already spent two and a half days here, plus more on other worlds, while they only had a week to destroy all of the Power Cores before EX-2 started capturing more of them. They ate the last of their supplies in a rush and took off in the car for where Amber remembered a man lived who made flying machines.
It was on the opposite side of town, on the outskirts, and on the way they saw the remaining citizens coming out of their houses, blinking up at the sky and watching after them in surprise. No one seemed to connect the rumbling steam-car with the freeing of their city, though they may have wondered if it was the last of the enemies fleeing away.
They reached the place Amber indicated in good time. It was a sprawling yard in an empty field beyond Dodgelake, covered in pieces of scrap metal, odd sizes of lumber and squares of ripped canvas. A tall picket fence shut out sight of the low house, but they could see the ship-like shapes of some sort of machines inside next to it.
When they knocked at the gate (with little hope of answer) they found that it was locked and the owner gone.
“Jeram Whist must have run away from the Power Core and left his precious machines behind,” Amber said, tapping her metal fingers on the gate in thought. “Well, it is an emergency. I guess we can break in and take one now, then pay for it later.”
Patch gave her an admiring glance. “Now that, mateys, is the way to think.”
It did not take long for them to break through the latch on the gate and enter the inner courtyard. There were three flying machines standing inside of it, on three sides of the low, ramshackle house. The one on the right was only half-built, with scaffolding and unused parts laying around it. Behind the house was a huge shape, like a large sailing ship without rigging or spars. On its sides were some sort of canvas and steel wings, folded back like the wings of a bird so that drapes of fabric hung down in great billows.
The third airship, on the left, was much smaller. It was, Lenny thought, comparable in size to a yacht. A polished wooden hull curved up each end, the front having a carved knob painted yellow as the figurehead. The cabin was in the center, set low so that its flat, black roof was just visible from below. In the rear was a higher deck with a ship’s wheel set on it, gilded tips on each spoke. The sides of the ship sported flaps for steering, while the rear had two huge propellers mounted on it. On the top of the cabin roof was a frame holding what looked like a giant, collapsed balloon of silk. Connected to it was a long rubber hose, going down to a huge tank situated beside the house. There was a valve on the tank, but it was evidently closed at the moment.
“It’s an airship. It works on lighter-than-air gases being pumped into the balloon and sealed off,” Amber explained, following his gaze. “The big one has glider wings, but I think it’s too large for our uses.”
“Hey, wait.” Jax waved a hand at it. “The bigger the better, right?”
“Not always, lad.” Patch shrugged. “Bigger vessels take bigger crews. And more watching over. A little rig that that one to the left won’t be seen in the air as easily. But the galleon? Everyone will have their glims on it right off.”
“Hm, I guess you’re right. But I did so want to be the captain of a big’ol man o’war with cannons a’blazing. By the way, do either of them have any weaponry?”
They went and inspected each from the outside, but neither seemed to have a cannon installed, though there was places to put one on either side of the larger ship’s deck.
Still, it was not worth the extra effort to fly the larger one just so that they could install cannon. The smaller ship suited their needs nicely. Climbing aboard, they found that it had both a cabin in the center with four berths and a cooking area, as well as a space up in front of the cabin, in the bows, for hammocks to hang.
‘The foc’sle’ is what Patch called it, while the cooking area was the 'galley’ the balloon’s frame was the 'main mast’ and the rear deck he vibrated between calling the 'steerage deck’ and simply 'abaft’. There was plenty of space under the rear deck for holding supplies and even a pair of barrels on stands with taps in their ends, for drinking water.
While some of the crew took these out and filled them at a hand-pump in the yard, Amber and Jax went into the house and 'borrowed’ as much foodstuffs as they could easily take, as well as a few spare blankets from a guest room. But on the center of the table they left a pile of gold coins and some of the few coins Amber had on her, paying richly for all they had taken. It was, as they told each other, all for a good cause.
Outside Patch was both helping transport the water barrels aboard and shouting orders to the others at the top of his voice; “get that scuttled butt over to the side, before I lose me temper and roll both at once! Nay, nay, don’t ye know better than that? Ye salt-lickin’ double knotted---”
“I think he’s enjoying himself,” Amber commented, staggering towards the ladder under her load of items. Jax, puffing behind her, agreed,
“Yeah. I just wish I was in command of the water crew. Man, I would make them jump! Oh, by the way, you could just dump that stuff at the bottom of the ladder and we’ll use a rope to get it up once we haul more out.”
They dropped off their goods and went for another round. Meanwhile, Soleeryn was escorting her charge towards the ship, keeping a close eye on him as if she thought that he might keel over any minute. They reached the ladder and Dansei looked up with a hang-dog expression. Concerned, the healer lay a hand on his arm. “Do you think that you can make it?”
“I’ll try my best.” Dansei let out a long sigh, before darting away from her and running up the swaying rope as quick as a squirrel. Stopping at the top, he leaned on the rail beside the little gate where the ladder came down. With a smile and a wince, he looked down. “I seem to have made it. Do you need a hand?”
Soleeryn shook a fist at him, though her anger was only halfhearted. “You smooth-tongued liar! And all morning you’ve been working on my sympathies. Well, now I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Shall we try being honest with each other?” the Ninja suggested cheerfully, “or do you enjoy intrigue as much as a courtier?”
They continued to argue and banter, while the others got the supplies aboard and stowed them. Finally everything (including the Ninja) was stowed underneath and they were ready to lift off.
Amber showed them how to watch the balloon and guide it as it filled, before running down to turn on the valve. Gasses began hissing into the silk envelope, gradually filling it into a blimp shape floating above the hull. It was connected to the ship with stout ropes, and the basket was held down to the ground with another line tied both fore and aft. Amber climbed carefully back up the ladder, which now dangled below the bottom of the hull a few feet in the air, before going to the steerage deck. There Lenny and Jax were installing the Di-jump, fastening it to the bottom of the spidery metal frame which was on top of the roof and ran to the back, holding some of the lines fastening the balloon in place.
Once it was connected to the frame, Lenny also ran a wire into the cabin, fastening it to the thin steel brackets which held up the bunks. That way the crew could sit on the bunks and hold onto the brackets to make the jump, or stand outside on the deck and grasp the frame.
Once they were done, the ropes were cut and the air ship was allowed to rise from the ground. Amber showed them briefly how to steer the ship from side to side, as well as power it forward with a pair of large levers sticking up beside the wheel, or make it angle downwards with another set of flaps. There were ballast bags to keep it at a certain height, which could be cut away if you wanted to rise suddenly. It was a simple machine to understand once the controls were explained.
Once they were aloft they were ready to make the jump.
“I hope it still works, when we’re not actually grounded,” Jax said, fiddling with the Di-jump in its new post, “otherwise, we’ll have to land every time we wish to change dimensions.”
“Wait a minute.” Lenny took the long lengths of wire that he had picked up in Ti-Gallin from his pocket. “This will ground us.”
Splicing them together, he wrapped one end around the metal frame and let the other dangle over the edge, having Amber pilot them downwards until the wire just touched the earth. “It’s better than having to land, even if not by much. Now, where are we going to go next?”
“Just on to Patch’s world, as it’s next in the original loop.” Jax frowned at his meter, flipping through the dimensions in range. “I just hope that...”
“What, don’t you know which one it is?”
“I think so.” Jax bit his lower lip, then nodded as if convinced. “Oh, yes, of course. This one.”
Amber stepped over to hold on to the metal frame, while everyone else was down in the cabin, already in place. “Are you sure--?”
Before she could finish the sentence, Jax pushed the button.
The world blurred, they all blinked and everything faded back into place around them.
At first, it appeared that they had come into Patch’s world at night. But Lenny looked up and around and could not see the stars in the sky, nor any moving clouds or other signs of a storm. Around him, the air was stuffy and stale, not at all like the upper atmosphere should be at night. Moving over to the side, he looked down. Though everything was in darkness around him, far down below he saw a glimmer of red. In between the ship and it seemed to be a distance of empty air, perhaps thickened by some sort of mist or fog.
“Where are we?” he asked, turning back to look towards his friends. Everything was so dark he could not really see them, only slight shadows where they stood. “I feels like underground.” Jax said, a small amount of worry creeping into his voice, “maybe in some sort of giant cave. Hey, you down below! Bring up some lights!”
It was not long before a pair of green circle floated out of the cabin stairway, followed by a pair of yellow glows which turned out to be lanterns. Leaflow looked over the edge curiously, as the rest of the crew held up the lanterns to see where they were. A dark gray, knobbly surface arched over them, so close that the envelope was almost brushing against it. They were in a large shaft above some sort of huge cavern, a shaft leading almost straight down towards the red glimmer below. The rocks pressed around the ship on all sides except for in the front, where there was a gradual vault leading downwards until it opened out.
Water dripped from the stones now and then, falling into darkness or hitting the balloon with a thin plunking noise.
“Does...does this feel like your world?” Jax asked Patch hesitantly.
“Nay.” The pirate shook his head. “Somehow, I think I would know my land right off. Though I suppose we could be deep underground in a part of it I’m not familiar with.”
“No, it’s an unmistakable sensation when you come home.” Jax was looking more worried every moment. “Which means...”
“Oh, Jax!” Amber exclaimed, “don’t tell us that you picked the wrong world?”
The traveler’s face turned paler than usual, while his cheeks burned bright red. “Well, how should I know? I can’t always get it right! All I’ve got to go on is how far away or near these blasted things are. I’ve got to take a chance every time, unless I know the pattern. I have a good map in my head of where most dimensions are in the galaxy, but not every one. Most of your people’s worlds I haven’t even been to before. So I made a little mistake!”
“But one that will cost us time.” Jackal pulled his hat grimly down tighter on his head. “Time we can’t afford to lose right now. How long until that mechanism can go off again?”
After his outburst, Jax’s face had gone entirely pale. Reaching out a hand, he laid it shakily against the Di-jump. “It just depends on how quickly it cools. We can’t risk another jump right away...but in this atmosphere, it should only be a few hours.”
When he said it, Lenny realized for the first time that it was a little cold in the cavern. Not icy, or a cold you immediately noticed. But after a time it seemed to be touching all of your skin with clammy fingers.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. I can put a little water on the outside of the Di-jump, so that it evaporates and cools quicker.” Lenny shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets. They were starting to fill with dust. He should have picked up a change of clothes on his world when he could.
“Any little thing will help,” Leaflow put in, finally looking back up from leaning over the rail. “But while we wait, we might as well explore this place.”
“And have somethin’ to eat,” Raggsy added, heading for the galley.
Lenny followed him to get a rag and a bowl of water, which he dabbed carefully on the shell of the Di-jump. When he went to return it the Ratperson had a pan already sizzling on the little coal-fired stove. He truly enjoyed cooking as well as eating what he made, and at the moment he was singing under his breath as he peeled potatoes. The words went something like this:
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
‘If I see you standin’ in the sunshine,
Or runnin’ errands in the rain,
I’ll know what lit’le dreams are made of,
Though they bring me so much pain...’
“I didn’t know that you could sing, Raggsy.”
“Heh, heh, I can’t.” The Ratperson flashed square, yellow teeth at him in a sideways grin. “It sounds terrible, especi’lly any louder. But I was just remembering when I was a young Ratling and there was this pop’lar song on the radio...the Ratgirl who sang it had a beautiful voice. Made you feel like you were standin’ in the sunshine or runnin’ in the rain, ya know?”
As they were talking, Amber came striding down into the galley, frowning at her right hand. Sitting on one of the bunks, she began stripping the activation rings off of her sound fingers, letting the fine cords and tubes dangle. Working backwards, she took the bands which held it in place off of her arm, then finally took off her tightly-fitting red coat with the hole in the back and stripped the backpack off. Setting it carefully aside, she put the coat back on over her white top, buttoning it only half-way up.
“Is something wrong?” Lenny asked, surprised to see her take the pack off. It was necessary for it to be in place to control the last three fingers on her right hand. He had never seen her without it. Somehow she looked smaller and less ready for anything with it off.
“Yes, I’m out of air.” Amber shook her head, holding up the metallic fingers half-curled inwards. “There was no compressor on the steam car, and there is no steam power at all on this airship. I’ll have to just use two of the fingers on my right hand until we find a new source. But don’t worry; I can manage.”
“I’m sorry.” Lenny shifted uncomfortably. He knew how it was to lose one of your functions when technology gave out. “We’ll try to replenish your tanks as soon as possible. I just wish Jax hadn’t taken us to the wrong place.”
Though he complained, he could not help feeling a small, traitorous bit of gladness that Jax had made a mistake, even if it cost them in the long run. Jax was always right about everything, it seemed. He knew when to trust a person and when not to. Take Raggsy, or Dr. Devi, for instance. He knew right away that the Ratperson could be a good companion, while the doctor would be a traitor. So, though he would not have admitted it to anyone, Lenny felt a tiny crumb of vindictive glee at the mistake.
Amber nodded, standing up to head back up the ladder to the deck. “We’ll just have to take Leaflow’s advice and explore this place until the Di-jump can be used again. It shouldn’t take long. But now I have to go up and pilot the ship, or at least help. Did you two want to come watch?”
“Na, I’ll stay down here and make stuff to eat.” Raggsy waved one paw in the air airly, stirring the contents of the pan with the other.
But Lenny followed Amber, coming up on deck to find Jax moping by the bow, Patch and Jackal arguing over if the red gleam were lava or crystals, and the rest gathered near the ship’s wheel waiting for Amber to return. She hurried over to the controls, resuming a conversation she had put on hold earlier, “alright, now I’ll aim for that crack running downwards by pulling this lever and tilting the steering flaps. Now all we have to do is give it power ahead, using the props. But slowly: we don’t want to bump the roof or else the envelope might rip.”
“What makes those ‘props’ go around?” Soleeryn asked, turning her long, thin face to look at them.
The pilot was over at them now, fiddling with a machine set in front of them at the back of the deck. They heard a soft, rumbling roar as the propellers started to turn, over which Amber shouted, “a complicated sort of engine that Mr. Whist has recently developed. Instead of using steam, it is powered by the same light gas as fills the envelope, which is held in a tank at the bottom of the hold, under the floor. I don’t understand all of how it works, as I never had time to study it, but it seems that is uses tiny explosions to force the cylinders back and forth, creating motion.”
The healer looked with raised eyebrows at the engine attached to the propellers by moving rods, as if doubting that explosions could be contained safely in that knot of iron and steel.
“How marvelously fast technology moves,” Leaflow said seriously, though there was a glint in his eyes that was less than grave. “Next thing you know, they’ll be inventing machines to take people to the moon.”
“Oh, come on, don’t tease us because some of us are behind,” Amber returned with a laugh, “we all know what your home town looks like, and you’ve told us before that you have gone to other planets. You probably have engines far better than this one, at home?”
“My car works on a more compact engine of the same general idea. It simply uses a different kind of gaseous fuel.”
Lenny did not join the conversation, as Stato-drive would be difficult for him to explain to someone from his own world, let alone another one.
“Maybe you can give me one of the engines from your world sometime,” Amber suggested in reply to Leaflow’s explanation, hurrying back to the controls as the ship began to move slowly forward. “Then I could take it apart and figure out how it works!”
“Perhaps.” Leaflow inclined his hooded head a little, without giving a more definite answer.
Looking over the front edge of the ship, Lenny saw that they had angled downwards and were gliding slowly along the open vault towards the lower regions of the cavern. The damp, enclosed air pushed against their faces as they descended, rustling with eerie noises past the balloon. Underneath them, the red glimmer got brighter and deeper, spreading out into a wide patch on the floor of the cavern. Other lakes of color joined it as well, glimpsed in the distance. The cave was indeed huge, the main part of it reaching into unknown distance in the front and for at least a thousand feet behind them. It was difficult to tell the distance down to the floor, as they did not know the size of the red pool to compare to.
Like a single, large lantern suspending in a black sky, the airship propelled itself at an angle down towards the cavern floor. Hung in the contained immensity of the stone, it was like a single bright spirit in the chaotic flow of life.
“You know, there is one mistake we made in getting this airship,” Amber said suddenly, while still steering the ship towards the ground.
“We didn’t return the car?” Lenny suggested.
“No.” she gave him a sideways look. “We can always do that later. I meant that we did not give it a name. Every ship has to have a name. What should we call it?”
“Skydestroyer of Deepest Doom,” Jax put forward, having crept back from the front of the ship in slow degrees as he conquered his shame.
“But it doesn’t have weaponry, lad,” Patch pointed out, “it’s as safe as a cockle for anyone around it.”
“I think a good name will suggest itself as we go along,” Lenny told them to avoid an argument, “we’ll just have to wait for it to appear.”
At about this point Leaflow informed them that they must be nearing the ground, as he was starting to see their shadow thrown on the surface from the lanterns’ light. Coming over to join him, Lenny saw that the ground had come up on them, until he could now vaguely make out the bumps and roughness of the stone on its floor. Just behind them was a great crack in the rock making a wide chasm in the floor of the cave. It did not appear to be filled with either magma nor mystic crystals, but a thin, stagnant liquid of glowing crimson. The light of it was thrown up on the walls of the chasm, staining them like living blood. Stony crags sticking up out of the pool were black shadows in comparison, a vapor hovering over them. No heat came from the pool, but a thin hissing noise like air escaping a tire.
As they looked back at the pool, the airship steadied out at a constant height and began propelling itself gently across the cavern. Because there was no external light source other than the glimmering pools, there was no way to tell how long or wide the cave really was. They only saw the bumps and hillocks below them, or the crags which stuck up now and then in their way. Amber piloted them skillfully by every obstacle, the airship gliding around jutting rocks like a fish.
“What do you think could be in those pools?” Jax asked Lenny, sidling up beside him.
“I don’t know. Some sort of neon liquid. It might be one that none of us have ever heard of before.”
After a while they floated across one of the wider pools, so that the liquid was directly below them. A sulfurous smell wafted up around the ship, mixed with an odd metallic scent. Jax took out a long length of twine and tied a washer onto the end of it, dangling it over the side into the pool. It came up with an eaten, brittle ring of filigree instead of the washer, while the end of the rope was soaked but unharmed.
“Yipe! Don’t want to fall in there,” Jax said, holding up what was left of the washer by an untouched length of string. “It might do the same thing to flesh and bone as it does to steel.”
“I doubt it.” Leaflow joined them. “It only corrodes certain metals that badly. Though it wouldn’t be pleasant to sit in, either. And it would be a little more than very bad to drink. If I’m not mistaken, its a form of what they call on planet FP-EI 4 'Ughlath’um’ and on the science ships that go there 'Triopilate Gratheum’ or Triple Grag, for short.”
Lenny looked at him closely to make sure that he was not joking, before asking, “and what properties does this stuff have? Is it used for anything?”
“On it’s planet of origin it can only be found deep underground, like it is here. The natives use it in three ingenious ways. The first is that it is the only way to successfully incubate and hatch live Uhhahg-zor, a species of domesticated dragon. The second is in a complicated preparation that removes the toxic elements and makes of it an elixir which grants heightened senses for a short amount of time, with little side-effects. Thirdly, it is an excellent poison for your enemies to try, if you wish them to go away. Which is, of course, how I came to learn of it.”
“And on the science ships? What do they want it for?”
“Manufacturing the elixir and selling it to rich countries for military use, mostly. But there have been many experiments and I am not knowledgeable about all of them.”
“Wow, we could get rich taking some of this back home, if we only knew the right recipe for the elixir.” Jax leaned over the edge to watch the last of the pond slide away behind them.
“And poison ourselves trying it, if we didn’t,” Lenny pointed out, “let’s just leave it where it is, okay?”
“You’re always such a Stick-in-the-mud!” Jax exclaimed, though without any rancor. They had gone on from the glowing pond about two hundred feet when he jerked his head over even further and called suddenly. “Hey, slow down! What’s that down there?”
Amber eased off on the propellers’ throttle, making the airship come to a gentle standstill. Poking his head over the rail next to Jax, Lenny did not at first see anything different. Then he began to notice odd shapes on the stone, too square and angular to be natural. He blinked, and he was looking down on a pattern of old bricks, chiseled walkways and other signs of habitation.
“It looks like part of a ruined city,” he said, voice rising in surprise, “though I can’t make out much from up here.”
Leaflow was also looking over beside them and confirmed what they saw. “It is definitely something man-made.”
At their request, Amber began circling the airship downwards. Everyone that could go to the rail was looking over now, though Amber was busy at the controls and Dansei still claimed that it would make him dizzy to see the ground so far below with nothing in between.
“A tall building, a palace roof? Yes. Airships flying like a bird? I will decline.”
So the ship was brought down among many exclamations until it was floating only a few feet above the ground. Then the two young men threw the end of the rope ladder over the side, so that it uncoiled onto the hard ground. They all descended with a clatter and crunch onto a gravelly patch of rock, near the edge of the bricks. Up close, they could see that the old carved stones lay in heaps at some places, but were scattered out over the ground randomly at others. Mostly they still made the outlines of a cluster of buildings, with lined paths leading in between them. The stone cavern floor had been chiseled and hammered flat here, so that there was not the bumpy protrusions which riddled the rest of the cave.
As most of the crew began inspecting the ruins, Leaflow and Soleeryn went strolling towards the pool of Triple Grag that lay at a little distance. As they went, their voices came back to Lenny, arguing over whether being a poisoner was the other side of the same coin as being a healer, or not.
Kneeling down, Lenny picked up a small brick, about a foot long and four inches thick. It was a dark maroon-black color, almost dusty purple when held in the right light. He was pretty sure that there was no corruption from EX-2 on this world. Not everything in a dimension that was purplish was evil. It would be a difficult lesson to remember, once this crusade was over.
On one side of the brick there was a swirled pattern carved into the rock. It was made up of little dots about the size of his finger tip, repeated at close intervals starting in the center and working outwards. After looking at it for a minute, he set that brick down and picked up another nearby. In the dim light, he saw a symbol on it that resembled a deer, or at least a deer-like creature, with one of its hooves resting on another, smaller, swirl of dots.
The light got stronger suddenly as Jax came up to him, carrying one of the lanterns. “Hey, Len, look what I found.”
He held out a broken shard of glass, red on one edge, gradually fading to clear on the other. It was curved as if it had once been part of a fat-bellied vase.
“That’s a nice find.” Lenny stood up to look at it closer. “And all this leaves no doubt that people did live here at some time. People advanced enough in technology to blow glass and carve intricate details on stone.”
“Yeah, but how did they live down here?” Jax threw out his arms to either side, almost losing the piece of glass in his hand. “They couldn’t grow any crops except for maybe mushrooms, there’s no light and the air is stuffy. Not to mention that the only thing to drink is that Triple Gughum-whatever stuff!”
“Maybe this was just an outpost for collecting Triple Grag,” Lenny suggested, “they could have lived down here part-time, collected the red liquid in glass bottles like that one to sell, or trade for goods, and then took it all back up to the surface and lived there on their earnings.”
“If there is a surface.” Jax looked ruefully down at the shard. “But I guess their must be, unless the people that lived here could survive on just Triple-whatsit alone.”
“I doubt it.” Lenny turned his head at the sound of footsteps to see Leaflow and Soleeryn coming back. The healer was carrying a pair of glass vials in her hands, such as she used for her medicinal potions. But now both of them were full of the red stuff, glowing and fizzing inside the glass.
“What are you doing with those?” Lenny asked her, “hopefully Leaflow hasn’t convinced you to be a poisoner?”
The healer gave him a small smile and shake of her head. “No. We are going to try to make the good elixir out of them, the one that gives enhanced senses. It might be useful to us in our mission.”
“Well, don’t try it on me first!” Jax exclaimed, waving the lantern around wildly so that the light made strange shadows jump among the ruins. Lenny gave him a look with raised eyebrows. It was not so long ago that the young traveler had been suggesting that they make the potion.
“I wouldn’t, of course. I would be the first to try it,” Soleeryn assured them, before walking towards the ship with Leaflow behind her. He looked back once and winked a glowing eye at the boys, before disappearing up the ladder.
After everyone had taken their fill of looking at the old ruins of an underground village (where Patch found a silver earring, and others came up with shards of glass and bits of colored stone) they climbed back aboard the airship for Raggsy to serve them lunch.