0177: Alarmingly Near and Disturbingly Small

Ziggurat #85

“Shouldn’t we be wearing spacesuits or something?” She asked in sudden alarm.

“Mr. Lamont,” Rico chided the newspaperman. “We are supposed to be reassuring our passengers.”

Townsend reflected on this for a moment, finally shaking his head. “Wrong day,” he explained. “No cigarettes. Ask me tomorrow.”

Constance laughed.

Just then, a lanky young man with a shock of curly black hair loped down the gangplank, leaning on a pneumatic lift to address the assembly. “Checks are done,” he said. “We’re ready to go when you are.”

“Are you certain you know how to fly this thing, Lazarus?” Lamont asked him.

“Sure,” the young man shrugged. “How hard can it be?”

The newspaperman sighed and gestured with exaggerated hospitality toward the metal plank. “All aboard,” he invited. “Stow your bags on the overhead racks and be sure that you have a good hold on the netting. The way out can be a little bit bumpy.”

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The next hour of Constance Beckett’s life felt like at least a day as one novel experience was piled atop another. The colonists and crew members filed into the interior of the strange vessel, in which the prospect of human occupancy had clearly been an afterthought at best. They were packed onto makeshift metal benches like so many sardines, the uniformed crew rather predictably taking one side of the ship while the colonists took the other. As a matter of habit, Constance double-checked that the children were well-secured against the cargo netting and that Miss Anna, who was uncommonly quiet and introverted, was as comfortable as possible. Then she noticed that Lamont and Rico, rather than sitting with the other crew members in the cargo section, were up at the front of the ship with Lazarus. Constance boldly went to join them. Rico and Lamont were settling into a row of four utilitarian bucket seats that were bolted to the floor. In front of them were two pilot seats, one occupied by Lazarus, nestled among a truly dizzying array of instruments and controls. While Constance was taking this in, the storage bay outside the bulbous amber windows was bathed in red, to the accompanying muffled sound of a claxon.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing spacesuits or something?” She asked in sudden alarm.

“Shouldn’t the Titanic have more lifeboats?” Lamont asked rhetorically. He patted the seat beside him. “Strap in, love. We’re about to be ejected.”

“Ejected?” Constance asked, hastily taking the seat and fumbling to work the canvas belt attached to it.

“Nicest word I can think of for it,” Lamont grumbled. He pulled a cigarette from one of the many pockets in his jacket and pressed it between tightly clamped lips without lighting it.

He wasn’t wrong. Far less polite terms came to mind as the world outside was replaced by a dizzying, tumbling nightmare of motion. Overcome by vertigo, Constance braced herself for the cries of children behind her, but none came; all she heard was a scattering of exclamations. Closing her eyes briefly, she realized that the effect was almost entirely visual. The only sensation she felt was a moment of apparent weightlessness that, with a turn of her stomach, quickly passed. All of the sudden she was watching the gray metal exterior of Westward’s aft, the storage bay door sliding closed. It was both alarmingly near and disturbingly small.

“That was bloody close, mate,” Lamont complained through gritted teeth, leaning toward where Lazarus sat in front of him.

“All but the bare minimum of air was drawn back into the ship before the door was opened,” he explained in a casual conversational tone, his hands flying nimbly over the controls. “We don’t want to waste any.”

“Any less and we’d be wasted,” Lamont observed.

If a witty retort was forthcoming, no one would ever know. The cabin fell into silence as the nebulous clouds of open space were replaced by the eerie green glow of the dimly self-luminescent blue gas giant as its haloed shape filled the viewing windows. In the center of it was the hazy black disc of the moon and, projecting from that like a copper needle, the tower.

“Oh my god,” Constance whispered, feeling a little sick. “We’re actually doing this.”

“Let’s hope we haven’t worn out our welcome,” Lamont muttered.

Next: New Arrivals