Dreamcatcher | ONC 2020 Honourable Mention | ✔

Chapter Four

A critical engine failure? Rav gripped the counter's edge. An engine seizure at full speed would damage the ship's only propulsion source, possibly beyond repair. But neither Manish nor the captain looked concerned.

"Indra?" shouted the captain down the hallway without rising from his chair.

Through the light balsa, Rav could hear footsteps in the suddenly silent ship: long ones headed for the engine room in the stern, steady ones up near the bow, and slow, heavy ones down where the ballast tanks should be.

The long footsteps returned, and a man with an angular face and the build of a spider ducked low to clear the doorway. "Just the silent stop again."

The captain grunted. "Good. Go watch it."

Indra threw Rav a different greeting—a hand to the chest and a small bow—and ducked out the doorway again. He was from the inland states, possibly the capital.

Manish kept stirring pots, and the captain pulled what looked like a compass from his pocket. He squinted down its face with a frown that sank deep lines between his eyebrows. Rav tentatively returned to his meal. After several minutes of silence, the engines started again with a jolt and resumed their purring. The captain left without a word.

"Go tour the new cabin boy," Rav heard him grunt to someone in the hallway.

The steady footsteps from the bow approached the room. The man who entered could have been Manish's brother, a head of height difference and a stronger build aside. Both men chuckled as Rav's eyes darted back and forth between them.

"We're cousins," said Manish. "Come. We'll show you the ship."

They left the pots on low heat and traipsed through the low doorways and tight rooms of the ship-like gondola. The tour took them to all but the foremost cabin, which Sanjay said was the captain's. Rav could see why: the engines' throb was quietest here.

Rav was shown lines to pull and lines to avoid, the state-of-the-art closed-circuit steam engines, and the pipes their exhausted steam ran through to heat the rest of the gondola while the water vapour condensed back into water for reuse. Some of the airship's decorative features had other purposes, he learned. The delicate metalwork that ran like a spine over the top of the envelope was for lightning safety, while the keel along the bottom spread out the gondola's weight. Even the ornate nose cone was reinforced to hold the ship safely moored in strong winds.

"She's equipped for whatever the ocean can throw at us," said Manish, patting the inside of the balsa hull. "And this isn't just decorative. We can land on water if we need to."

That was useful, Rav supposed. He had never had cause to land an airship on water, but in the ocean there wasn't usually much else.

For a bed, Rav was given a hammock in a tidy storage room. Sanjay showed him how to get in and out of it without making impromptu friends with the floor, a task more difficult than it looked. They returned to the deck. The ship was at over five thousand feet now, and the air was chilly enough to call for a jacket. Rav avoided looking over the side as Manish and Sanjay strolled across the open deck with no safety harness to speak of. The railing suddenly looked awfully low.

They were revisiting the ins and outs of the bellows that worked the giant ballonets when the engine died again.

Manish clicked his tongue. "She's picky today."

Sanjay didn't reply. He had opened a crate to find a wrench, but now lifted a large white clump for his crewmate to see. It took Rav a moment to realize it was lines. Dozens of lines, snarled in a ghastly tangle so thick and solid it looked like cat's vomit.