restrained the water which would otherwise have drifted about the air of the Cabin. I lay there feeling the aches depart from my bruised flesh. And when the brave Pocket brought me a brandy—sealed into a snifter-sized globe, from which one sucked the liquor through a small rubber nipple—and as the incongruous smells of cooking meat —and the sound of piano music!—drifted over my screen, I closed my eyes and found it quite impossible to believe that I was at that moment suspended in a small metal can and hurtling between the worlds at five hundred miles per hour.
I emerged from the bath and allowed Pocket to assist me with a towel. When I was dry I dressed, again with Pocket’s assistance. My clothes had been cleaned and brushed, only superficially, but sufficiently to give me the feeling of freshness and comfort.
“So, Pocket; and how are you now?”
“More myself, thank you, sir,” he said, evidently embarrassed.
“What is your view of our situation? Have you shared such adventures with Sir Josiah before?”
Pocket’s thin mouth twitched. “We’ve seen some scrapes, I dare say, sir,” he said, “but nothing quite on the scale of this little lot… I have two grandchildren, sir,” he blurted suddenly.
I straightened my jacket. “Never fear, old chap. I am quite sure it will not be long before Sir Josiah finds a way to reunite you with your family.”
“He is a resourceful bloke,” Pocket said; and with deft movements—already he seemed to be growing accustomed to our falling conditions—he folded away the privacy screen.
I touched his bony shoulder. “Tell me,” I said. “Is Traveller aware of your—infirmity?”
“I suppose you don’t know him all that well, sir. I doubt very much he is aware of any such thing.”
I was scarcely surprised to see that Traveller had unfolded a small piano from the Cabin wall; he floated before it, one foot locked around a fold-down leg, and played the jolly melodies I had heard earlier. Holden remained sprawled on, or against, his rug; he watched Traveller in a bemused fashion, currently the most ill-at- ease of the four reluctant voyagers.
He turned to me and forced a smile. “So, are your wounds healed?”
“Salved, at least; thank you.” I nodded at Traveller. “Will the marvels of the man not cease?”
Holden raised his eyebrows. “What amazes me is not the fact that he’s playing the piano in interplanetary space—no such feat could surprise me any more—but what he’s playing.”
I listened more closely, and was startled to recognize one of the bawdier music-hall melodies popular at the time.
Traveller became aware of our attention and, with an uncharacteristic touch of self-consciousness, abandoned his tune in mid-phrase. “Rather a neat little device,” he observed. “I picked it up at the Exhibition of ’51. Intended for yachts, I think.”
“Really?” Holden replied drily.
A gong sounded softly; I turned to observe Pocket hovering in the air, utterly composed, bearing a small disc of metal. “Supper is served, gentlemen.”
“Splendid!” Traveller cried, and he folded his piano with a snap.
And so I took part in one of the strangest repasts, surely, in the tangled story of mankind.
The three of us took our seats. I wore my harness loosely, just sufficiently tight to keep from floating around the place. Pocket spread napkins over our laps and helped us affix wooden trays to our knees with leather straps. The food itself had been wrapped in packets of greased paper which Pocket drew from one of the Cabin’s ubiquitous cubbyholes. Another hinged panel hid a small iron stove into which Pocket inserted his packets. The meal, when served, was of astonishingly high quality; we started with a fish mousse of intense but delicate flavor, followed by slices of roast lamb, potatoes and peas embedded in gravy; and concluded with a heavy syrup pudding. We drank—from globes—a satisfactory French vintage with the main course, and concluded with smaller globes of port, and thick, strongly flavored cigars.
The whole was served with silver cutlery and on china decorated with the livery of the Prince Albert company, which centered on a crest depicting the Neptunian sculpture decorating the
It was a meal that would have graced many a high table across dear, distant England, even if some of the circumstances remained a little peculiar. The only constraint on the food seemed to be the necessity to glue it to its plate or bowl in some way. The gravy served with the main roast, for instance, was thus rather more glutinous than I would otherwise have preferred, but it served its purpose—save for one or two peas which bounced away from my fork.
But never before had I been served by a waiter who swam through the air like a fish.
Pocket was allowed to sit with us to eat, as there was no separate galley or kitchen.
When Pocket had cleared away the debris we sat in the silence of the Smoking Cabin, sipping at our port and watching Earthlight slant through the smoky air. Holden said, “I have to congratulate you on your table, Sir Josiah. I refer both to the quality of the provision, and to the ingenuity with which you have arranged your galley.”
“Hydraulic presses, that’s the secret,” Traveller said comfortably, and he stretched his long legs out in the air before him. “The food is prepared in a decent restaurant in London I favor from time to time—and then rapidly dried out, in hot ovens, and compressed into those packets you observed. The result is a small, compact bundle which can be stored for some weeks without spoiling, and which requires the application of only a little heat and water to be reconstituted into a fine meal.”
“Remarkable,” I observed. “And I would hazard that there are many more such meals stored in the walls of this vessel?”
“Oh, yes,” Traveller said. “We have some weeks’ provisions.”
Holden relit his cigar. (I noticed how oddly match flames behaved in this falling condition; the flame clustered in a little globe around the head of the match, and would extinguish itself rapidly if one did not draw the match gently through the air to new regions of oxygen.) The journalist said, “I am relieved that we are in little danger of starving to death. But perhaps this is the moment at which we should discuss the provisions available to us in general.”
The thought of starvation had not entered my limited imagination before that moment; but of course Holden was right. After all we were lost in a cold, desolate void, with only the contents of this fragile vessel available to sustain us. I reflected guiltily now on my enjoyment of the meal; perhaps we should already have entered a regime of rations.
“Very well. As for water,” Traveller said, “we carry several gallons.” He thumped the floor with one bony foot. “It is contained below, in a series of small tanks. One large tank would be unsuitable, you see, for as the craft flies there would be a danger of the water sloshing about—”
“Several gallons hardly sounds a lot,” I said uneasily. “Especially since I’ve already run a bath.”
Traveller smiled. “You need not worry, Wickers; bathing water is passed through a series of filters and pipes which enable it to be used several times over. It is fit to drink, even after four or five filterings.” He laughed at our expressions. “But the water we use in the closet—which Pocket will show you later—is vented directly, you will be relieved to hear, from the hull of the craft.” Then his expression melted to one of worry and calculation. “Nevertheless water remains our problem. For water is used as our reaction mass, and I very much fear that our Prussian friend may have expended rather too much of it for comfort.”
I would have asked for a discourse on this worrying mystery, reaction mass, but Holden was leaning forward urgently. “Sir Josiah, what of air? This is a small vessel. How can four men—or five, counting the Prussian—survive here for more than a few hours?”
Traveller waved a long-fingered hand languidly. “Sir, you need have no concerns. Once more an ingenious —if I may say so—filtering system is in operation. In one hour a healthy man will absorb the oxygen contained in twenty-five gallons of air, and replace it with carbonic acid, useless for respiration. A pump works continuously to draw the air from this Cabin—and the Bridge—through grilles. The air is passed through potassium chlorate, at a temperature several hundred degrees above room temperature; the chlorate decomposes to the chloride salt of potassium and releases oxygen to replenish the stale air. And then a measure of caustic potash is applied, which combines with the carbonic acid, so removing it from the air.
“We have stocks of the relevant chemicals sufficient to sustain life for several weeks.”
“Ah.” Holden nodded, evidently impressed.