“Traveller, where is it going?”
“Well, it’s surely intended for the battlefield. What better way to demonstrate His Majesty’s displeasure than to flatten the pride of Prussia and France with one blow?… But Gladstone’s bunglers have made a mess of it. They’ve overshot. I knew I should have stayed home to get it right for them. I knew…”
His voice was steady and rational, but it had a strange undercurrent; and I sensed that his control was about to snap. “Traveller, perhaps the shell’s inaccuracy is a blessing. If it falls harmlessly into an uninhabited area—”
“Ned, the shell will be tipped by a Dewar containing several pounds of anti-ice. It is unlikely to be ‘harmless’… and in any event, I have observed it long enough to be sure of where it will fall.”
“Where?”
“It will be any second now, Ned; you should shield your eyes.”
“Where, damn you?”
“…Orléans.”
First there came a flowering of light, quite beautiful, which fled along the ground in all directions from the center of the old city. When that had faded, and we were able to open our dazzled and streaming eyes, we saw how a great wind was scouring after the light across the plain; trees snapped like matchstalks and buildings exploded to rubble.
Within seconds of the impact a great bubble of cloud formed over the city center. The cloud lifted to the sky, a monstrous thunderhead growing out of the ground; it blackened as it rose, and was lit from below by a hellish red glow—undoubtedly the burning of Orléans—and from above by the flickering of lightning between plumes of cloud.
It was all quite soundless.
I became aware that the clashing armies below had grown still, that their guns no longer spoke; I imagined hundreds of thousands of men straightening, facing their erstwhile opponents, and turning to this monstrous new apparition.
Traveller said: “What have I done? It makes Sebastopol look like a candle.”
I sought words. “You could not have stopped this—”
He turned to me, a bizarre smile superimposed on his travesty of a face. “Ned, I have dedicated my life since the Crimea to the peaceful exploitation of anti-ice. For if I could get the damn stuff used up on peaceable, if spectacular, purposes, then men would never again use it on each other. Well, at least the stuff will be exhausted now by these follies of Gladstone’s… But I have failed. And more: by developing ever more ingenious technologies for the exploitation of the ice, I have brought this day upon the Earth.
“Ned, I would like to show you another invention.” His face still disfigured by that ghastly smile he began to open his restraints.
“…What?”
“A conception of Leonardo’s—one of the few Latins with any sense of the practical. I think you’ll find it amusing…”
And those were the last words he spoke to me before his fist came crashing into my temple.
Cold air slapped me awake. I opened my eyes, my head throbbing.
The Little Moon filled my eyes.
I was sitting in the hatchway near the base of the Smoking Cabin. My legs dangled out of the open hatchway; the battle-strewn ground was many hundreds of feet below. A strange khaki pack, like a soldier’s knapsack, was fixed to my chest.
Startled to full wakefulness I made to grab at the lip of the hatchway. A hand rested on my shoulder; I turned and stared at long fingers dully, as if they comprised some odd spider.
It was Traveller, of course. He said, shouting over the rushing air, “It is nearly done, Ned. The supply of Antarctic anti-ice is all but exhausted. Now I must finish it.” He laughed, his voice distorted by the hole in his face.
His tone was terrifying. “Traveller, let us land in safety and—”
“No, Ned. Once, our young French saboteur told us that to waste a few ounces of anti-ice was worth the life of a patriot. Well, I’ve come to believe he was right. I mean to destroy the Phaeton, and in this act of atonement to hasten the removal of the anti-ice curse from Earth.”
I searched for words. “Traveller, I understand. But—”
But there was time for no more; for I was administered a kick to the small of my back, which propelled me feet first from the vessel and into mid-air!
As the chill air whistled past my ears I screamed, convinced I was to die at last. I wondered at the depths of despair which had compelled Traveller to commit such an act—but then, after a fall of fifty feet, there was a sharp tug to my chest. Cables fixed to my pack had tautened, and now I dangled, slowly descending. I looked up—uncomfortably, for the straps of the pack had bunched under my armpits. The cables were fixed to a construct of canvas and cable, an inverted cone which was catching the air as I fell and so slowing my fall to a safe rate.
Squirming in my straps I looked down, beyond my dangling feet. The anti-ice thunderhead, still growing, climbed high over the corpse of Orléans. The armies of France and Prussia lay spread out beneath me, but there was little sign of movement; and I found it inconceivable that men should resume killing each other after such an event. Perhaps, I reflected in the silence and calm of my mid- air suspension, now that the world’s anti-ice was virtually exhausted, this ghastly—accident—would serve as a warning for generations to come of the perils and horror of war.
Perhaps Traveller had at last achieved his goal of a warless world—but at a cost he would find difficult to accept.
From somewhere above my canopy there came a roar, a flash of steam and fire. I twisted my head back once more—there was the Little Moon staring down, bemused, at this tortured Earth—and there went the fabulous Phaeton, rising for the last time on her plumes of steam.
The ship continued to climb, unwavering. Soon only a vapor trail, reminiscent of Gladstone’s shell, marked out her path; and it became obvious that Traveller had no intention of returning again to the world of men. At last the trail thinned to the near-invisible as Traveller reached the edge of the atmosphere… but it was a trail that pointed like an arrow at the heart of the Little Moon.
Now his intention was clear; he meant to drive the craft into the bulk of the satellite itself.
Some minutes passed. Traveller’s trail dispersed slowly, and I swung impotently but comfortably beneath Leonardo’s canopy; I kept my eyes fixed on the Little Moon, hoping to be able to detect the moment of the Phaeton’s impact with it—
The world was flooded with light, from horizon to horizon; it was as if the sky itself had caught fire.
The Little Moon seemed to have exploded.
Barely able to see, I fell heavily to the ground among a group of wondering French infantrymen.
Epilogue
A LETTER TO A SON
November 4, 1910
Sylvan, Sussex
My Dear Edward,
I trust this parcel finds you as it leaves me: that is, in good health and spirits.
No doubt you will be surprised, on opening this latest package from home, to find the customary missive from your dear mother replaced by these few pages of scrawl from myself. And I hope you will forgive me if I omit the usual bulletin of news of home; of these matters I will only say that we all remain hale and hearty, and miss you tremendously.
My intention in writing to you is to try in my own inadequate way to make up for the deficiencies in understanding which should exist between us as father and son. I accept full blame for this; and you may have realized that our last lengthy conversation before your posting to Berlin—you remember: that affair of pipes, whiskey and carpet slippers before a dying fire, late one Saturday evening—was an earlier attempt to break through this barrier between us. I failed, of course. And yet, in the purity of your anger that evening, how my heart was rent to see in you so much of myself, the self of thirty or forty years ago!