Shielding their eyes, Burton and Swinburne looked into the station and observed a vast workshop. A number of globes hung from the high ceiling. Lightning bolts had somehow been trapped inside them, and they bathed the floor beneath in an incandescent glare, which reflected off the surfaces of megalithic machines—contrivances whose functions were baffling in the extreme. Electricity fizzed, crackled, and buzzed across their surfaces, and shafts of it whipped and snapped across the open spaces, filling the place with the sharp tang of ozone.
Among all this, over to their right, there stood a bulky vehicle. Around twelve feet high and thirty-six in length, it was tubular in shape—the front half a cabin, the back half a powerful engine—and it was mounted on a large number of short jointed legs. Rows of legs also projected from its top and sides. At its rear, steam funnels stuck horizontally outward, while its front was dominated by a huge drill, which tapered from the outer edges of the vehicle to a point, the tip of which stood some eighteen feet in advance of the main body.
Spencer, noticing them looking at it, explained: “That's a Worm—one of the machines what they're usin' to dig the London Underground tunnels. They reckons Underground trains will make it easier for people to move around the city, now that the streets are so congested with traffic. But you won't find me gettin' into one o' them trains. I'd be afraid o' suffocatin'!”
“You can't suffocate, Herbert,” Swinburne objected.
“Aye, so you says!”
Another contrivance caught their eye. Surrounded by a group of technicians and engineers, it was a large barrel-shaped affair on tripod legs with a myriad of mechanical arms, each ending in pliers or a blowtorch or a saw or some other tool. As Burton, Swinburne, and Spencer entered, it swung toward them, lurched away from the Technologists, and stamped over.
“Greetings, gentlemen,” it said, and its voice was identical to Herbert Spencer's, except pitched at a low baritone.
“Hello, Isambard,” Burton answered, for, indeed, this hulking mechanism was the famous engineer—or, more accurately, it was the life maintaining apparatus that had encased him since 1859, earning him the nickname the Steam Man. The king's agent continued: “The crew of the Orpheus is standing ready to take delivery of the vehicles and further supplies. Is everything prepared?”
“Yes, Sir Richard. My people will tarry—harry—excuse me, carry— everything aboard.”
“I say, Izzy!” Swinburne piped up, with a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes. “Has your new speech-rendering device broken?”
“No,” Brunel answered. “But it is not currently interacting sufficiently—effusively—expectantly—I mean, efficiently—with the calculating elephants—um—elements—of my cerebral impasse—er, impulse—calculators. Unanticipated variegations—vegetations—my apologies—variations are occurring in the calibration of the device's sensory nodes.”
“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “The problem is obviously chronic! I didn't understand a single word you just said! It was absolute gibberish!”
“Algy,” Burton muttered. “Behave yourself!”
“It's all right, Sir Pilchard—er, Sir Richard,” Brunel interjected. “Mr. Spinbroom has not yet forgiven me for the way I treated him during the String Filled Sack affair. I mean the Spring Heeled Jack despair—um—affair. Kleep.”
“Kleep?” Swinburne asked, trying to stifle a giggle.
“Random noise,” Brunel replied. “A recurring poodle. I mean, problem.”
The poet clutched his sides, bent over, and let loose a peal of shrill laughter.
Burton sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Mr. Brunel's speakin' apparatus is the same as me own,” Herbert Spencer put in, raising a brass finger to touch the rounded arrangement of pipes on his head. “But, as you know, me intellect is knockin' around inside the structure o' black diamonds, whereas his ain't, and the instrument responds better to impulses from inorganic matter than from organic.”
“Ah-ha!” Swinburne cried out, wiping tears from his eyes. “So you still have fleshly form inside that big tank of yours, do you, Izzy?”
“That's quite enough,” Burton interrupted, pushing his diminutive assistant aside. He steered the conversation back to the business at hand: “Are we on schedule, Isambard?”
“Yes. We have to declare—compare—repair the ventilation and leaping—um, heating—system, but the League of Chimney Sweeps has guaranteed periphery—I mean, delivery—of a new section of pipe by six o'clock today, and the work itself will slake—take—but an hour or so.”
Swinburne, who'd regained control of himself, asked, “Why can't you fabricate the pipe yourself?”
“Reg—parp—ulations,” Brunel answered.
Burton explained: “The Beetle has recently secured the sole manufacturing and trading rights to any pipes through which his people must crawl to clean or service.”
“That boy is a genius,” Swinburne commented.
“Indeed,” Burton agreed. “Very well, we'll leave you to it, Isambard. The ship's crew will help your people to load the supplies. The passengers will reconvene here tomorrow morning at nine.”
“Would you like to suspect—inspect—the vehicles before you depart?”
“No time. We have a murder investigation under way. I have to go.”
“Before you do, may I peek—speak—with you privately for a moment?”
“Certainly.”
Burton followed Brunel and stood with him a short distance away. They conversed for a few minutes, then the Steam Man clanked off and rejoined the group of Technologists.
Burton returned.
“What was all that about?” Swinburne asked.
“He was telling me a few things about the babbage device that John Speke has fitted to his head. Let's go.”
“Should I join you, Boss?” Spencer asked.
“No, Herbert. I'd like you to stay and check the inventory against the supplies loaded.”
“Rightio.”
Leaving the clockwork man, Burton and Swinburne walked out through the doors, crossed the courtyard, and joined Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, Constable Bhatti, Isabella Mayson, Mrs. Angell and Fidget, and various other passengers at the foot of the rotorship's boarding ramp. Crewmembers D'Aubigny, Bingham, and Butler were also there, having been granted a few hours' shore leave.
The pea-souper swirled around them all, dusting their clothes and skin with pollutants, clogging their nostrils with soot.
“Are we all ready?” Burton asked his friends. “Then let us go and bid civilisation farewell, except for you, Mother Angell. I fully expect you to maintain its standards while we're gone.”
The group walked out through the station gates and passed alongside the outer wall beside a patch of wasteland that stretched down to nearby railway lines—a location which held bad memories for the king's agent and his assistant, for two years ago they'd been pursued across it by wolf-men and had narrowly avoided being hit by a locomotive.