‘Captain?’ Roberts said.
Maskelyne ignore him. His attention had already turned to a wide workbench under the stern windows, where a shining gem lantern stood amidst what appeared to be a number of optical and magnetic experiments.
Kitchener whistled through his teeth. ‘Never seen the like,’ he said.
‘Fair bit of money here, Captain.’ Roberts added.
Maskelyne turned his blunderbuss over and pressed two fingers against the glass void-fly phial. It still felt ice cold. He leaned the weapon against the table and then let his gaze travel across the room. Several of the experiments looked familiar. A sealed bell jar contained a tiny copper vane, like a miniature version of the anemometers in the cabinet. Each of the vane’s four thin, square fins had been painted black on one side and polished on the other. They were turning slowly, even in the sealed environment within the jar. Beside this mechanism a brilliant white gem lantern illuminated a diffraction box, wherein the rays of light passed through a pair of closely spaced vertical slits in the centre of the container and made patterns of interference across a rear screen. In addition to these finds he noted a large array of kaleidoscopes, reflecting telescopes, boxes of magnets, wires and prisms, and even a pair of Unmer spectacles. Runic inscriptions covered the silver frames, the decorations whirling around a tiny wheel fixed to one side of the rightmost lens. A triangle had been impressed into the wheel, within which was etched several digits, almost too small to see. Maskelyne picked up the spectacles and squinted at them. The number in the triangle was 1.618.
The golden ratio.
‘Looks like our captain was an amateur opticist,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Spectacles like this were once worn by archivists, but I’ve not seen a pair quite so fine before.’
‘Nothing amateur about anything the Unmer do,’ Kitchener growled. ‘And nothing normal about it either. There’s a reason this ship came after us. Mark my words, sir. There’s an evil will behind this. Someone wanted us aboard this vessel.’
Maskelyne examined the table. ‘The captain was studying the properties of light,’ he remarked. ‘The diffraction box illustrates that light exhibits the properties of waves, while this vane suggests that it is actually composed of particles. And yet if light travels in a straight line through a vacuum, can a single ray still be a wave?’ He found himself musing about each speck of starlight oscillating at a particular frequency. Had our brains developed to interpret those frequencies? How did light particles interact? There had be some association between them – perhaps analogous to the association that existed between the fragments of mankind? Looking at the experiments, Maskelyne suddenly felt that he was on the verge of finding something important, a key to the mystery behind all Unmer artefacts.
He picked up the spectacles and studied them closely. They were more intricate than any he’d seen before. The lenses were not solid, but actually composed of a number of incredibly thin optical elements sandwiched together. When he turned the tiny wheel fixed to the frame, these inner circles of glass rotated around each other, but not in any commonsensical alignment. He could perceive nothing strange or magical about the set-up.
He put the spectacles on.
The cabin looked normal.
He turned the wheel beside his right eye and heard the almost imperceptible murmur of the glass discs revolving inside the lenses. This sound was followed by a sudden crackling buzz. The legs of the silver frame felt warm against his head.
And something odd happened. The cabin now appeared to be much darker than before, and yet everything around him was awash with a low, flickering silver luminance, as if each object – the bed, the cabinets, the artefacts – possessed a strange and intermittent aura. The workbench experiments shuddered in the dim light. He watched ghostlike wisps of light tremble across the diffraction box, the kaleidoscopes and the telescopes. It looked like some sort of interference pattern. No doubt the artefact was broken, and had been brought here to be repaired. The spectral radiance, however, did not extend beyond the cabin, for the mists beyond the window now appeared as black as night. White dots shifted in the gloom outside – like stars. Kitchener and Roberts emitted no discernible luminance at all. ..
Indeed, both crewmen were now missing from the scene entirely.
Maskelyne removed the spectacles. Kitchener and Roberts reappeared, standing there regarding him as if nothing had happened. He put the spectacles back on. The two men simply vanished before his eyes, leaving the surroundings intact, but stammering in that darkly uncertain light. Suddenly he thought he detected movement at the corner of his vision, and turned abruptly. But there was nothing there, just the cabin walls and the door.
Had that door just closed?
Remarkable. Was he witnessing some previously hidden property inherent in the objects themselves? The very essence of sorcery? Could that explain both the consistency of the cabin and the sudden disappearance of his two crewmen? The ship was sorcerous, but his comrades were not? Was it possible that these spectacles could perceive one and not the other? Maskelyne could not imagine another solution. He wondered if he could tune the spectacles to eliminate the interference and produce a clearer picture.
He turned the wheel back to its original position.
This time a searing white light blinded him, as if a magnesium powder flash had been set off directly in front of his eyes. Images crashed into his retina: the cabin, a ship, the sky, cabin, ship, sky, all accompanied by a terrible stuttering roar. Maskelyne tore the spectacles from his face, overcome with agony, and pinched his eyes.
‘Captain?’ Kitchener said.
After-images remained burned into Maskelyne’s retinas. He’d glimpsed something he recognized… But what was it? Now he couldn’t see a thing. ‘I’m blinded,’ he cried, and realized that he couldn’t even hear his own words. The roaring sound still drummed in his ears. Yet even as he spoke, he realized that this sensory storm was already beginning to fade. Slowly, his vision began to return to normal. He heard himself breathing once more.
‘Some water,’ Kitchener said to Roberts. ‘Fetch clean water.’
‘No,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘I’m all right. I can see again. I can hear.’ He set down the strange spectacles and then took a deep breath. His nerves felt utterly shredded. He was shaking. What was it he’d glimpsed during that terrible glare? A face? The more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that was it. A hideous iron visage, scorched and blackened by fire. ‘Blame my own foolishness,’ he said at last. ‘I should have known better than to make assumptions. You are quite right, Kitchener. Normalcy is not a quality one should ever associate with the Unmer.’ He shook his head clear of the last vestiges of the vision. ‘Start bringing the crew over now. Leave the trove, but bring the gas welders and grab as much water, food, rope, tools and sailcloth as you can carry.’
‘Sailcloth, captain?’ Kitchener inquired.
‘I want to put a spinnaker up on that tower,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘If there is a will at work here, we ought to give ourselves the opportunity to thwart it.’
Ianthe retreated into the darkness of her own mind. She found that she was breathing rapidly. What had happened? She’d been looking out at the cabin through Maskelyne’s eyes. She saw the optical experiments and watched her host pick up the spectacles. She had looked out of his eyes in awe at the change in luminance when Maskelyne had first turned the wheel and then gasped at the abrupt disappearance of the two crewmen. And then…