It was too big for her but Jan was grateful for it. It was already much colder up in this strange place than it had been way down in the slave’s quarters. Milo was meanwhile pulling other things out of her locker. “Put this on over the jacket,” he instructed, giving her a kind of harness made of leather. She allowed him to help her do up its many fastenings, trying to ignore the feel of his hands when they touched her body. She wondered what the metal loops on the harness were for. Next came a pair of boots with thick soles made of a strange rubbery substance, then a pair of leather gloves. Both boots and gloves looked well-used and had a pungent odour. Then Milo handed her a large coil of cord with metal clips at each end. He showed her how to carry it over her shoulder, with the aid of a loop on the harness. Finally he gave her a stick with a clump of cloth strips on one end.
She stared at it. It’s a mop, she told herself disbelievingly. What was she supposed to do with it—clean the outside of the Sky Lord? The idea was absurd. Surely the hull was kept clean by rain showers and the wind.
“Move it, you lazy bastards!” roared Benny, moving among them. “Last one topside will get a kiss from my razzle stick!”
Jan cringed mentally at the memory of the unbearable pain she’d experienced when the thing had touched her before. She looked desperately towards Milo who had gone to a locker at the end of the row and was hastily donning his own equipment. She hurriedly joined him. “Where are we supposed to go?” she asked.
He jerked his head. She looked and saw a ladder extending down from the ceiling. The others were already moving towards it. Benny was pushing a lever at the base of the ladder. A panel in the upper hull slid open and Jan saw bright sunlight and felt a rush of cold air. She went to the ladder, anxious not to be the last up it but every time she tried to get on it one of the other slaves blocked her way. She began to feel panicky. Anything would be better than to feel the effects of that magic stick again.
But they continued to block her way until the last of the other slaves, grinning, ascended the ladder ahead of her. She glanced apprehensively towards Benny and then realized that Milo was holding back behind her, waiting for her to go up. With relief she got on the ladder. As she climbed she looked back over her shoulder. Milo was following. Benny was scowling at him but made no move to touch him with the pain stick.
Had Milo deliberately put himself at risk on her behalf or had he known Benny was only bluffing, she wondered? But then she emerged through the hatchway and all such thoughts vanished. For a few moments she was so disorientated she froze on the ladder but then she felt a sharp tap on her leg and Milo said curtly, “Out, amazon. Plenty of time for sight-seeing later. Too much time. …”
She slowly climbed the rest of the way out and stood beside the hatchway, bracing herself against the stiff wind that blew over the airship’s hull. Airship. She had forcibly to remind herself that she was indeed standing on top of the airship. So immense was the hull she had got the impression she’d been magically transported to some other world. She couldn’t see the ground, all she could see was the curving, alien landscape of the Sky Lord’s vast back in all directions.
Feeling insignificant and vulnerable she went and took a firm hold on the rail that formed a large circle around the hatchway area. The other slaves, oblivious of the view, laughed and joked loudly over the whistling of the wind. “Quite a sight, eh?” asked Milo, joining her at the rail. “I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I first came topside. But you’ll get over it.”
Jan didn’t believe a word he said. She couldn’t imagine him feeling the way she felt at the moment, nor did she imagine she would ever get used to being a flea on this giant’s smooth and shiny back. She looked more closely at the surface of the hull. It seemed to be covered with countless close-fitting pieces of hexagonally-shaped, dark grey glass. She remembered watching the Sky Lord from the ground and thinking that its upper half was covered in fish scales. She asked Milo what they were.
“Sun-gatherers. At least that’s what these sky people call them. Actually, they’re. …”
He was interrupted by Benny yelling at them to get moving. The slaves started to head out on to what seemed to be a kind of pathway, bounded by low hand rails, that appeared to stretch along the spine of the hull all the way back to the huge tail fin. Jan figured that the towering structure of the fin was at least a third of a mile away, but distances were hard to judge in this bizarre landscape.
She kept hold of the rail as she and Milo followed the others on to the pathway. Benny brought up the rear. He was whistling.
“The sun-gatherers are what used to be called solar cells,” Milo continued. “They absorb the sunlight and convert it into electrical energy. That’s where the power comes from for the Sky Lord’s engines, for the heating and light—everything. When they finally all give out the sky people will be, as we used to say once upon a time, up shit creek without a—”
“Give out? What do you mean?” she asked.
He gestured at the glass pieces. “These are Old Science. The members of the Sky Lord’s Guild of Engineers, the nearest thing to intelligent people on board this giant bag of gas, can’t duplicate them. They contain a genetically engineered substance that is similar to the chlorophyll in plants. Very efficient and in theory will continue to work indefinitely, but I wouldn’t bet on it. These airships have been knocking around the world for hundreds of years now and the wear and tear is really beginning to show. I wouldn’t be surprised if a large percentage of these cells are no longer functioning properly, or maybe have become disconnected from the power grid. The engineers don’t even know how that works so until the lights go out one day they won’t have a clue about the real situation. …”
“Okay, hold it!” ordered Benny. “This is it, section five. Where you work today, glass walkers.”
Jan looked and saw a large figure ‘5’ daubed to the left of the pathway. The red paint covered several of the ‘sun-gatherers’. Jan asked Milo, “Don’t tell me we’re supposed to clean all these things?”
“Can you think of any other reason to be out here with mops?” he said with a grin.
“But why do they need cleaning?”
“Fungus. There’s a particular species that likes to make its home on the glass. The air-borne spores lodge in the cracks between the cells. Eventually the fungus covers the whole cell, preventing it from absorbing the sunlight.”
Jan looked down at the glass segments in front of her. “They look clean to me,” she said.
“These may be but this isn’t where we’ll be working. Come on. …” He helped her over the railing. The other slaves, and Benny, were already over and heading towards the left ‘horizon’. As she walked after them with Milo she almost immediately became aware of the curvature of the hull under her feet. Walking along the footpath had created the impression that the hull’s surface was perfectly flat. A queasy feeling stirred in her stomach. She didn’t want to go any further from the path but knew she had no choice.
“See those two carrying those tanks?” Milo asked her, pointing at two male slaves who were carrying bulky metal cylinders on their backs. “They’ll spray the affected areas with solvent ahead of us then we simply wipe it off.”
“So why aren’t they spraying yet?” she asked anxiously.
“Because we haven’t reached the allotted area yet. All this part of the upper hull—the easily accessible sections—are taken care of by other slave units. But Guild Master Bannion’s glass walkers get the more difficult jobs. That’s why Bannion is rich and we live better than most of the other slaves.”