"I can hear the engines, but just barely."
"Yes. Now here's another stateroom, and then round the comer we have the stair and the elevator. One more tum and we'd be back at the pool."
"It isn't really all that big, is it?"
"There's another deck below, which we'll see in a moment, and the control gondola forward, and some other things, but of course the passenger space really isn't enormous, compared to an airliner. It's the gas bag that makes us look so huge. Let's go downstairs now, if you're still game."
"Sure."
H. G. Van Loon, the captain of the Bayern, sat in the little comm room forward in B Deck, watching the spy screens. It was boring work for a man like him, but what the devil, there was no help for it; it would have been unfair to ask the three pilots, who stood regular watches in the control gondola, to do this additional duty as well.
Here she came down the stairs with Stone, and he heard her voice:
"This is Mr. Zwingli's office, we won't disturb him just now. Here on the other side is the infirmary; it's quite modem. We could do surgery here if we liked."
The next camera picked them up at the dogleg. "What's this?" Stone asked, rapping the wall on his left.
"That's the pool; the deep end is here. It goes all the way down through B Deck to the hull, another three feet or so. There's a camera inside--sometimes we put fish in, and then it's like an aquarium.
"And on the other side we have the crew loo and showers. Now along here on the right is the crew mess, and this little corridor leads to two more staterooms. And here's the galley. Hullo, Antoine, Juan. This is Mr. Brown, who is traveling with us. Antoine LaMotte, Juan Estero."
In the galley pickup, the cook nodded and smiled. "Very glad to meet you, Mr. Brown." The potboy, shy as usual, said nothing.
"My name isn't Brown, it's Stone--Ed Stone." He offered his hand.
LaMotte looked puzzled, but wiped his palm on his apron and shook hands. "Mr. Stone, then, you like better?" He glanced at Clitterhouse, who shrugged.
"I'm the guy who was kidnapped by aliens. So now I've been kidnapped twice."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Stone. Sorry I don't recognize you. You are looking different now."
"I've had a hard life," said Stone. He sniffed. "Something smells good."
"That is the onion soup. Now we are peeling shallots for the chicken. Do you like shallots, Mr. Stone?"
"I don't know what they are."
LaMotte picked up a little brown bulb from the counter and exhibited it with a flourish. "They are in the middle between a garlic and an onion. There will be garlic also in this dish. Without garlic, without shallots, without onions, how can one cook?"
"Sounds like you enjoy your work. "
"Oh, yes. I like very much to be chef on an airship. Only the best ingredients, you understand, best of everything. I cook for all here, the crew and staff are nine, then Mr. Zwingli and Ms. Clitterhouse and now you. For a dinner party, it might be eight or ten upstairs, usually not more. But if it is more, we can use the lounge instead of the dining room, and once we used both the dining room and the lounge. That was in Istanbul two years ago. There were twenty at table."
"We'll leave you to it then, Antoine," said Clitterhouse. "Dinner at the usual hour?"
"Oh, yes, certainly, the usual hour."
Another pickup. "Please don't be difficult about the name," Clitterhouse was saying. "We like to keep on the good side of Antoine, because when he sulks his cooking is awful. Now this is the pantry, and down here is the communications room." That was Van Loon's cue. He flipped off all the screens, got up and opened the door. "Oh, Miss Clitterhouse," he said, "I was just going to look for you. Can you relieve me here while I have a wash?"
"Certainly, Hendrik." She said to Stone, "Captain Van Loon will show you back to A Deck, if you've seen all you want here."
"I can get back by myself, " said Stone. Van Loon bowed slightly and watched him walk away. Clitterhouse went into the comm room and switched on the screens. "It's all right," she said after a moment; "he's going up the stairs."
"He doesn't like me," said Van Loon mournfully.
"Well, can you blame him?"
Zwingli came upstairs, after a pleasant and productive afternoon, half an hour before dinnertime. He found Stone reading a magazine in the lounge, with a drink in his hand.
"Well, Mr. Stone," he said, "you have not been too bored, I hope?"
The bartender walked in with a highball on a tray; he put it in front of Stone and picked up the old glass. "Something for you, Mr. Zwingli?"
"I can get it myself, Oskar. You should be laying the table, I think."
"Yes, Mr. Zwingli, but Mr. Stone-"
"I understand. Go on, Oskar, we won't need you now."
Oskar bowed and went away. "Please excuse me," said Zwingli. He crossed to the bar, got a glass and a bottle of Pernod, and came back. He filled the glass and raised it. "To your health, Mr. Stone."
Stone raised his glass. "Where are we headed?" he asked.
"We are going to cruise on the Continent for a while; I like to stay out of Asia as much as I can. By tomorrow morning we shall be passing Chungking, and the day after we shall be crossing the Aral Sea. I have to do some business in Munich at the beginning of November, and at some point we must make a refueling stop, but otherwise we can go where we like. Is there anything you would particularly like to see?"
"No." After a moment Stone said, "I should of known something was fishy when that guy told me you didn't want to advertise where you were. How the hell could you hide something this big?"
Zwingli smiled. "We could build a hangar at every port of call, but that would be very expensive."
"Yeah. But you don't need hangars?"
"No, only the mooring towers. In fact, an airship can land without a tower, if the weather is calm. The Graf Zeppelin once landed on the polar ice, to exchange stamped letters with a Russian icebreaker. "
"Is that right? When was that?"
"In nineteen thirty-one."
"Yeah? Funny, I never heard of it. I heard about the accident, though, after I came back. Is that why they stopped making zeppelins?"
"Yes, but there have been no accidents to my company's airships. You probably know that the old zeppelins were inflated with hydrogen because helium could not be imported from the United States. And, of course, many of the flights were made in wartime. So most of the zeppelins went down in flames, or broke up in unusual winds. But we know better how to design them now. They are very safe, safer than airplanes."
"Okay, so why did you stop?"
"It was decided to put an end to commercial flights as a matter of policy. They would have been available for flights to Shanghai, which we did not want to encourage. We also arranged for some breakdowns in rail service, and that was of some help, but not enough."
"Oh, I get it."
"The other airships, the larger ones, were all broken up for scrap. The company allowed me to keep this little one for my own use, and I must say I like it very much. I can carry on my business affairs as well here as in any skyscraper. If I want to see people in person, no problem. Either they come to me here, or I go to them. The airship travels slowly enough that I never have jet lag, and at my age that is a serious consideration. I have lived aboard most of the time now for more than three years."
The first stars were coming out. On the horizon were mountains like clouds, or clouds like mountains.
"Funny that I always wanted to do this," Stone said. "It's almost like, you get whatever you want bad enough, but you don't always appreciate it when you get it."
"That's very true, Mr. Stone. I myself try to appreciate whatever I get."
Dinner was onion soup with a Chablis, then chicken with shallots and sour cream with a white Zinfandel, followed by a lemon souffle light as air with a St. Emillon, and cheese and melon after, with port or brandy to follow. Stone did not eat much; he had had several highballs before dinner and was a little red-eyed, although he was alert and his speech was distinct. Zwingli thought he was taking it as well as could be expected, and he himself did not mind carrying the burden of the conversation.