Old Mars

The bosun, who had lashed himself to the mizzenmast, stared at Kidd as though he doubted his captain’s sanity. At the beginning of the storm, following long-standing naval custom, they’d struck all the sails and the balloons, facing the storm with bare masts rather than risking the sails being torn away; since then they’d set only the bare minimum of sail to control the ship. But now Kidd was telling him to raise the largest sail and turn it so that it would catch as much wind as possible.

“Smartly now!” Kidd cried, reinforcing his command with a demand for rapid action.

“Aye, sir!” the bosun replied. He and the maintop men unlashed themselves and crept cautiously, with at least one hand clutching the shrouds at all times, up the mainmast. Only the diligence, skill, and bravery of their decades of experience made it possible for them to unfurl the sail and sheet it home, the yard running fore and aft so that the wind from the larboard side caught the sail full-on.

No sooner was the sail set than it snapped open, filling with the rushing air. The frightening sound of tearing canvas could be heard even over the wind’s roar, but the ship surged beneath Kidd’s feet, lurching directly sideways toward the patch of blue. At sea, this sort of maneuver would be impossible, but with nothing but air beneath the keel, the game had entirely changed.

“Set all sails!” Kidd cried. “Brace all sharp on a larboard tack! Smartly now!” This stratagem could only succeed if they managed to press on all sail while the favorable wind continued.

The crew set to with a will, sheeting home one rain-lashed sail after another. With each new stretch of canvas, the ship rushed faster toward the open air.

The force of the gale on the crowd of sails also tumbled the ship to the side, heeling her so hard over to starboard that her keel pointed directly into the wind.

Kidd and Sexton clung hard to the whipstaff, but though the ship now lay entirely on her side, the Earth’s pull had grown so weak that no man fell overboard.

The patch of blue, now above the mainmast, grew larger and larger.

And then the ship rushed through it, tumbling up into blue and clear air. The storm fell away behind, a horrific ball of lightning-whipped black cloud.

“Thank God,” Kidd cried, “for able seamen!”

Kidd, Sexton, Edmonds, and the ship’s carpenter floated in the air off the ship’s starboard hull, each secured from drifting by a light line tied to an ankle. The storm lay three weeks behind them, but they’d passed within sight of many other such—great untidy knots of roiling cloud—and Kidd and Sexton had argued the whole time over how best to prepare for the next that could not be avoided.

The carpenter had chalked a large X on the hull, between the dried barnacles and shipworm holes. “This’d be the spot, Captain,” he said. “If’n you’re sure …”

Kidd wasn’t sure, not at all. He cast a baleful eye at Sexton. “This is madness. To cut holes in our own hull?”

Sexton glared right back. “It is the only way.”

For three weeks, the ship had been subject to the whims of the interplanetary atmosphere, tossed here and there by every changing breeze and tumbled every which way as it flew. Though they’d fastened down everything they could, the men still floated freely in the air, and the ship’s unpredictable turns and tumbles had resulted in many injuries and several men nearly lost overboard. Kidd had learned much about how to sail in this new world, but still the ship seemed to fight him at every turn.

Sexton had proposed a new sail plan of radical novelty. The mainmast and mizzenmasts would be unshipped and remounted forward on the lower hull, sticking down and out to form a great equal-armed Y with the foremast. According to Sexton’s theory, putting all sail forward in this way would cause the ship to present her stern to the prevailing wind rather than constantly heeling over; distributing the sails equally in the vertical plane would give them control over the ship’s direction and her orientation in the air. But no ship in history had ever had masts below the waterline!

“We’ll have to saw the masts from the keelson!” Kidd protested. “She’ll never be whole again!”

Sexton patted the air placatingly. “I promise this new design will balance the ship out,” he said. “If you can but make the masts secure in their new locations.”

Kidd and his men would have to work out an entirely new system of rigging to support the masts. But their spare cordage was limited, and it would have to work perfectly the first time: If the rigging proved inadequate to hold the sails against the pressure of wind, the remounted masts would tear the hull apart. He shook his head. “I don’t know if it can be done. Give me time, damn it! We can yet learn to sail her as she stands …”