Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology by Terri Wagner (Editor)

was in the air again.

    Four days later, on City Thirty-one, Valerie allowed herself half a day to walk and get some space away from the cabin fever of the flyer, and to buy more book spools to occupy her time on the lonely journey. She bought a bottle of brandy; she would save it, and open it to celebrate her return to City Twenty-seven.
    There was no word of City Twenty-seven’s troubles, and she hadn’t expected any. Danforth had told her the city’s predicament was being kept secret to avoid a panic. Other, smaller, cities were moving toward City Twenty-seven, but they wouldn’t be able to take more than a tiny fraction of the populace. By the time any of the bigger cities could get there, it would be too late. The protonium device was the city’s only hope.

    Huxley—Danforth’s contact on City Six—waited for Valerie on the dock as she landed. “Danforth told you the plan?” he asked.
    Apart from a two-hour stop at City Fifteen, Valerie had been in the air ten days since leaving City Thirty-one. She wanted a hot bath and a real bed, and she’d half a mind to open her celebration brandy early. She didn’t want to get into this conversation yet. “Not exactly. He said you’d have a way to get me onto Belvedere. He didn’t give away any details.”
    “I’ll give you the specifics later. You’ll be leaving here the day after tomorrow. When you reach Belvedere, you should be able to lose yourself in the city. They’re not like us. Not organised. People come and go as they please, and no one cares. You’ll be able to do the same.”
    “Then what?”
    “Find the protonium. Get it onto an outbound supply ship if you can, then signal me—I have a transmitter for you—and we’ll do the rest. If you can find the reaction vessel and the containment shell too, that’s all the better—the protonium is the key.”
    “What if I can’t get it onto a ship? Danforth suggested throwing it off the city.”
    Huxley shrugged. “That’s an option. Just get it off Belvedere however you can, then contact me.”

    The robot supply airship was precisely where Huxley had said it would be. Valerie guided her flyer underneath it, matched speeds, set the clockworks, and went back to the hatch in the ceiling of the flyer’s central corridor. Wind whistled as the hatch opened, and she shuddered at the thought of what she was about to do. She wondered for the hundredth time why Huxley couldn’t have come up with a less dangerous plan.
    She checked the shoulder strap on her bag again and tightened it one more notch. It was heavy, weighed down with the book spools and the brandy bottle and her other things. She could have left it behind . . . but the books were all she had to keep her sane.
    She looked up through the hatch, at the belly of the airship. She had no alternative. She steeled her nerves and climbed up the ladder, then clambered out on all fours onto the top skin of the flyer. The hatch slid closed behind her automatically—now there was no going back, for there was no way to open it from the outside.
    The metal struts and supports of the larger ship were five feet above her head, but she was frozen, unable to stand for fear of being blown off the aircraft by the rushing slipstream. She had only moments before the clockworks engaged and the flyer turned back to City Six, with her stuck up there on the roof. She forced herself to stand, grab the metalwork and lift herself up. A moment later, she was crouched in the angle between two struts. The flyer’s clockworks engaged, and she watched as the little craft dropped and turned.
    And now she saw the ground, three miles below, and her fingers ached as she gripped the metalwork, afraid to move. She stayed that way for a full minute, petrified. The chill of the wind began to cut through her clothes. She couldn’t stay there. She’d freeze to death. She had to get moving, and quickly. She forced herself to stand.
    The wind whipped her hair around her face as she