In a world of steamships and Progress, no one who sails due south across the Wild Sea ever returns.
No one knows why.
Dale Mortensen intends to solve the mystery. With the help of an old sailor and a reformed playboy searching for his missing sweetheart, he locates a captain and crew ambitious—not to mention crazy—enough to undertake the journey across the Wild Sea.
The Infinity and her crew sail south, but the truth of what really lies on the other side of the horizon is more amazing—and terrifying—than anything they can imagine.
It’s the adventure of a lifetime—and it may just get Dale and his friends killed.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Click here to start from the beginning. Or if you want to read it at your own pace, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HORIZON
E. R. PASKEY
TWENTY-SIX
DALE DRAGGED HIS EYES AWAY FROM THE strange tower and his first glimpse of ocean in days with a supreme effort. His jaw dropped again as he took in the full scope of his surroundings. Instead of the beach he expected, this Rail Station had been built on the edge of a cliff—and it was completely encased inside a glitterglass box, tube, control box, and all. Long, narrow windows at the top of each wall provided fresh air.
Inside the control box, an old man dozed in a chair; he seemed completely oblivious to Dale’s presence.
At the other end of the glitterglass box, another tube stretched off into the distance toward the strange tower. That must be the Platform, Dale realized. Hoisting his seabag over one shoulder, he started toward it, but when he neared the cliff’s edge, he abruptly halted.
His heart pounded in his chest; he sucked in a sharp breath. The tube was actually a bridge. A wide, glitterglass bridge, connecting the Platform to the cliff. Why anyone would do that was currently beyond his comprehension.
Through the hazy glass, Dale saw foam-covered rocks far below and let out a long, low whistle. I think I understand now why Sivak wanted to know if I’m afraid of heights.
He cast one last look at the sleeping old man and the Rail car that could carry him back to the mines, and squared his shoulders. I don’t want to work underground. He set one foot on the bridge, and, when it held his weight, he took another step. I reckon it’s safe enough. Whoever built the bridge must have designed it to handle an influx of men striding across it—which would be more than enough to support one small giant.
After his first few steps, however, Dale was too distracted to worry about the bridge. The sea claimed his full attention. It was not his sea—too stormy and on the wrong world, of course—but it was a sea and that was enough. A fresh line of storm clouds was rolling in; the waves roiled and bucked below him, driven by a wind he wished he could feel.
The bridge ended at the top of the Platform, which was an open deck with a waist-height railing running around it and a boxy structure that looked like a one-room shack with windows standing in its center. The entire top of the Platform was also encased in glitterglass. The hazy roof stretching overhead prevented raindrops from hitting the deck, but Dale was grateful to finally feel a breeze. A keen glance around told him there were a few narrow openings in the glitterglass walls here as well.
He wanted to move to the railing and stare out at the vast, angry ocean spreading before him, but he knew he was on the clock. I need to find Reffet.
Dale approached the metal shack, which featured a heavy metal door facing the shoreline. He twisted the doorknob, only to find it firmly locked. All right then, he thought, and raised a fist to hammer on the door instead.
After the first couple of knocks, a metal plate behind an equally thick metal grate set in the door at chin-height-on him, anyway; it would be eye-height for most men-slid aside with a screech. A rough voice demanded, “Who are you?”
“Mr. Vandergild sent me.” Dale bent his knees to peer through the grate into a pair of suspicious green eyes.
“Another one? Show me your token.”
Wordlessly, Dale yanked the chain out of his shirt collar and dangled his blue token for the man to see.
“He sent you all right, I guess.” The man still sounded suspicious, but a hint of something that smacked of curiosity crept into his voice.
Dale heard the unmistakable sound of a number of bolts being undone, and then the heavy door swung open to reveal a narrow-shouldered man a head shorter than Dale. He gave Dale a quick once-over before stepping aside to make room for him to enter. “Come on, come on. Not supposed to have the door open long.”
It was not in Dale’s nature to simply come out and ask why, though he did wonder. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. The room itself was empty, save for a few chairs, a small table, and what looked like a cellar entrance with two heavy doors in the middle of the wooden floor.
Dale stepped over the threshold and the man bolted the door shut behind him before extending a work-roughened hand. “Nate Hawk. Most folks call me Hawk.” He had dark, curly hair, a full beard, and the pale skin of someone who has not seen enough sunshine.
Dale introduced himself and Hawk eyed him again. “You a sailor?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Me too.” A shadow darkened Hawk’s face behind his beard. “Or was, anyway.” He jerked his chin toward Dale. “New Arrival?”
Dale nodded and held up his letter. “Mr. Vandergild told me to give this to Mr. Reffet.”
“Right. Follow me.” Hawk led the way down the stairwell into the bowels of the Platform.
As far as Dale was concerned, the narrow stairs appeared to carry on straight down to the center of the world. Lanterns hung on the walls at various intervals to relieve the gloom that enveloped them once Hawk shut the doors above their heads. Dale caught brief glimmers of what looked like daylight seeping under the cracks in doors along the way, but he was not sure until they reached a level where even those cracks of light vanished.
“We’re underwater now.” Hawk glanced over his shoulder at Dale. “In fact, the Platform’s bottom six levels are all underwater. Heavily reinforced against Them, just in case you were wonderin’.”
Dale had not been, but the oblique reference to the mysterious Streamers started him wondering. “Could they get in here?”
Hawk threw him a dark look over his shoulder. “You’d better hope they don’t.”
Dale had no answer for that.
“Here we are,” announced Hawk a moment later. “Bottom of the ocean.”
The narrow, ladder-like stairwell ended at the deepest level of the Platform, which to Dale’s surprise, contained a pit leading down further still. The room was full of strange machinery; tubs, clear pipes, gears and controls he did not recognize. The pit below housed a piece of machinery that rocked up and down with rhythmic sways. That must be the drill, he thought, though it resembled no drill he had ever set eyes on before.
He noticed Hawk giving him an expectant look, as though he was supposed to say something. He cast about for words and latched onto the first thing that popped into his mind. “It’s better lit down here than I expected.”
To his surprise, Hawk burst out laughing. “That’s your first impression?” Still chortling, he motioned for Dale to stay where he was and hopped down into the pit.
From where he stood, off to one side of the ladder in case someone needed it, Dale could make out several men working in and around the drill in the center of the pit. He could not, however, determine exactly what they were accomplishing.
A moment later, Hawk climbed back out of the pit with an older, stockier man in tow. He had swarthy brown skin and curly black hair shorn close to his head. He had to crane his neck back to peer up at Dale’s face and a wry smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Whatever your parents fed you, it obviously worked.” He thrust out a hand. “Elias Reffet. Platform Foreman. You have a letter for me?”
Dale pulled it from inside his shirt and handed it over. Reffet skimmed its contents and nodded. “Good. We need somebody else with mechanical experience. Follow me.” He looked at Hawk. “Take his bag to Level 4 and put him in with Abdul and the others.”
Dale handed over his seabag; Hawk nodded and disappeared back the way they had come. Dale then followed the foreman as he climbed back into the pit and wove his way through the machinery, until he came to a stop in front of a boxy control panel that seemed to be connected to one of pipes.
Reffet slapped a hand on the top of the control panel’s frame. “You’ll be manning one of these.” He jerked a thumb toward the drill. “Drill rig brings up glitter-oil and fills those holding tanks. These panels control the pipes,” he skimmed a finger in the air following the trail of one of those pipes, “which empty out the tanks and carry everything back to the refining facility on the shore.”
“How do they do that?” asked Dale, in surprise. “Don’t the Streamers—”
Reffet made a choking noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t name them, man. We don’t talk about those things down here.”
“Sorry, sir.” Given how freely Hawk had referenced the Streamers, Dale suspected the ban had more to do with Reffet being uncomfortable with them, but he let it go. He was stranded in Rift City for the foreseeable future; there would no doubt be plenty of other opportunities to make inquiries later. For now, it was more important to avoid rocking the boat his very first day on the job.
Mollified, Reffet carried on with his introduction to the Platform’s functions. “The pipes are made of glitterglass—same as the walkway, which you probably noticed—and funnel glitter-oil up to the top of the Platform, where they lead over to the cliff and the refinery.”
Ah. Dale had wondered what those glittering cylindrical rods were. Not rods at all, but pipes. He thought back to them, trying to recall what the glitter-oil had looked like as it flowed through the pipes. Nothing came to mind except his initial impression of hazy gray glass.
“You’re probably wondering what this stuff looks like,” said Reffet shrewdly.
Surprised, Dale jerked his attention back to the foreman. “Sir?”
“Everyone does.” Reffet left the control panel and moved around to one of the holding tanks. The side came up to his neck; only by standing on his tiptoes could he actually see inside. He kept his hands well away from the tank.
Being nearly a foot taller, Dale had no such trouble. He peered over the side of the tank and scrutinized the thick, syrupy liquid inside. It had a glittery, silver sheen that vaguely reminded him of mica.
“Whatever you do,” said Reffet grimly, “don’t touch it. Stuff’s damn near impossible to get off.”
Dale looked at the foreman, his brow furrowing in confusion. “How do you turn glitter-oil into glitterglass?”
Reffet shrugged. “Hardens when it’s heated. Funniest thing.” Someone yelled and he started. “Come on, Mortensen. You’re up.”
He lend Dale back to his new station, handed him a pair of glitter-oil-stained gloves, and showed him how to work the controls before vanishing into the depths of the Pit.
In theory, Dale’s task was simple. In practice, however, it was decidedly tricky. Timing was everything, as shining patches of glitter-oil on the deck attested.
As soon as Dale filled his holding tank, he physically disconnected his pipe—which was surprisingly heavy and had a shallow trough at the top to keep glitter-oil from spilling out into the Pit during this process—and used the control panel to move it over to another glitterglass pipe leading up to the next level. Later, he would learn that was where several men manned smaller pumps which transferred glitter-oil into the pipe system connected to the mainland.
After what felt like hours, his stomach began to rumble and growl. Dale looked around, but no one else had moved. Maybe they don’t have breaks for lunch. Maybe they work straight through until dinner. The idea did not fill him with joy.
Judging time down here was a difficult feat. The light from the lanterns mounted along the walls never changed; he thought he began to understand why Hawk and some of the other men he had seen thus far looked so pale. Already, he found himself calculating how long it took the pump to fill a tank—and how long it took him to empty one.
A loud whistle blew, cutting through the noise in the Pit. Dale looked up at the sound with hopeful eyes. His tank of glitter-oil was nearly empty, and the sandwich he had made himself that morning was still squished into his pocket. To his relief, he saw his fellow tank managers abandoning their posts.
“Lunch break,” said someone at his elbow. Only years of keeping a straight face when his cousins popped out of unexpected hiding places to scare him enabled Dale to manfully refrain from jumping.
Hawk’s green eyes held a glimmer of amusement nonetheless. “We get an hour for lunch. Thought I’d show you around. Follow me.” He led the way out of the Pit and up the narrow ladder-stairs, where they joined a mass exodus of men traveling up to the Platform’s top level, beneath the exit that led to the glitterglass bridge and the mainland.
Dale inhaled deeply as delicious smells wafted along the corridor toward him, along with the rumble of men talking and laughing. “Good to know they feed us.”
“Oh, yes.” Hawk’s face brightened a little. “Best thing about being out here is the food. They don’t skimp on that, you see.”
They stepped through a doorway narrow enough that Dale’s shoulders brushed both sides of the frame and into a noisy dining hall. Two long tables ran down the center of the room. A few scattered individuals had already sat down with full plates, but everyone else was lining up to be served.
Dale and Hawk joined the back of the line. The man in front of them, young and covered in grime, looked over his shoulder at Dale with a friendly smile. “You the New Arrival?”
“Yes.”
“Welcome to the Platform.” He stuck out a freshly-washed hand. “Gerald Niehaus. I’m a driller.”
After Dale and Niehaus shook hands, Hawk proceeded to introduce Dale to some of the other men around them. It was hard to believe, but he had the feeling his arrival had caused a bit of a stir.
“Two new recruits in a couple of weeks?” hollered a lanky man with sloping shoulders from across the dining hall. “We won’t know how to act!”
Laughter greeted his words.
“I might have known you’d end up here,” said a familiar gruff voice.
Dale turned sharply to find Belly standing a few feet away, a steaming plate of food in hand. The old sailor was smiling. “Belly!” he gasped.
“So this is one of your crewmates?” Hawk lifted amused eyebrows at Belly. “You weren’t joking when you said he was the size of a small giant.”
Belly kept pace with them as the line of hungry workers moved forward. “Blasted nurses wouldn’t let me back in to see the lot of ya after I left.”
“I heard,” said Dale.
“Everyone all right? How’s the lad?”
Dale smiled. “He’d climb rigging, cast and all, if Mrs. Weatherby would let him.” He and Hawk received full plates and headed over to a space at one of the tables to eat. Belly fell in with them.
Dale spent the next hour listening to stories about life on the Platform and receiving well-meaning tips about things to do and things to avoid. He suspected a few of the tales were grossly exaggerated; a few members of the drilling crew had trouble keeping a straight face during the telling.
The whistle blew again to inform them it was time to get back to work and the group of men began to disperse. As he clumped past Dale on his way back to his station, Belly muttered under the cover of the conversations around them, “We need to talk later, lad. There’s somethin’ strange goin’ on in this place.”
Dale would have liked to ask what that was, but he had no time. Instead, he returned to his station, his curiosity piqued, and spent the rest of his day filling holding tanks.
He was relieved when his work shift finally came to an end, signaling another meal in the dining hall and then freedom to wander the Platform or sleep until his shift began again in the morning. He ate dinner, wondering briefly why Belly did not join him and Hawk, and then waited in line for the washrooms.
It did not hit him until he was following Hawk to the cabin he would share with three other men that he would be unable to keep his promise to visit Raphael and the others in the Hospital for the next nine days.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Or if you want to keep reading right now, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
Copyright © 2013 E. R. Paskey