CHAPTER 8: Cloud and Night (Wednesday Morning, 5th of August 1914)
Above the stars wink out one by one, disappearing behind the shadowing limb of the airship. At an angle they come, cutting against the gondola's panes of glass and metal frame. Somewhere I hear the motors churning through air and realize in my stupor that Ostfriesland is heeling in a great loop. At the center of the command gondola the airship's wheel wavers minutely, chestnut horns untended, glinting in the red light of the wall-mounted side lamps as the moon climbs higher in the east. About its floor bodies lay where they'd fallen. From my place memories and voices swept back into my mind, a shimmering world of fates and faces that have never been.
"I believe the electrical discharge simple a manifestation of minute differences in the potential between worlds…" Tesla pronounced at our approach, the terse manner and certainty with which he pronounced them reverberating inside my head. His certainty was strange for such a thing, I'd thought, and supposed it had been more to calm the trepidation in the faces arrayed about the bridge. "Very small, vanishingly so, but effectively endless in reserve. Hence the power…"
From beside the helmsman Strasser remained an unperturbable rail, "Voraus mit 5 Knoten. Halten Sie so viel Abstand wie möglich zwischen unserer Haut und dem Blitz ein."
"Ja, Herr Hauptmann!"
The Helmsman rang bells and the great craft slowed, inching to a crawl as the ring about the dervish blazed before then slowly about us. To our sides the fire faded, the Tear growing closer. The great curved nose of the airship hovered but feet before the precipice, not a window but an undulating sphere, perhaps 500 feet across. Reflections danced all about the gondola, and bereft of the crackling lightshow at its edges, we could see through the kaleidoscope now a an undercast of ground-obscuring cumulus beyond, billowing in moonlight. Above them arced a vault of brilliant and familiar stars. Upon the deck and bridge wings, men gathered in morning lit silhouette, looking silently outward.
"There is no sun…" Strasser muttered almost beneath his breath, the light playing across that ragged, battle-weary visage. "Nothing but cloud…night."
The taps and dashes of the message repeated in my head, somehow translating to her voice, little tones playing out strained and haunting words. "When we cross, it's not just to another place…it's to…" I swallowed my words for fear of revealing too much. For fear of saying something now that might cause them to lose their nerve. "I don't know what to expect when crossing. It can be unpleasant. Warn your crew to be ready…to steel themselves."
Strasser's eyes turned back to Stern, then toward the Tear. In Paris both had seen too much. Reaching beside the wheel, Ostfriesland's Captain took to the ship's address. A few words in German followed before again he turned to his Helmsman. "Steuermann! Vor einer Viertelmacht!" For a moment the young man seemed frozen, even paralyzed as the mesmerizing brilliance twinkled and danced in his eyes. Seeing this, Strasser nudged him.
"Yavol, Herr Hauptmann!" He jolted. "Vor einer Viertelmacht!" Bells rang and the beast surged forward. Fire drew about us…brighter and brighter, until it was the fury of the sun itself.
Hands to grimy deck plate, I press myself upward, remembering the pain of the cancer and how it wracked my body…burgeoned inside…the pain that had eaten me alive and slow, inexorably ending me. And her face, distraught at my side as I gurgle in my bed. Pain now, strangely, impossibly…gone. I shake my head, trying to hold onto the memories like a man waking from a dream. Yet as I do, they seem to slip from the clutches of my thought. Elizabeth…my Lamb. Columbia…the plan. All slipping from my mind's grasp like water draining through fingertips. I know only one thing from this other me. That I am dead.
I've been dead before.
About the deck men groan, and I can see upon their faces that very same shock and tremulation that quakes my bones. Even Strasser shivers on his side, a man reliving the tumult of his own demise. Beside me Nikola shakes his head and opens his eyes. "DeWitt! We're through!"
"Do not call me that accursed name!" I hear someone cry, feeling my lips move, remembering how very much I had hated it, that old, unsanctified appellation the Sodom below had bequeathed upon me. "You will call me the Pro…" I catch upon the word, it's sound reverberating inside my skull. "Or Zzzz…" From my side Tesla glares at me in shock. Placing palm upon the cold plate, I sit up, looking about. My head spins and anew I shake my head.
He offered his hand, and as my discordance faded, I saw upon his face not the quaking terror of the others but only simple concern. Taking hand in mine, he drew me from the floor. "What was that about?"
"Comstock…" I muttered, looking outward to the wheel of cloud and stars. To our port quarter the spindle burned and wheeled a few miles away, hanging a thousand feet above the ghostly popcorn cloud tops. I felt the very wind knocked out of me. "He's dead."
"Dead?" Tesla said, dark brow puzzled. "The man you told of? Who snatched your daughter…styled himself her father? How could you possibly know?" About us now from their spasm men were stammering, groaning, still caught in the trauma I had been. Hesitantly he reached out to wipe my nose. "You're bleeding."
I touched my scruffy top lip to find a red stain upon knuckle. As they began to rise, I saw to a man the lot of the bridge crewmen's noses bloodied. Strasser's worse. Somewhere in this world, I surmised, Ostfriesland and her compliment had met a most untimely fate. "He's not her father. Neither am I."
The words struck Tesla his eyes fixated upon me as he parsed the meaning. Before he could question further, the cloudscape garnered his attention, his eyes drawn to the inconstant moon. Instead of the break of dawn, Ostfriesland, wherever we were, was back in the wee hours of the night. Finding almost accidentally the ladder, terror struck the inventor's face. "Katharine…" In a dash he clambered its incline, feet resounding upon it's the bowing metal rungs. Haltingly I made to follow, but with a swift grasp of forearm Strasser stopped me.
"What…what just happened to us?" He growled in pained English. Having pulled himself up alongside the engine controls pedestal, his eyes landed upon me, mustache and chin matted from the bleed. By his feet the Helmsman groaned. Strasser relinquished my arm, kneeling to place his under the man's.
"Ist schon gut, Erich, wir sind durch und am Leben. Lass mich dir aufhelfen."
"We…passed into another place." I answered, fighting yet the tendrils of discordance in my mind. "Not another place, another reality. I told you it might be rough."
"Another world? You are bleeding." Strasser said, eyes narrowing, looking to me as he brought his shaken man upright. "What is it, DeWitt?" To our side Stern wheeled his arm against the gondola wall where he sat slumped upon the deck, drawing our attention as the loud, metallic bang rang out. His eyes were shot wide, mouth open in some silent, horrid remembrance. From beneath that bloody, graying moustache, only whimper escaped. Seeing his crewman standing, Strasser raised a hand to the kid and knelt as Stern's side. About us and out on the enclosed wings, other corpses began to stir. Helping Stern upright, Strasser set his ally to lean upon a plotting table and returned to me. The Colonel muttered something inaudible, breath hardly escaping to form the words. "Stern…you are here, aboard Ostrfriesland…collect yourself!" Strasser whispered into the man's ear. Stern's stricken eyes turned upward to meet his.
"What…what did you see?" I heard Stern whisper.
"Fire…I saw fire…" Strasser said quietly, glancing one by one about and over his men. "We…burned."
"Steuermann," Strasser said. "Lassen Sie alle Motoren im Leerlauf laufen und beginnen Sie, die Station zu halten."
Wiping a trickle of black drainage from his nose, the shell-shocked kid looked up to him and nodded. "Ja…Ja, Herr Hauptmann."
"Tesla…where is he?"
My gaze turned to the ladder up and groaning shadows above. "With his wife."
#
The catwalk at the wireless shack was peppered with upset, ghost-haunted crewmen as we made our way aft. There I fought my immediate compulsion to head aft, to abandon Strasser and Tesla and see to my own men. Parsons would be there for them, but I couldn't help the guilt crying out inside me. Despite my urge we turned right forward at the wireless compartment, quick-timing to Tesla's adopted cabin find Stolz frozen in the chair, muttering to himself, catatonic in the embrace of some unseen demon. Beside and ambivalent to his wide-eyed visage Tesla knelt, holding Katharine's hand and brushing her hair, wiping the well of blood from her nostril. I thought I heard him saying a prayer. Inside the echoes of this other man continued to taunt and jeer.
"Stolz!" Strasser shouted, pressing past me and the Serb to grasp the wide-eyed surgeon by the collar.
At Strasser's grip he came suddenly to life, jerking madly and keening. "Ingrid, Paul!" He clutched at his heart and head.
"Holen Sie sich Ihren Verstand über Sie, Mann!" Strasser whispered in his ear.
"He can't help it, Captain." I whispered, touching the Captain at the shoulder of his heavy leather coat. "You know what you felt…what I felt. What we all felt." Lenin looked at me, chagrinned.
From the bunk green eyes glistened. "Booker?!" The whisper was Katherine's. Tesla's eyes opened, and seeing what he must have thought to be hallucination broke into a smile.
"It is a miracle." Tesla whispered, taking her hand as her thin gaze found his.
"Nikki…" A rattle escaped her mouth. "I…I saw Robert…Robert and…me."
Her thought took a moment to register. Tesla's elation drained. He turned to us…toward me. "Gentlemen, we must find a hospital with proper medical attention. We must get her to a surgeon!"
He'd looked at me as if Columbia were mine, but if there was a place in the world I despised more than any other, it was that. Yet a pride came over my senses, remembering each island we'd built over the years, how we'd engineered them with the thousands of lift cells and girders and chromium steel. How on that day in 1893 we'd broken what seemed to be half of Michigan from the bedrock south of Chicago and sent it throttling skyward with half the Exposition upon it, blotting out the very sun. And then the bastard reporters from all those mocking Sodomite papers had laughed no more.
"That would be an excellent idea, Herr Tesla, if you could only tell me where it is!" Taking a towel from its hanger beside a silver countertop water basin, Strasser stepped wiped the coagulation from moustache. His gaze, inevitably, turned to me. "There was only cloud and nothing in sight below. Where is it, Lieutenant? This city your friend boasted of."
I scowled at Nikola, noting the streak of blackish red across the Captain's once white terry cloth hand towel. Though he was intent upon barely conscious Katharine, Tesla registered my displeasure. "I admit I'd hoped It would be there, right on the other side, but it's not. So, we follow it to…to where they want us. Follow the transmission…it's a beacon. It will lead the way."
"How do you know that?" Strasser answered, brow strained with incredulity.
As I walked out, I didn't look back. "Believe me, I know."
#
"Do we need to bring the ship's doctor?" I asked Parsons as Delmachio wrapped a fresh bandage around Mike Benson's leg. Like most of our kids he was only 18, yet he looked outward with the vacant eyes of a soul much older, attempting every now and then to focus before drifting back into a fog of fear and fright.
"Hard to say. We were all…all…" Tommy got that distant look I'd seen since I'd returned, almost forgetting to breathe before he shook it off. "Knocked silly. Mike hasn't said a word since, about the leg or otherwise. I'm sure it still hurts like the Dickens."
"Get him ready. We'll run him forward to see Stolz or whoever still has their wits in the Infirmary." I shook my head, looking for Jurgen.
"What happened, Lieutenant?" Jody Halprin said from down the compartment side. He'd been helping Montagnard and the other Frenchmen when I'd entered, and from what I saw from the frightened faces he wasn't done. Having lived through the same trauma, the dozen or so French soldiers looked on as if I had some revelation in store.
"It's…hard to explain." I said, wishing I'd been here. Wishing all their eyes weren't upon me. "I wanted to warn you, all of you, but I wasn't able to get free of Strasser in time. Not before we…" I sighed. "Maybe I just didn't know what the hell to say."
"Mind giving us a try, Lieutenant?"
At Eddie's consternation my eyes carried instinctively to my hand. They were all afraid. But how to explain? "Look, this is going to be hard to believe…"
"I just died, Lieutenant. Delmachio grated, wiping the grimy blood from his nose. "Just like every other swinging dick in this compartment! And from the howling outside a whole lot of them Krauts along with us. You know something, tells us what gives! Are we dead or what?"
"We passed through a…portal. A gateway. We were following a wireless transmission…to this." Once more I produced the scrap of paper, the faces of soldiers pointing upward toward the angel in the sky. Folds tearing and stained now with its fair share of blood, it had seen better days.
"Moers?" Delmachio questioned. "The angel?" His eyes flitted to the others before landing upon Delmachio, Tommy and me.
I nodded, weary and desperately in need of sleep. "We were near Dusseldorf when we found it. It was a big…hole…inside some kind of electrical storm. Big enough to sail through. And…and we did." My mind remained transfixed at that moment, remembering how much I'd wanted that precise outcome…no matter what happened after. I memorized their faces now, Eddie and Jody, Thomas and Mike and Lou…reminding myself that their blood would be upon my hands.
"And where exactly are we?"
I shook my head. "I…I'm not sure, but we're…somewhere…somewhere on the other side where it's the middle of the night and nothing to see for a thousand miles. Strasser and his crew…they're following the transmission."
"Why? What's so all fired important about a radio signal?"
"Because…they're offering help." I lied.
"Offering help? Some radio guys on the other side of a death storm are offering help?" Delmachio blurted.
"Not just anywhere, Eddie." Thomas Parsons interjected, staring at me straight on. "This is Columbia."
"Like in D.C., or South Carolina?" Delmachio rasped.
"Or Missouri?" Halprin added.
"Tell them, Booker." Tommy insisted, eyes narrowed upon me. "It's about time, since we seem now to be up to our necks in this."
For going on two years now we'd had a confidence between us. It was only right, I' supposed…after all that Thomas had seen at Wardenclyffe, I'd owed him an explanation. Whether he'd fully believed it, I'd often doubted. By those eyes any doubts as to my truthfulness had faded. "No…" I said with a conciliatory glance his way. "Not a state…not a country. Columbia is a city…the strangest goddamned city you've ever seen."
Before their faces I held my hand and snapped my thumb. A flicker of fire popped forth, stunning my gathered men. "You might have figured from back at Chateau Thierry, I ain't like other dogfaces." Although it was adequately lit in our troop compartment, it wasn't especially bright. The small flame caught as a gleam in their mesmerized eyes, flickering from my thumb until I waved it out. "And I'm sorry I didn't stop to explain because it's just too damned unbelievable."
"Jesus, you a witch, Booker?" Lucius said, shaking his head before looking at me wide eyed.
I looked to Thomas, having been this way before. "Uh, well, not exactly. You see, I ran across some guys in New York who were selling…uh, magic potions a few years back…and drank one. Or two." The boys were staring at me now, seemingly waiting for the punchline to a joke that wasn't. I sighed and closed my eyes, realizing the truth was indeed stranger than fiction. "Well, shit, I guess I'm a witch."
"I knew it!" Jody said, almost beside himself with revulsion tainted in glee. "I seen what you did to those tanks!" His eyes shot to Eddie Delmachio. "Five bucks, Sarge!"
"You wagered I was a witch?" I snarled, wanting to smack the towhead. I placed my hand on Parsons' shoulder and looked at him. Tommy rolled his eyes. "Look, this isn't, uh, Satan, its science…but not science from our world. And those potions…I ain't lyin' about 'em…they're for real. The people…the Columbians…they call them Vigors and they don't come from, uh, Earth. Our Earth, at least. They come from, uh, Columbia. The thing we passed through, the gateway…the Columbians…they call them Tears."
I notice now the attention of Montagnard and the Frenchmen down the way, looking on toward our close held magic show. "This is a different reality…like ours but with a different you and a different me and just like ours but only…not."
"What happened to us back there?" Thomas said, and I had the vaguest feeling he was sizing up whether to use a stake or burn me at one. "
"What we all went through…the spasm and…memories…" I shook my head and pinched my brow. "It only comes when the version of you in this new reality is, uh…"
"Go on." He said.
"Dead." I looked to them all. "But you already guessed that, didn't you?"
"We're all…dead…here?" Delmachio's voice was flat, disbelieving yet knowing the truth of it.
"And by the looks of it, everyone else on this crew."
"Look, if what is coming is what I think is coming, I'm going to need you men. Columbia, if this is Columbia and I'm betting it is, might just be able to give Strasser and Stern what they want…a fighting chance to win their war. But there's just this one little thing about Columbia that I haven't told them, and well, you, and it's why I joined the Army and sucked you all into this mess." No one said anything, but Thomas looked on, realizing where my thoughts were going. "In this universe, Columbia's universe, the guy that's in charge…who built the whole shebang, well, he and I don't get along."
"Why is that?" Montagnard said from behind Jodie. It was only then I realized that some of the Frenchmen had been eavesdropping.
"Because of a woman."
Montagnard mumbled something and the Frenchmen seemed to nod and approve amongst themselves. Outside on the gangway Jurgen's German-accented English carried across the passage, along with the scent of cigarette smoke. "Frenchmen, Americans…there is food in the aft galley if you are hungry, but the Captain has asked that you remain to the crew compartments and avoid the forward and aft gangways for your own safety until the situation has passed."
"Ça vous dérange de nous dire ce qui vient de se passer, mon ami?!" One of the Frenchmen shouted.
Jurgen ignored him and turned to glance at a cadre of twelve deckhands making their way in haste up the gangway, each upon a corner of a small, reinforced wooden crate. Though the containers were small, by the troupe's exertion the boxes seemed unreasonably heavy. Ammunition perhaps…or something else. Across the passage a tall man hung in a half open door, stub of a cigarette glowing as he took a draw. Like nearly everyone on Ostfriesland, he sported a dried bloodstain at the tip of his right nostril. His eyes followed at his comrades' passage, almost envious.
"Geht es dir jetzt gut, Dieter? Sie wissen, dass wir in Paris sind? Jurgen said, hesitating before following his detail.
"Hätten Sie gedacht, ich würde den Eiffel nach dieser Explosion vermissen? Mir geht es gut und ich atme jetzt viel besser, Gunter. Danke für die Nachfrage. Jetzt kannst du wieder Strasser's Arsch küssen. Ich werde auf unsere Freunde aufpassen." The man across the gangway smiled. Jurgen did not.
Put out, the Petty Officer turned our way. "Durch deinen Urlaub." With a curt click of heels, he ventured after his work detail and toward the bridge.
"Jurgen!" I shouted, eyes trailing again to the strange yet oddly familiar crates they were carrying.
The man turned, and I saw that he too had been afflicted by our journey. "Yes, Lieutenant?"
Sidewise I glanced to Thomas, sharing my curiosity at the shipment. "Look, do you have a machine shop on board?"
"Why?" With my detention he seemed on edge.
"Hard to explain…could you show us to it?"
"I shall do better." Jurgen glanced indignantly toward the smoker, speaking snidely. "This is our chief Rigger, Lieutenant DeWitt. Whatever business you have, he shall know the men to talk to. Take your matter up with him. Now, if you shall excuse me?"
"Chief 'Rigger,' eh?" I said, looking the man up and down as Jurgen turned his back and strode up the gangway. Like him and Strasser and the rest of Ostfriesland's crew, this fellow was clad in a dark coat and scarf. I offered my hand. "Booker DeWitt. Second Lieutenant, United States Army." "This is my second in command, Sergeant Thomas Parsons."
"Dieter Schmidt. One of the recently deceased aboard this vessel."
"You don't seem to be taking it so badly." Parsons observed. "Unlike nearly everyone else."
With a long breath, Schmidt loosed a billow of smoke into the corridor. "We were going home, which I considered a long shot at best considering the way the war has been going. This recent encounter sort of cements the misgivings I had." The cigarette smoldered in his grasp.
"Aren't you afraid you're going to blow us all to kingdom come?"
Casually he smiled and looked up toward Jurgen's diminishing form. "Not with Helium in the bags, as I keep having to remind my comrades these days. You should have seen Strasser last year before your Congress gave us the gas. I liked to smoke then too. You are the American friends of Tesla?"
"We are." I answered.
"If you want to talk to one of our machinists, follow me. We work closely with them to keep the vessel airworthy. What did I hear you ask Jurgen for again?"
"Well, to begin with I'll need some tough but flexible leather…and a metal bar you can bend." Seeing a bewildered look, I handed him my hasty sketch. For a moment I paused. "Into a hook. On second thought, five would be better."
#
Half an hour later our complement huddled in the wireless compartment, listening to the signal. One by one the operators worked their dials, tuning empty frequency to empty frequency. It didn't take long for my boys to understand the implication. "Save for this lone signal, all frequencies are dead. Nothing on the military bands. Not even a single civilian broadcast across the ether."
"Not even Paris?" Haberny asked. "The way they were ploughing through the city, I'm sure the Reds would be broadcasting from there."
"Nothing." Stern repeated from the back of the compartment, counting my boys and Montagnard's who'd come in tow. You've lost how many?"
"Too many." I answered. How many had I lost? Brett lingered in my mind, along with Joe and Henry. And that was only since the trench breakers.
"As hollow as it sounds, France thanks you men for your service." A weary sigh escaped his lips. "All of you." He looked at me. "You trust them, these Columbians?"
"No." I answered flatly with a glance to Parsons. "I do not. You shouldn't either."
Over our shoulders bells rang. The address crackled to life, spitting German: "Alle Hände, Generalquartier! Aussichtspunkte haben etwas vor sich gesichtet!"
"General quarters." Stern said, graying eyebrows taught as the operators looked up beside him. "Something's happening."
I didn't wait for the French man. Down the catwalk and incline of the ladder I flew, leading five bedraggled soldiers down onto the bowing deck of the Command Gondola. About us clouds remained, less frequent but with billows higher, forcing Ostfriesland to weave in and out of them at our cruising height. The moon had well passed zenith now, setting toward the west, yet away from it to the north a glow persisted.
From his post as Officer of the Deck, Jurgen turned to look at our arrival. Strasser's unhappy gaze followed. "Bitte lassen Sie sie das Deck verlassen. Sie werden die Gondel überladen."
Jurgen straightened. "Lieutenant…I am afraid you and your men are not authorized to be in the Command Gondola. You must leave immediately. How did you get past the security door?"
"I let them past." Stern said, sliding down the rails of the gondola ladder on his hands to alight behind us. "The good Lieutenant requested he and his men be allowed to listen to the radio transmission. I figured it was the least I could do."
Strasser rolled his eyes, glaring with renewed intensity to the French stragglers peeking down from above. "Does this resemble the wireless compartment?!"
Stern shrugged. "The Lieutenant took unexpected liberties." He shouted something at the blue coated soldiers and Montagnard, who now held back.
"They have a right to see what we are up against, Captain." Stern continued, puzzling outward at the glow. "As do my men."
"And overload the gondola for a quick trip into the ocean!" Strasser sneered. "Have a good look…then get out."
"Gebäude, Herr Hauptmann! Gebäude in den Wolken!" Came a cry from one of the spotters. Ahead a moonlit cloud passed to our right, and what I'd thought to be a shadowed buildup beyond it turned out to be instead an immense slab of bedrock. Atop its windswept, rolling miles a web of lights gleamed, a small town amid what I would have sworn to be miles and miles of Kansas farmland. As the moon shadow cast by Ostfriesland passed over its moonlit fields, jaws about the bridge gaped at windswept wheat.
"Mein Gott..." Strasser mumbled, frozen stiff at the sight.
Amongst the clouds I could see now more of these landbergs, all impossibly immense, not a one identical. It soon became apparent that they were, however, aligned radially, like pieces of some enormous pie, converging from all directions upon some distant, unseen hub miles ahead. Passing a final echelon of obscuring cloud, the source of the glow appeared.
"I take back everything I have ever said about you behind your back, DeWitt." Tommy said from my side.
"Jesus, will you look at that?" Jody Halprin whispered, eyes a goggle. Eddie Delmachio's gum fell from his mouth. From north to south, a metropolis every bit as mighty as New York City rose, skyscrapers aglow, towering like thunderheads. It had been two years since I'd last seen the sight of Emporia…and it awed me now no less.
"Mon Dieu…" Stern had stepped forward to gape. Off his left shoulder I saw in the distance a long bridge, suspension cables arcing between towers on islands suspended mid-air, lit along its risers like a string of Christmas lights. From the center of the city shadowy cigars approached.
"Oh my God…" Eddie exclaimed, half in excitement, half in trepidation. And totally in awe. "Do…you see that?"
"You said this Columbia was a city…" Strasser turned to me, suddenly furious. "You knew of this…why did you not tells us this city flew!?"
"Would you have believed me?" I let the absurdity of the thought settle into the recesses of his mind. He swallowed then, turned back to the glowing, magnificent horizon and loosened his collar.
From behind I heard a clatter, turning past my men's awestruck eyes to see the blond wireless operator standing there, dumbstruck, the lights of the city illuminating his eyes like a buck caught in the headlamps a barreling Model V. In his hand he absently held a scrap of paper. I grunted. My attention seemed to jar him, though he dared not press past me to Strasser. "Herr Hautpmann, das Signal hat sich geändert. Ich glaube, eine Nachricht wird gesendet!"
"Geändert?" He whispered, unable to pry his eyes from what he was seeing. He reached past me to take the paper. Snatching it from the man's hand, he walked to one of the red map lights anchored along the gondola's side frame. "A message, Gentlemen. It is in English:
"Airship approaching from bearing 170 degrees at 6000 feet, you are to make your heading north and approach the city. Elevate to 7000 feet and slow to twenty knots until you have our cutters in sight. You are to follow their lead and await further mooring signals upon arrival. So not deviate from this instruction. Welcome to the New Jerusalem, pilgrims…welcome to Columbia."
"It seems we are expected."
"Steuermann, mach deinen Steuerkurs auf 170 Grad. Steigen Sie zu 7000 Fuß und verlangsamen Sie zu 20 Knoten!" Strasser shouted
"Yavol, Herr Hauptmann."
Again Strasser turned to me. "We are instructed like a dog to do tricks."
Outside I could see the plains give way to a great fissure of cloud and sky, below a glimpse of a darkened seascape thousands of feet below. Soon another landberg split the clouds, and as I felt the deck cant and the ship ascend, I saw a small farmhouse, two dark figures outside, one pointing upward toward us.
Outside the dark shapes resolved into 'cutters,' catching the predawn light, green and red running lights at first that grew, revealing them to be not lighter than air vessels like Ostfriesland but aerial dreadnaughts, each well-lit and bristling with armament. Though but half the German airship's length, each was clearly constructed not of fabric but steel plate. Smoke spilled from their sterns as they wheeled about, turrets bearing on our fragile conveyance. Upon those decks, for there were many hanging below and arrayed above their lengths, dark coated airmen looked our way, flashing signals with light guns.
Like every other man upon Ostfriesland's bridge, at this sight more than any other Strasser's jaw hung. With the Captain's nod the helmsman brought us in behind the first, while the second took up a commanding oversight to our starboard side, guns bearing.
The city began to expand now, encompassing the far east and west, miles of skyline setting the whole horizon afire. For a moment, streamers of cloud eclipsed the western reach, but as we emerged a final bludgeon caught the gondola's occupants. To our port bow the bridge I'd seen and knew so well burned brightly, caught by that rising sun. Emerging from the clouds now a new insult trembled our minds, illuminated from below by brilliant floodlights like the Statue of Liberty at night. In the dawning sun she was aglow as if on fire, her wings clipped only by heaven itself…almost as large as Ostfriesland herself. In shock Strasser turned to me as if to confirm that which his eyes could scarcely believe. Either that or to beg forgiveness. For a moment I stared at him, the angel of Monument Island and the gunships about us.
Upon the floor I spat and made for the ladder.
