Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

dishware was emblazoned with the insignia of the Lunardi airship line. Baz gave me a wink as I passed.
    I’d given the tour a hundred times, and the words streamed out automatically today: a smattering of history, technical details, and airship lore. Kate de Vries was a most appreciative audience, I must say. You could tell by her eyes and the angle of her chin that she was listening to every word.
    “What a grand ship this is,” Kate said, and I liked her all the more.
    I took her into the gymnasium with its exercise camels and rowing machines and a variety of other scarifying apparatus meant to strengthen one’s muscles. I can’t say it was used much. Most people were more interested in the eating, drinking, and smoking aspects of the ship. But here this morning were a couple of young men, dressed in their striped exercise kit, doing sit-ups and knee bends and grunting manly encouragements to each other as they pulled levers at various machines.
    Farther along we came to the cinema. A small affair it was, to be sure, but not many airships hadone. It seated fifty only, but we’d managed to procure a print of the Lumière triplets’ latest epic, Gilgamesh . I gestured to Kate to stick her head past the velvet curtain across the doorway. Ghostly light flickered over her face as she watched.
    “I shall have to ask Miss Simpkins to accompany me to that later,” she said. “It seems very exciting.”
    At the end of A-Deck was the smoking room. I opened the padded leather door and winced against the pall of cigar fumes.
    “Would you care to step inside?” I asked.
    “No, thank you,” she said.
    “There are some very fine Depressionist paintings on display.”
    “I can live without those,” she said.
    I didn’t blame her. Despite the vigorous fans pumping the smoke outside, the room was unbearable. As for the paintings, I always felt they were a bit gloomy myself, with all their dingy scenes and singed colors. Perfect, in fact, for the room in which they hung.
    I led her down the grand staircase to B-Deck. The lounges and reception rooms were much the same as the upper floor, though not quite as large or lavish. I showed her the bakery and pointed out the chief steward’s cabin as well as the crew’s and officers’mess. And after that, I took the ring of keys from my pocket and unlocked the access door that led to the rest of the ship. For me this was the most interesting part of the tour, when you left the passenger quarters behind and got to see the real bone and sinew of the Aurora . Most people didn’t feel the same, though. They were always glad to get back to the comfy armchairs and the drinks trolley.
    I led Kate along the keel catwalk, heading aft. Of course she’d come this way earlier this morning, but she wanted to take it all in again and have me explain everything. Her enthusiasm rekindled my own, and I pointed out the countless tanks of ballast and drinking water and Aruba fuel that were secured on either side of the catwalk, and the endless bundles of wires and cables and tubing that ran all throughout the Aurora like veins and arteries.
    Kate stopped and stared up at the giant gas cells, the bottoms of which hung shimmering not twenty feet above our heads.
    “They’re beautiful,” she exclaimed in delight. “What are they made of?”
    “It’s called goldbeater’s skin.”
    “What a wonderful name.”
    “It’s membrane from cows’ intestines, actually. Specially treated to make it impermeable to gas.”
    This didn’t seem to revolt her in the slightest. “It must have taken a great many cows,” she commented solemnly. “How many gas cells are there?”
    “Twenty.”
    “They really are huge.” She sniffed. “Is that mangoes?”
    “You’ve got a good nose, miss. That’s the hydrium itself. You can always smell it very faintly, but if it gets any stronger, you know there’s a leak somewhere. In the control car, there’s a special board that tells you the pressure of all the