Free Emilie & the Hollow World by Martha Wells Page B

above the water, at least twenty or thirty feet, with trees and clumps of vegetation on top and sharp cliffs dropping down to the waves.
    By going to the bow and looking over the rail, she found Miss Marlende and Kenar on the main deck. Miss Marlende was using a spyglass to study the islands. Emilie hurried down the nearest set of stairs to join them. “What's that?” she asked. “Are we nearly there?”
    “Possibly,” Kenar admitted. “These islands are similar to the ones near where the airship went down. I just hope we can navigate through them.”
    Miss Marlende lowered the spyglass. “The channels between them seem quite narrow in spots. We're going to have to go very slowly.” She tapped her fingers on the rail in frustration.
    “And hope nothing tries to grab us,” Emilie added, thinking of the Sargasso creatures last night.
    “There's that,” Miss Marlende added wryly.
    There seemed to be nothing more to do at the moment than watch the islands draw closer, and Emilie's stomach was growling. She went back inside, and found her way back down to the crew's galley. Mrs. Verian wasn't there, but her young assistant was scrubbing the tables, and Emilie managed to get him to stop long enough to find her a sausage sandwich, an apple, and a mug of very sweet tea. She was so hungry she ate the sandwich standing up at the serving counter, then put the apple in her pocket and carried the mug of tea out, meaning to head back up to the main deck.
    But just down the corridor, at the base of the stairwell, she heard Dr. Barshion's voice and stopped to listen. “…I'm sorry, Abendle, I just don't believe that's the right method. We should be adjusting the axis slowly, not trying to reorient it completely.”
Abendle. That was the older engineer who was working on the aetheric engine with Dr. Barshion and Ricard. Dr. Barshion sounds exhausted, Emilie thought. Sounding even worse, Abendle replied, “Yes, Doctor, you know more about it than I do, but I still think these figures don't show what they're supposed to. Maybe if Miss Marlende looked at them-”
    “No, Abendle, she's not familiar with her father's work in that detail. I wish she was.” Dr. Barshion laughed a little wryly. “No, you and I will have to try to puzzle it out.”
    Steps sounded on the metal stairs above and Emilie hurried away down the corridor, looking for the next stairwell. She made it before the two men reached the corridor, and escaped unseen up to the next deck. She wasn't sure why she had fled, except that Dr. Barshion already thought she was an eavesdropper and she didn't want to confirm that reputation by being caught at it again.
     
     
     
    Emilie spent the morning out on the promenade deck, with Kenar and Miss Marlende. But Miss Marlende was too impatient to stay in one spot for long, and kept getting up to walk around the ship.
    The scenery they were passing was endlessly fascinating. The islands were growing larger and closer together, so sometimes it was difficult to find a course through them. The ship kept having to stop and send out the launch to take soundings, which made Miss Marlende even more frustrated.
    The trees were like the palm trees Emilie had seen drawings of, the ones that grew on the coast far to the south. But the fronds were much bigger, stretching out for ten or fifteen feet and then drooping at the ends. There were other trees like none she had ever seen before, squat with thick conical trunks, topped by sprays of feathery fern-like leaves. Beautifully colored birds - blue, yellow, green - flew away from the ship's passage, too quickly for Emilie to get a good look at them.
    After the third time Miss Marlende excused herself to go up to the wheelhouse, Emilie said to Kenar, “You're not nervous.”
    “I'm less nervous.” He smiled at her, a quick flash of pointed teeth. “My people are in an area that's foreign to them, but the ship was in good repair when I left, and they had plenty of supplies. And I know