Free Airship Hunters by Jim Beard, Duane Spurlock

flushed from the memory of the unfathomable blackness in the sky over Lake Manitou. Valiantine could feel Cabot’s gaze upon him, scrutinizing him.
    The young man stood up suddenly, dropping his napkin on top of his dishes. “Going to catch a few winks before we arrive, if you don’t mind.”
    The lieutenant nodded and turned to watch Cabot walk toward the door of the dining compartment. The agent spun around to face him before exiting.
    “Valiantine, I...I know there’s something you’re not telling me. That’s your prerogative, of course. But, I feel as if I understand it, though I don’t know what it is. And I hope you come to trust me in time.”
    He turned to leave. Alone at the table, Valiantine smoothed down his moustache for the hundredth time and contemplated the wrinkles in the tablecloth before him, counting each fold and line.
    There was something his companion wasn’t telling him, also, something to do with his own experiences and their new status. He felt sure of it. But if he himself wasn’t forthcoming about everything, why would he expect anyone else to be?
     
    They hopped an electric railcar not far from the train depot in Detroit and made their way to their target. Valiantine looked around at the city while Cabot filled him in with a few particulars on the man they’d come to see.
    “Andrew Carnavon. More an engineer than an inventor, really. Doesn’t seem to be a native of Detroit, but we’re unsure of where he was born. Kept a low profile in his work ’til now, which is mostly in the carriage trade. Made a few advances in load bearing, structural integrity, that sort of thing. Unmarried, as far as we know, keeps a small staff and has owned his current residence for almost fifteen years.”
    “That’s not much, all told,” the lieutenant remarked. “But I guess it will do. Let’s assume that he hasn’t had much contact with the law, let alone federal agents. Easy does it, until the point where we must insist he cooperate.”
    The Treasury man nodded. “I’m familiar with such situations. The velvet glove before the cestus.”
    “Perhaps you should take the lead on this one, then,” Valiantine said with a slight smile.
    The lieutenant began to point out the various businesses they were passing to his partner. Detroit’s diversity of industry and manufacturing astounded him. Since they’d boarded the railcar, they’d passed plants manufacturing bicycles, paint, beer and other spirits, and pharmaceuticals, as well as lumber yards, iron and steel foundries, and what appeared to be a place that produced entire railroad cars.
    Over it all hung the smell of tobacco. Cabot informed him that one of the city’s major outputs was tobacco products.
    “I once heard it called the ‘Paris of the West,’” Valiantine said with a smirk. “Can’t imagine what they mean by that with all this.”
    They rode the rest of the way in silence, enjoying the gorgeous early June day and the wide expanse of clear blue sky overhead. Valiantine liked that; you could see anything that was coming with such a sky.
    Disembarking from the railcar, they walked roughly a mile to Carnavon’s compound. The part of the city upon which they alighted was dirty and rough, occupied by several low buildings and dotted with smokestacks. The two agents passed few people on the streets, but those they did appeared to be tradesmen and laborers, going about their business and taking no real notice of the duo.
    We may be able to walk in and walk out of this easily , Valiantine mused to himself. He’d never visited Detroit previously, but so far as he’d seen, the city wasn’t going to top his personal list of favorites. The assignment’s culmination would help him place it.
    They rounded a corner onto the street they sought. Across it and a hundred feet away stood a long wood-slat fence, some six feet high. Beyond it sat a two-story brick building with two large smokestacks standing like sentinels on either side of