‘We’d best be getting aboard,’ said Longtayle. One of his ears twitched, and Arthur realised the Rat was listening to the sound of the ship’s engines, which had just grown softer. ‘We’ve heaved to. The submersible must be about to rendezvous.’
‘Submersible Rattus Balaena alongside!’ reported a Rat a second later.
‘Are you coming with us, Captain?’ Arthur asked Lieutenant Longtayle.
‘I am assuming command of the submersible,’ said Longtayle. ‘Due to the nature of the expedition, all the crew are volunteers. Are you ready to go, Lord Arthur? And you, Doctor Scamandros?’
‘I’m ready,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes, I believe I am,’ replied Scamandros.
‘Good luck!’ said Commodore Monckton. He stood and saluted as they left, as did the Steward and sentry Rats.
‘And to you too,’ muttered Doctor Scamandros as he followed Arthur out the door.
Twenty
THE SUBMERSIBLE’S CONNING tower was the only part of the Balaena visible above the surface. The sub had tied up on the starboard side of the ship, and Port Wednesday lay to port, so Arthur only had a brief glimpse of that harbour, made even less visible by the fading light from the distant ceiling as the Border Sea’s strange night came on.
He saw a dark granite mountain that had been terraced into a dozen or more levels, with hundreds of houses and buildings sprawled along each terrace. Beams of light shot up and down from the higher terraces, marking the paths of elevators to other parts of the House.
Arthur couldn’t see the harbour mouth, but he could see a telltale forest of masts in the middle of the lower terraces, so the harbour clearly cut deeply into the mountain, and the terraces wound around it.
‘Mind your step, sir!’ called a Rat.
Arthur gratefully accepted a helpful paw to jump from the ship to the conning tower. The Rat’s paw felt just like a human hand, at least through Arthur’s glove.
Arthur’s boots rang like a bell on the ladder as he quickly climbed down into the hull. The access tube was quite narrow and would have been difficult for a fully grown man, but it posed no problem for Arthur.
The inside of the submarine was not what he expected. Though it was a grey, dark metal above, inside it was panelled with a cherry-coloured timber, and there was a richly patterned carpet on the floor. Arthur peered at the design in the relatively dim light from what appeared to be electric lamps set into the bulkhead. It took him a moment to work out that the flowing lines contained text and that the whole carpet was some sort of epic poem. Or a mission statement. He’d heard of some weird companies doing that in their headquarters. But he didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
There was a door forward and a door aft, the forward one open. It was wood-panelled too, but Arthur could see the metal beneath, as it was easily six inches thick.
A crew Rat beckoned Arthur ahead. He was a brindled Rat, a kind of brown-and-black mixture, wearing a blue woollen turtleneck sweater with Rattus Balaena embroidered around the neck in gold. He also had on a leather helmet, like the ones pilots wore in really old, open biplanes, but without the goggles.
‘Welcome aboard, sir. If you would just come forr’d to the bridge. There’s not much room elsewhere.’
Arthur ducked as he stepped through the bulkhead door. The Rat led him along a very narrow corridor that had doors and hatches of varying shapes and sizes along both sides, till they came to another bulkhead door.
This opened to a chamber about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was also carpeted, but you could see where the carpet had been cut so the furniture could be bolted to the metal deck beneath.
The front of this chamber was dominated by a bank of glass-covered dials and instruments, numerous wheels and levers, and a crystal globe about two feet in diameter atop a central plinth. Two tall-backed leather chairs were positioned on either side of the globe, facing the controls.
The rear two-thirds of the bridge, as this room clearly was, could have been transplanted from an expensive hotel or café, though one with limited space. There were six elegant, narrow chairs, bolted to the deck in groups of three, each with a little table between them.
Longtayle and another submariner Rat were down at the controls, intent on going through a checklist. The only other person — or sentient being — there was an exquisitely dressed girl sitting demurely in one of the forward chairs, with her back to Arthur. She was wearing a pearly-white dress with puffed-up sleeves and numerous ruffles and flounces, topped with a very broad-brimmed white hat that had a spray of peacock feathers that almost touched the ceiling. She was drinking very slowly and precisely from a gold-rimmed teacup.