Oggolopoli remained inconsolable. He sat with his back to the wall clutching his purloined circuitry, rocking back and forth.

Rip felt bad for the man.

And I’m the one stuck in a parallel world, he thought.

“Don’t worry about it, Doc,” Rip said, patting him on the shoulder. “You’re more worked up about it than I am.”

“It’s not just that, Sergeant. Certainly I regret not being able to send you back, not without recreating years of work to set up a proper punch card sequence. But more than that, because I opened your portal on another level in the steam vaults, there were no eyewitnesses to your arrival. I did not even see it, much less any credible observers. If a Sewer Trooper saw you, I certainly would not be able to trot him in front of my colleagues at the Lyceum to hear his testimony. I have no proof of my achievement!”

Rip shrugged, his bare shoulders bouncing underneath the overalls.

“Who cares what . . . what did you call them earlier? ‘Old fuddy-duddies.’ Who cares what a bunch of old fuddy-duddies think?”

“Ah, you don’t understand. Those fuddy-duddies are my colleagues. My academic peers. I have been working on the mathematical solution to opening portals between worlds for most of my career. During that time I have gleaned nothing but scorn and ridicule from others in the Lyceum. And now that my grand experiment has succeeded, I can do nothing to prove it. Even worse, I’ve lost the means to replicate it!”

“I see.”

When he puts it like that, it does sound bad.

“Well, if I can help in any way, I’ll be glad to. I mean, I know I came from another world, and I’m a little slow to fully understand everything that’s going on in this one. But I’m happy to sit down and be questioned by your colleagues, if it’ll help. Maybe they’ll realize that we’re both telling the truth.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.”

He thought Oggolopoli seemed to be taking things better with the promise of going with him to an academic inquiry when they returned.

Rip patted the older man on the shoulder again and pulled himself up. His bumps and bruises painfully announced their presence all over his body.

He walked through the same bulkhead everyone else had gone through and found himself in a narrow passageway. Unlike the wide underground tunnels in the steam vault, the floors and walls here were all wooden.

And a light, soft wood at that, he thought, tapping on the wall experimentally.

“Not quite balsa. It seems more durable. Pine, maybe?” he mused out loud.

A few doors down, he heard the sounds of conversation from an open doorway. Peeking inside, he found a cocktail lounge with sofas, chairs and a bar. Shelved bottles stood behind thin strips of metal, holding them in place.

All the furniture was wicker, he noted, keeping with the lightweight theme. Indeed, nothing he had seen onboard so far looked unduly heavy. Everything seemed deliberately kept as light in weight as possible.

And no wonder. Looking out the large bay window making up one entire wall of the lounge, he thought every extra pound probably cost the ship. Just adding five more people probably made a difference in fuel and lift power.

Blair and Chance were here, engaged in an animated conversation, a bottle of an amber liquid open and two empty glasses on a wicker table between them.

“You’ve got to learn to conserve your dynamite, Bobby.”

“Not this again. It was needed at the time, yeah?”

“You could have held back a stick or two! You didn’t have to toss them all. Those boggarts would have all died in that confined space without throwing everything you had, and you know it!”

They did not notice him out in the corridor. He decided not to interrupt their quarrel.

Rip moved on down the hall, heading for the front of the airship.

Here, the corridor opened to a wide seating area with large windows on either side. Long wicker benches stretched out, with an aisle down the middle.

It reminded Rip of airline seating. But passengers could sit anywhere and still have an excellent view through the wall-sized windows.

At the very front, down lower by a couple steps, he could see the ship’s bridge. Rip headed for it.

At the top of the steps, he gazed out the giant forward-facing window. Verdant land slid by below like a green carpet. Houses dotted the countryside, plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys. White roads of crushed rock snaked their way to villages in the distance.

The view looked stunning. All the clouds had disappeared and Rip could see for miles in all directions under a clear blue sky.

A tall, lanky man wearing a dark brown jacket with a fur lining sat at the controls, speaking quietly with Bixby.

He turned when Rip appeared at the top of the steps and jumped in his seat.

“Leapin’ licorice, lad!”

Powell glared at Bixby and said, “Why didnya tell me you brought along a worker from the vaults? Or is this some stowaway, then?”

Bixby looked up at Rip and smiled.

“That’s the new chap I was telling you about, Mr. Powell. We picked him up when he sprang us from some cages on Level 12. We were in a bit of a spot, I don’t mind saying. He’s proven himself quite useful. Dr. Oggolopoli claims Sergeant Coulter is here because of an experiment he was running down there. We’re all quite anxious to see what the other boffins make of him. I’ll be presenting him at the Venture Society tomorrow when we make our official report.”

Powell glared at Rip.

“Well, now. Is he civilized? He certainly doesn’t look it. Vestus virum reddit.”

Rip smiled and said, “I agree. ‘Clothes make the man.’ But in my case, I had little choice in the apparel at hand, so here I am.”

Powell’s eyes widened.

“What a grockel! He’s got an accent, but he understands the old tongue.”