1
AEROPHILIA
BY TOBIAS S. BUCKELL
"You know, the thing about zeppelins is that they got a bad rap," Vince says. He's actually twirling a virtual mustache. Nutjob. "I mean, in the famous 'Oh, the humanity' accident only thirty-five passengers died. Out of ninety seven!"
He steps forward and looks at me critically.
"Ever heard of a sixty-four percent survival rate in any crash? Space or air?" He doesn't wait for an answer, but turns around. "No!" I can't answer him anyway. My mouth is gagged with a rubber ball and strap, and my hands are cuffed. My lips are starting to dry out and stick to the black rubber ball.
The key to the handcuffs has been flushed out of the airship through the toilet. It's probably still falling, and will fall for a few hours more until crushed into liquid metal by the deadly atmo-sphere far below us. It would continue falling, being crushed even smaller, until it joined the great diamond core of the gas giant that was Riley.
Or so some physicists I once saw quoted in a touristy introduction to Riley had said.
Four passengers sitting on the side of the gondola stare at me with wide eyes. They're local colonists. Three guys in tuxedos on their way to a party and a lady in a hoop skirt and purple plastic corset. Probably lived all of their lives in any one of the aerostat cities on Riley's upper atmospheres. They've certainly never seen a down on his luck spacer like me, likely because there has never been such a thing as a down on his luck spacer. It's almost oxymoronic.
"On a planet like this," Vince continues, "Zeppelins are too useful to ignore. But I think the colonists are missing something."
The colonists: they