“Whale!” was the cry all over the ship. Though usually harmless in termperament, the kind of whales one was liable to run into out there could often flatten a ship by sheer carelessness alone. All hands were engaged as soon as the alarm was raised, to get us away from the beast as fast as could be done.
“It don’t seem possible,” I overheard one hand remark. “Came out of nowhere!”
The hulking black mass of the thing towered over even our mast. For a moment, on my coming up to the deck, I confess I stood transfixed by it until a strong hand on my shoulder awoke me once more. High on the lookout’s perch, the old man was hurriedly throwing down a rope and preparing to abseil the length of the mainmast.
All was chaos as we scrambled as one swarming entity to escape the whale, straining the old boat to its limit.
“Still it gains!” cried the lookout, giving a kind of strangled squawk as he dropped to the deck. “Still it gains!”
There was much, and varied, cursing at this. A determined whale could outpace any ship, of course, but whales so rarely determined to do anything, much less attack an innocent ship (Innocent of any crime against the whale, anyway). At the helm, Mr Hardman shouted to the massed crew:
“Bearing away!”
The ship lurched as he wrenched the great wood-spoked wheel of the ship to the right. All of us on deck, for our part, wrapped ourselves securely to the rigging. Men and women swung out over naught but ocean on the ends of loose ropes as Hardman brought us round side-by-side with the great whale, facing the opposite way. With any luck we could now escape while the thing was still turning around. The maneuver had given us all quite an appreciation for the size of the thing. It was bigger than any living thing should be, plainly the result of some dire mutation indeed.
The collective sigh of relief that was breathed by all aboard was short-lived, however. Mere moments after we left the whale to ponderously wheel around – by which time we would be long gone – another cry pierced the air.
“It’s turning around!” called the lookout, halfway up the mainmast. We ran to the stern of the ship and a sight we would have thought impossible met our eyes: the whale was rotating on the spot, as though there were a spit through its middle roasting it over a fire. It lined up its great black head with us, and then all of a sudden it leapt forwards again, giving chase once more.
The fight was gone out of us this time, any will to attempt escape drained by the insane sight. Someone began to sing, a lilting, keening song in a language I didn’t recognise.
As the enormous maw bore down on us, I found my thoughts returning to home, and how glad I was that I would never have to go back. Then all light died.

I awoke to find myself, to my surprise, alive. I quickly patted myself down to check everything was where it ought to be. It was pitch black, but I seemed to be lying on the deck of the Beacon where I had stood when the horrible beast had swallowed us.
A voice came rumbling through the darkness. “Alive, are you?” It was the captain. “Then get your sorry carcasses off the boards! Strike a light!”
As if to answer his own oath, there was a sharp rasp and the flickering pinpoint of a match lit outside the door to the captain’s quarters, revealing the man’s gnarled grimace. Captain Fourier always looked like a man who probably had barnacles of his own, so indelibly tied to the sea as he was, and it seemed that now they were giving him trouble. He grunted and touched the match to the wick of an oil lantern that hung on a hook by the door.
There was much scrambling, so as not to give the impression of layaboutiness among the crew, and before long our eyes had adjusted to the dimmest of light and could faintly discern some small part of our fate.
I happened to be on the side of the boat that was close to the inside of what we had taken for the whale’s mouth, though closer inspection revealed it to be rather harder that one might expect from such a delicate internal part of the animal. At first I believed that we were merely looking on the animal’s enormous teeth, until someone said, astonished, “It’s made of metal!” and I saw that it was true. We were trapped within an enormous metal cage!

A gaseous whoosh from some distance away turned my attention alone, and I saw a flash of greenish light in the distance that sank to a steady glow. A few seconds after, another flash came, slightly closer. Then another. At last I got the idea into my head that something might be coming along with the light, and my suspicion was confirmed when I caught a glimpse of a glinting glassy reflection after yet another flash.
“Look out!” I cried, pointing to the strange approaching figures. Like the whale, they seemed unnaturally large, bulky forms, with a uniformity that was almost unseen in this region of the Static.
As the lumbering figures approached, I realised that the reason for their uniformity was – a uniform. All of them wore identical heavy protective suits that gave them a broad, hulking stride. Heavy brass helmets covered the heads of the strangers, with glass panes that must have been as useless to see out as to see into, appearing only a plain, featureless white.
As more and more of the lights flashed into life we also saw that the strangers were crossing to our ship on a long metal gantry that protruded from the water. Evidently this was a carefully planned operation.

The strangers took us to a barred cell that protruded inward from one of the outer walls of the Whale, wielding long staffs that they warded us off with. One man tried to struggle, rushed at the lead man, but a touch of the staff and he flew back as if he’d been kicked by a horse, a singed hole in the middle of his shirt. Electricity. That should have been impossible in the Static. This all should have. There was no way such a machine could possibly be maintained at the technology level that we of the surface were forced to keep. These strangers must have some secret that hid them from the strange forces above.
Apollo kept very quiet as the lot of us were shepherded into the cramped cell. We were all quiet, at first. Nothing but the groaning and creaking of the outer wall to keep us company. Then Fourier spoke up.
“Better bloody get started on an escape plan, I suppose,” he said grudgingly. “Trapper?”
Mr Viol sprang to life at the sound of his moniker. “Captain? I studied the route they took us along to get here. I could get us back to the Beacon, should the opportunity arise.”
“And then what?” said Apollo, cutting through the murmuring of the crew. “When we’re so deep underwater.”
“Underwater?” said the captain.
“Just listen to the wall,” Apollo said. “It’s under fantastic pressure.”
One of the sailors muttered “It’s not the only one,” bitterly.
“We have to find their control room, force the Whale to surface,” said Apollo, striding across the cell to the barred door. “And the first step of that is getting out of this cell.” She pounded her fist on the door.
“And how are we supposed to do that?” said the sailor, getting to his feet. He was the one who had tried to rush the strangers earlier, the smoking burn-hole in his shirt revealing an angry red mark on his chest.
“I don’t know,” said Apollo. “Yet.”
“Oh, and a big help you were with the pirates, hiding away in your cabin while we fought and died for your sake!”
“I seem to recall you were found below decks yourself, young fellow,” said Mr. Viol sharply.
“Come off it, you old murderer!” said the sailor, drawing back his arm and half-aiming a punch at Viol. It was caught by one of the pirates before it connected, and he returned the favour directly to the sailor’s jaw.
I saw the way this was going, and before a full-scale brawl could break out I leapt forward, pushing the men apart. I saw the same happening elsewhere, with one of the sailors keeping a trio of pirates at bay.
When things had calmed slightly, the sailor spoke.
“My name is Moran, and I have an idea.” There were murmurings of discontent from the pirates. I realised they would never accept the help coming from one of the sailors, and raised my hand.
“I’ll second that idea, Mr. Moran. We all have to work together, or else we may as well abandon ourselves into the hands of fate.”
I turned to Moran and spoke again out of the corner of my mouth, so that nobody else heard.
“This had better be bloody good.”