CHAPTER 22
Member of the Cabinet

Nick had made it out, but there was nowhere on the Sulphur Queen for him to go. Everywhere, at every staircase, every gangway, every hatchway was some Ugloid cleaning. True, the ship was full of dark corners in which to hide, but dark corners were useless to him, because he couldn’t douse his Afterlight glow. A corner was no longer dark once he was in it. He didn’t have a plan yet for getting off the ship, but maybe if he could find Allie they could work together. By now she must know the ship better than he did. The problem was, he had no idea where she was, and he wasn’t in any position to go traipsing around the ship looking for her. In the end, he retreated back into the bowels of the ship. Not the chiming chamber, but one of the treasure holds. It was the best place to hide, for no one dared to come down and disturb the McGill’s possessions. He would hide here until the night hours, when the crew was down below, engaged in games, or brawls, or whatever. Those were the hours when he could more easily sneak around the ship. Then he would search for Allie. But for now, he found himself a large oak cabinet. He slipped inside, pulled the doors tightly closed and waited.

***

The dragons hoard in the central treasure hold was a treacherous mountain of mismatched booty. Allie, who had been here several times hunting for books worth reading and other things to pass the time, knew she had seen an old-fashioned typewriter, she just wasn’t sure where. The stuff in the chamber was a mixture of pure junk and treasure. The McGill did not discriminate; if an object crossed over, and he could get his hot little hands on it, it came onboard, and got dumped here. Jewels sat side by side with empty beer bottles.

The McGill was currently in his “war room,” planning a landing party to a Greensoul trap in Rockaway Point. As he was occupied, this gave Allie time to search. Climbing between the old filing cabinets and car tires, coat racks, and bed frames was no easy chore, and with no light but her own glow to guide her through the debris, it was rough going. She nearly got pinned beneath an airplane propeller, and flattened by an iron lung, but finally she found the typewriter beneath an old table. It was made of black dull metal. The keys were faded from many years of use before it had crossed over. A little emblem on its face said “Smith-Corona.”

Her grandmother had an old-fashioned typewriter like this one—she still used it. “Words aren’t words unless you pound them out,” she used to say. Allie found a slip of paper among the mess, and figured out how to load it into the machine.

Typing, Allie discovered, was a lot like keyboarding, with none of the speed and five times the effort. She shuddered to think of people spending day after day plunging their fingers against the little circular keys, which sank down a whole inch before flinging up an iron arm to smack the ribbon and leave a single letter imprinted on the page. She was thankful she had only a short phrase to type, but even so, she made enough mistakes to slow her down. The little typing arms kept getting stuck together like too many people trying to fit through a door. It took her four attempts before she had typed her message perfectly, then she put the typewriter back where she found it, and went looking for scissors. In the end she had to settle for the tiny scissors on a Swiss army knife she had found on the floor. When she was done, she slipped the little piece of paper into her pocket. She was about to put down the Swiss army knife when she heard the voice behind her.