It was awesome at first; I will admit that. It was desperately beautiful. After a time, the monotony of wrinkled water and sky and occasional cloud is numbing.

The sea here is quite empty. I must be able to see sixty, seventy, ninety miles to the horizon, and there is not a sail, not a skiff or fishing boat. The water color shifts between green, blue, and grey according to I don’t know what beneath the surface.

Our motion through the air is almost undetectable. We can feel the vibrations, of course, from the steam engines aft, the big propellers, but there is no sense of acceleration, of passage or direction.

This Trident is an astonishing vessel. Garwater is pouring effort and money into this journey. That is clear.

It must have been a sight, when the Trident lifted off from the deck of the Grand Easterly. It had spent long enough jutting over the ocean, lifted on a framework to keep it clear of the deck’s little capstans and bulkheads. I don’t doubt that there were bets taken on whether we would smash into the sea or into the fabric of the city.

But we lifted clear. It was late afternoon, and there was a darkness at the edge of the sky. I can imagine the Trident hanging there like gods know what, as big as most of the ships of the city, new and scrubbed clean.

We have brought with us the most bizarre thing. Hanging between our engines is a pen full of sheep and pigs.

The animals have food and water for our two-day journey. They must be able to see the gulf of air through the slats in their floor. I thought they might panic, but they can only stare down at the clouds below their hooves, with blank lack of interest. They are too stupid to fear. Vertigo is too complex for them.

I sit here in this little cubby, the lavatory, between the livestock and the control car where the captain and his crew steer us. A corridor from the main chamber.

I have come here to write, several times, since we lifted off.

The others spend their times sitting, whispering or playing cards. I suppose some are in their berths, tucked in the deck above me, below the gasbags. Perhaps they are being talked once more through what is expected of them. Perhaps they are practicing.

My own role is simple, and has been made very clear. After all these weeks and all these thousands of miles, I am back to being told that I am a conduit, that I will merely pass information and language through me, that I do not hear what is spoken.

I can do that. And until then, I have nothing to do but write.