Read Saving the Sammi for Free Online

thin.
    "Meralda! Ahead!"
    Lightning flashed, and a merciful rush of wind opened a ragged part in the clouds, and there, just for an instant, hung the Sammi.
    Her pilot's car was all but gone. Her bright yellow envelope was sagging, pulled out of shape by the ruined rigging that still bore part of her airscrew and random bits of cab.
    "Mistress, is that a woman?"
    Lighting flared, and Meralda saw her -- the faint outline of a woman, skirts flapping in the wind, clambering about on the Sammi's ruined gasbag, clinging to her tangled rigging.
    "What is she doing?"
    Meralda urged the Jenny carefully ahead, mindful of the capricious winds that buffeted her from both above and below.
    "I see now -- she's going after a falling shroud. Look, one is caught in the rigging!"
    Meralda didn't see, couldn't look at anything but the Jenny's nose and the Sammi's ruined silhouette.
    "Going after it for the kids," she said, through gritted teeth. "Do you see more than one shroud?"
    "No. Just the one." Mug kept his eyes on the Sammi. "Foolish, but brave. I think I like this woman. Did we by chance bring a trumpet?"
    "What in heaven's name for, Mug?"
    "She hasn't seen us. Now is probably not the time to just fly up alongside and shout hello. Don't want anyone falling off in sheer terror, do we?"
    "We'll have to risk it. How much flight time is left?"
    "Eight minutes."
    Meralda smiled despite the cold. "More than I thought."
    "That's eight minutes with you and I aboard. With you and I and the extra mass of the Ghotes -- well, Mistress, we may need that falling shroud after all."
    Meralda glanced at her gauges.
    "Shout, Mug, and loud as you can."
    The Jenny closed on the stricken Sammi, and as it drew within a pair of yards, Meralda and Mug both began to shout.
    Mrs. Ghote, intent on her climbing, didn't hear. But a pair of small pale faces appeared at the Sammi's shattered windscreen, and after a brief bout of waving and shrieking by the children Mrs. Ghote turned her face toward them.
    When she saw the Jenny, she went wide-eyed, missed her footing, and fell back into the boiling dark.
    Meralda shoved the coil levers to their stops. The Jenny fell too, banking and howling, fire streaking from her right coil, groans sounding from her every beam.
    Meralda never saw the woman. Never caught a glimpse of her, never heard her scream.
    Not until Mrs. Elise Ghote, still screaming, fell heavily into the Jenny's aft section, landing between two solid oak Palace chairs and atop a stack of blankets one of the carpenters had thoughtfully lashed to the hull.
    "Welcome aboard the Lucky Jenny ," sang Mug, when Mrs. Ghote sat up. "Mrs. Ghote, I presume?"
    Mrs. Ghote struggled to stand. The Jenny pitched and swung.
    "We're here to bring you home," said Meralda. She urged the Jenny up, brought it bumping gently against the bobbing wreck of the Sammi. "No time to explain. Get your children. Get your husband. Get them aboard, right now. Do you understand?"
    Mrs. Ghote regarded Mug's waving bundle of eyes, the rowboat, the banks of dials, and Meralda's wild shock of ice-stiff hair.
    "Of course," she said. "At once."
    And she was off, shouting and grabbing, and pulling and hugging.
    "We're nearly down to nothing," said Mug, with a nod of his eyes at the gauges. "But you did it, Mistress. Come what may, you did it, and no mistake."
    He sent forth a vine and touched Meralda's cold, pale hand.
    "You'd make a fine air pirate, after you do something about that hair."
    The Jenny lurched. Meralda struggled to keep her pulled tight alongside the stricken Sammi . A boy and girl scrambled aboard, faces nearly blue, ice crusted around their noses and mouths.
    "Grab a seat and strap yourselves in," said Mug, as the shivering children clambered into their chairs. Mrs. Ghote appeared, dragging the limp form of her husband behind her.
    When she stepped aboard, the Jenny pitched down and the Sammi bobbed up, and for one awful moment Meralda was sure she'd lost the Ghotes. But Mrs. Ghote