“Sidecut,” said the mouse.

  Ping. The red hot end of a cable whipped past Non, knocking over a first aid cabinet. The weasel’s jacket fell to Non’s hooves.

  “My Dad has a hydra eye!” said Non. Specifically, one of Lernea 3’s eyes with a green laser.

  Non moved the cabinet off the unconscious weasel.

  Non got the jacket, then rushed to the boar zeppelin’s rear hoof.

  Ping. Ping. Ping. The zeppelin lurched, then started upward.

  “I’m not sure we want to be on this ride,” said Non, forcing his staff under his surcingle. The crawlspace featured support braces every meter to keep the fabric tubular.

  “Aha! Nobody expects outlandish equiposition. Our chief weapon is surprise and ludicrousy!”

  Non held the knife and wrapper. “We have to be careful; these walls are fragile.”

  The woodpecker turned to look into the equitaur’s eyes, seeming to smile like a prankster. Then Picoid deliberately poked a hole in the fabric and flew off.

  “Dammit.” Non collected blood from near his horso nostrils, patching the hole with the wrapper and his blood. ‘Damn you, weasel.’ He imagined the weasel cutting the hole.

  Non committed the sewn name to memory. Ricki. He put the jacket on a ladder leading up.

  “Attention, all aboard the Erymanthia. Pilots report to the bridge immediately. Others report to the dining room. You will not be harmed,” said a voice over the intercom.

  Non clenched his teeth, then moved past the kitchen with the can opener in his feedbag.

  Non saw Picoid’s vision of the Cargo Prep room in steerage. A ramp allowed easy loading, then an elevator led up to the larger area under the inflation zone.

  Non lowered himself into a music room, then paused at a fancy hourglass. He snapped the stem and carried the sand bulbs, leaving a sand trail. Port. Down. In 3D Printing, he started a print of his badge.

  In cargo prep, he patted the remains of Lernea 3. Another crate of ice held the eyeless head of Lernea 5. “You didn’t deserve this, Lernea. Icosian, if I braced you, could you hold the zeppelin up?”

  “Right.” Non gathered himself, then went through the motions to enact his plan. ‘1. Turn on wrapping robot. 2. Use badge to make sure mouse finds sand trail. 3. Secure staff under table.’

  ‘4. Arrange parachutes at bottom of ramp, tie ropes to table. 5. Add a strong strap to table after making sure it’s not anchored.’

  Anchor bolts panicked Non, but he remembered seeing a power impact wrench. Whirr, whirr.

  ‘6. Summon and tape real badge to lever for ramp. 7. Get fake badge.’

  Non walked back to 3D Printing for the fake badge, tied his tail, waited for the mouse to walk by, then followed. At the Crew Only closet he grabbed a pole near the squeegees.

  An errant scratch on his taurjoin covered his hand in blood. He scraped that on a hoof as he went over steps he hoped to enact, leaving a bloody hoofprint.

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  ‘8. Talk to Dad. 9. Fight mouse. 10. Drop fake badge. 11. Put can opener in my mouth. 12. Trip into the wrapper robot. 13. Flail as my head gets wrapped. 14. Let Picoid scramble things.’

  He then faced the mouse, Murphy Roths Large. They had a chat. As his head got wrapped, he recalled the SF story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

  ‘In Harlan’s story, they needed a can opener. I set this as my memory unlock key.’

  Non felt his memories rapidly shuffle around, returning to normal as the fog of confusion left him.

  The ammonite writhed in agony at the literary artillery and telepathically screamed for help but quoted James Joyce instead.

  “Cryptoconchoidsiphonostomata erupt into this de-realized wordscape with unforgiving regularity!”

  “What?” asked the mouse.

  Before Murphy could dispel his confusion, Non activated a vector with his badge to pull the attached lever, opening the ramp. Suddenly on a downslope, the water tank rolled away as the ammonite wrapped around Non’s head.

  “Stop that! Sten, what’s going on?”

  Parachutes deployed and dragged the table down the ramp. The tank and water fell away. The dark thunderstorm outside wasn’t part of the plan. The table dropped out into it, held by the strap.

  Despite a bucking table and a giant ammonite biting his head, Non used his badge to close the ramp with himself outside, then summoned it to his surcingle to use more vectors.

  After the ramp closed, Picoid flew from the side of the zeppelin to land on the equitaur’s right arm. The woodpecker put a knife in Non’s hand and pecked at the bindings.

  “I have met with you, bird, too late,” said the ammonite, abrading Non’s scalp. ‘It’s going to grab Picoid!’ He thrashed his head around as the ammonite’s raspy tongue licked at his skull.

  Picoid dodged a tentacle, trying to stay away, then almost got crushed against the bottom of the deck. Blood from Non’s head spattered on Picoid before he resumed pecking. Sten grabbed the knife in a tentacle and flung it into the storm. ‘Dammit!’

  Sten probed Non’s left eye with a tentacle. He couldn’t steady the table, it weighed too much.

  With adrenaline fueling him with manic strength, he forced his hand against the table harder until the bindings snapped. After a few uncontrolled bangs, he ripped the serrated suckers off his head on one side, then the other, holding both pedipalps away from his face.

  “Neverheedthemhorseluggarsandlisteltomine,” said the Joyce-stuck ammonite.

  ‘A nonce word.’

  He smashed the wagon wheel sized shell against the deck and table over and over. With sharp jagged shell edges and the grisly beak, he cut the rope on his neck and the tape on his mouth.

  He summoned his staff from beneath the table and face-bashed the deck in a new way. Growling, he unbound his legs as rain washed over him, then removed the belts. Held just by the strap now, the table got one more good whack at him before he cut it away.

  ‘Whew.’ A severed pedipalp still writhing on his arm made him shudder. ‘Don’t scream. Balance.’

  Closing the ramp while outside was part of the plan, but slippery rain wasn’t. He’d barely practiced balancing upside-down against Icosian. The badge helped. But he had to be quiet.

  The mouse took money from the weasel’s jacket and left on the elevator.

  ‘Weather control. Cloud seeding uses silver iodide that has a crystal structure like ice. A lattice of entanglements in a storm could provide control like–’

  ‘Goals? What surgery? What is Mayhem doing? Save Dad? Do something, at least! I need to move!’

  Spurring himself into motion, Non tasked Tycho with the dual vectors as he followed access tube supports to the top of the craft. He immediately started sliding in an unexpected direction before falling against the slick surface. He struggled to keep his body pressed against the slippery zeppelin without his hooves or staff ripping it open and stopped near the tail.

  Non examined the standing problem first, then considered returning to cargo prep. A few minutes of math gave the vectors needed to safely traverse the outside of a moving zeppelin.

  Non stood atop the zeppelin, opening the flap for the access tube leading down to the main cargo area, holding his staff up high while pushing his hind hooves down. ‘Why is my hair standing on end?’

  Then a lightning bolt struck Icosian. Blankness.