Etelka moved slowly, knee-deep in mud and muck. The water carried the sucking sound of each step. She would be completely blind if it weren’t for the chartreuse-tinted vision, provided by the goggles she wore inside the heavy metal helmet. Turning her body was easier than peering through the small side windows of the giant sphere on her shoulders.
The exotic material of the goggles burned through the muck and drifting sediment of the [bayou] under the airfield. Everittite was rare, and had properties which were still poorly understood. One of them was filtering out all but solid material from the vision. This was convenient because Everittite lenses had the drawback of inserting ghostly phantoms that hovered unnervingly in the distance, even under water.
The air flowing through the tube mounted behind her head, blew oily, and fetid smelling air through her hair. It mingled with her perfume before being sucked out through another hose mounted to the top of the helmet. Sometimes, due to the the vagarities of the chance breezes on the surface she would get a stifling breath of smoke from the engine.
Etelka walked counterclockwise around the stone base of the mooring mast. In addition to the ghostly phantasm the Everittite goggles showed a kind of aura of living things drifting in the distance, as well as alligators and tentacled monsters from the brackish water.
She continued, her left foot, buckled into a weighted boot, bumped into a submerged rock. The pylons of the dock where in front of her. If she couldn’t find what she was looking for—what she was certain was here in the muck, she’d have to climb back up the slipper pile of rocks hand have the surface pump-boat move to the other side of the dock, so she could continue. She probably would not have to fully exit the absurdly heavy submersible diving suit, but that was still a possibility. The men would help her to the other side and then back down into the water.
The suit was hot. The air being pumped through was hot, hotter than the water around her. She would need a bath after this, something her airship could not provide.
Work in progress. Mistakes and misspellings are present. This is a very rough draft. Copyright 2021 Ion Fyr
I did just add the last paragraph of this section that I neglected to include when I made the original post.
#steampunk #fantasy
Ion Fyr 