Bad News

The puddle of red glistened in the firelight as it spilled from the gold cup that had been dropped from the hand of Starchaser Macbeth, spilling its winey contents onto the ornate cream and gold carpet, Starchaser having collapsed into a heap scant moments before. It simply could not be true, she told herself. In fact, she refused to believe that anything at all unsavory had happened to Jack, much less that he was dead. But John had seemed so sure that there were no survivors. She simply couldn't understand how something as simple as a short scout over the island of Periagua to look for fresh water had resulted in a terrible firey crash. Without Jack or his scout plane she and John would have virtually no protection nor anyway to send for help. They were stranded, trapped aboard an airship adrift over the Pacific ocean with no stearing, no water, and soon, they would run out of helium and be forced to start burning anything flamable in order to generate hot air as an alternative. And to think, all this could have been easily avoided.