Steampunk short story

Wanting, as I do, to be well-involved with Oamaru's up-coming Steampunk festival, as a participant rather than observer, I've submitted a short story for the consideration of one of the festival's organisers and hope, though that may be faint, to have it selected for reading at the short story reading event. I've had reactions from my daughter, then my wife to my story, Foreign Bodies, and invite you, pleasant reader, to comment also. I'd not be offended if you told me it was wanting as already Robyn's said, "It doesn't have an ending! People hate stories that don't have an ending!", so I'm already 'softened' to negative criticism :-)
Here it is:



Foreign Bodies



By late afternoon, the constant biting of the gnats had driven Linneaus to a point just short of total despair. His neck was a single red weal, a rosette collar of inflammation and throbbing heat, his eyelids weighty with histamine-induced swelling and his ears raw from the back-of-the-hand rubbing they’d been subject-to since the trek into the bog began seven hours earlier.  The Shrill-o-tron, with its super-audial repellent whine had proved to be largely useless against the biting swarms and had served only to irritate the other devices the botanist had employed throughout the day, causing them to throw up incorrect readings or fail altogether to do the job they were designed for. It was bad enough, Linneaus grumbled to himself, unaware that the anti-gnat device was scrambling his data-collectors, having to lug the confounded things in without finding that they were useless. The weight of the marsh-gas detector alone had been enough to make crossing some of the peat-islands an exercise in exhaustion and a window of opportunity for the leeches he so loathed to attach themselves to any skin on his legs not covered by the Tight-Weave leggings he’d spent so much money buying, knowing he’d be up to his waist in swamps of one sort or another for a long time to come given his passion. The spider-web composite hose was a miracle in modern organo-cloth technology, he’d been assured by the sales-woman, which might be true, he thought, until they snag on some submerged branch or other and lose their impregnability. Leeches can sense the slightest breach and the one on his inner thigh was an open invitation to rasp and drink. He’d tried darning the hole, using thread he’d unravelled from his micro-mesh pollen collecting net, but his fingers and eyes weren’t keen
enough to make an effective job of the repair and the leeches soon teased the weave apart and found his flesh. The afternoon sun, behind the swirling cloud of gnats, began to take on an evening hue and Linneaus knew he’d need to get back onto solid ground before it became too dark to see the luminol markers he’d placed on the way in. They’d help if he did get caught out and find himself floundering in the failing light of dusk, but relying on their pale glimmer wasn’t something he yearned-for, so he began retracing his soggy steps back to the roughland cycle he’d tethered to an old bog-pine that grew where the land was sound enough to support a tree. The day had been all-but useless, he thought to himself as he squelched through the sundew beds of the firm-zone, feeling unsatisfied at having found only  two or three of what he’d expected would be dozens of ‘Holy Grail’ pitchers, the elegantly fluted fly-catchers that represented the focus of his work and the reason for his masochistic visits to wetlands like this one, up and down the country. The vasculum he wore slung over his shoulder was all but empty as a result, and made a hollow sound each time it swung against his hip,
reminding Linneaus of how thin the pickings had been that day. “Bloody flies”, he said aloud. It was rare for him to speak when he was alone, but his neck was becoming unbearably itchy and the burning of his ears infuriating. It was as he was in sight of the pine tree and un-clipping the last of the now-glowing markers that he saw the flash of light in the purpling sky and heard the drawn-out scream of someone falling through the air toward the spongy expanse of water and plants. He’d watched for most of the day as the recreational airships criss-crossed the air-space over the bog, the
way they did every weekend with their payload the well-to-do, playing dare-devil and had shaken a metaphorical fist at them and their privilege, to no avail, they’d not have seen him under his pith bonnet, despite the constant flapping of his arms in defence of his neck, eyes and ears. He resented them and their touristic time-wasting, but his relationship with at least one of them had just
dramatically changed; someone was imperilled and he was very likely the only available rescuer. The ships didn’t climb very high, as they weren’t licensed to travel either cross-boundary into neighbouring counties, nor were they permitted to rise into the airspace claimed by the commercial
trading-blimps. The one Linneaus had just witnessed meeting a fiery end had been cruising at what would have been twice the height of a mature tree, had there been any growing in the nutrient-exhausted soils of the bog, and his immediate thought was that whoever was falling was both alive
and likely to survive the fall, given the cushioning they’d get from the water-logged mosses and worts they’d land on. Provided they didn’t break their neck. Or plunge headfirst into the vegetative sponge and drown. He even wryly and ever-so fleetingly considered the risk to the sky-diver of being eaten alive by the blood-thirsty insects and leeches he’d endured through the day, as he shed his equipment; delicate glass and finely-calibrated instruments amongst it, with an uncustomary recklessness and strode out, eyes fixed on the tumbling scrap of whoever-it-was that had almost completed its fall to the ground. He knew from past experience, that he was now in danger himself, diving carelessly into the heart of a now un-marked bog at a time when all his instincts
demanded that he stay on firm ground. He heard a muted thwack from the area he’d been exploring for most of the day and cursed, though it wasn’t in his nature to do so, remembering how thickly the leeches were concentrated there and how much bolder they were once the sun goes down.
He ran, wading and scrambling, straight through the expanses of rare chaerophyllums and utricularias he’d avoided earlier in the day for the sake of the precious habitat they represented, crushing them under-boot and leaving deep wells of muddy water and displaced plants as he went. Over the gurgling and sucking sounds he made as he ploughed back to where he’d spent the day, he heard a plaintive mewling and the frantic slapping of hands on water. Probably beating off leeches, he thought, ungenerously.
Linneaus plunged on.