With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.

by Rudyard Kipling

  The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under theengine-room dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The formersighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch.The latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits anotherFleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is toshunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching.That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside asputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-toppedtunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between thetwo, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on theirside, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle ofthe liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and thesoft _gluck-glock_ of gas-locks closing as Captain Purnall brings "162"down by the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom of the air on ourskin is no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the universal stillness.And we are running an eighteen-second mile.

  I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the hatch-coamings intothe coach. The mail-clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary, andMedicine Hat bags: but there is a pack of cards ready on the table.

  Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbine-valves andstand by; but the spectacled slave of the Ray in the U-tube never liftshis head. He must watch where he is. We are hard-braked and goingastern; there is language from the control-platform.

  "Tim's sparking badly about something," says the unruffled CaptainHodgson. "Let's look."

  Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since, but theembodied authority of the G. P. O. Ahead of us floats an ancient,aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with no more rightto the 5,000 foot lane than has a horse-cart to a modern town. Shecarries an obsolete "barbette" conning-tower--a six-foot affair withrailed platform forward--and our warning beam plays on the top of it asa policeman's lantern flashes on the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief,too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. CaptainPurnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him man to man. There aretimes when Science does not satisfy.

  "What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scrapingchimney-sweep?" he shouts as we two drift side by side. "Do you knowthis is a Mail-lane? You call yourself a sailor, sir? You ain't fit topeddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your name and number! Report andget down, and be----!"

  "I've been blown up once," the shock-headed man cries, hoarsely, as adog barking. "I don't care two flips of a contact for anything _you_ cando, Postey."

  "Don't you, sir? But I'll make you care. I'll have you towed stern firstto Disko and broke up. You can't recover insurance if you're broke forobstruction. Do you understand _that_?"

  Then the stranger bellows: "Look at my propellers! There's been awulli-wa down under that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! We've beenblown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's watchinside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Raywent out when the engines smashed; and ... and ... for pity's sake giveme my height, Captain! We doubt we're dropping."

  "Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?" Captain Purnall overlooksall insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing.The stranger leaks pungently.

  "We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug thefore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her captain wails.

  "She's sinking like a log," says Captain Purnall in an undertone. "Callup the Banks Mark Boat, George." Our dip-dial shows that we, keepingabreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last few minutes.

  Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to swingthrough the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity.

  "That'll fetch something," he says, while Captain Hodgson watches theGeneral Communicator. He has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a fewhundred miles west, and is reporting the case.

  "I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on theconning-tower.

  "Is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "She isn't insured, she'smine."

  "Might have guessed as much," mutters Hodgson. "Owner's risk is theworst risk of all!"

  "Can't I fetch St. John's--not even with this breeze?" the voicequavers.

  "Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you _any_ lift in you, fore or aft?"

  "Nothing but the midship tanks and they're none too tight. You see, myRay gave out and--" he coughs in the reek of the escaping gas.

  "You poor devil!" This does not reach our friend. "What does the MarkBoat say, George?"

  "Wants to know if there's any danger to traffic. Says she's in a bit ofweather herself and can't quit station. I've turned in a General Call,so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound to help--or else wemust. Shall I clear our slings. Hold on! Here we are! A Planet liner,too! She'll be up in a tick!"

  "Tell her to have her slings ready," cries his brother captain. "Therewon't be much time to spare.... Tie up your mate," he roars to thetramp.

  "My mate's all right. It's my engineer. He's gone crazy."

  "Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!"

  "But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by."

  "You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're less thanfifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers."

  A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes theair of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open and hertransporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as sheadjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's conning-tower. Themate comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into thecradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he mustgo back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will find anice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. The bandaged headgoes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheershollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the salooncolloid.

  "That's a good girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says CaptainPurnall.

  The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see himfetch St. John's. He dives below and returns--at which we little humanbeings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the ship's kitten. Upfly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and shehurtles away again. The dial shows less than 3,000 feet.

  The Mark Boat signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling herdeath song, as she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags.

  "Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning," says CaptainPurnall, following her down.

  There is no need. Not a liner in air but knows the meaning of thatvertical beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth.

  "But she'll drown in the water, won't she?" I ask.

  "Not always," is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift herengines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weekson her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, andlook sharp. There's weather ahead."

  Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavypithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as asettee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir ofthe crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict'sforehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She fallsstern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down thatpitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.

  "SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS LADDER OFLIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES HER"]

  "A filthy business," says Hodgson. "I wonder what it must have been likein the old days."

  The thought had crossed my mind too. What if that wavering carcasshad been filled with International-speaking men of all theInternationalities, each one of them taught (_that_ is the horror ofit!) that after death he would very possibly go forever to unspeakabletorment?

  And not half a century since, we (one knows now that we are only ourfathers re-enlarged upon the earth
), _we_, I say, ripped and rammed andpithed to admiration.

  Here Tim, from the control-platform, shouts that we are to get into ourinflators and to bring him his at once.

  We hurry into the heavy rubber suits--and the engineers are alreadydressed--and inflate at the air-pump taps. G. P. O. inflators arethrice as thick as a racing man's "flickers," and chafe abominably underthe armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim has blown himself up tothe extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck hewould bounce back. But it is "162" that will do the kicking.

  "The Mark Boat's mad--stark ravin' crazy," he snorts, returning tocommand. "She says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pullover to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first! We wasted an hour and aquarter over that dead duck down under, and now I'm expected to gorubbin' my back all round the Pole. What does she think a postalpacket's made of? Gummed silk? Tell her we're coming on straight,George."

  George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the Direct Control.Now under Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Accelerator; under hisleft heel the Reverse, and so with the other foot. The lift-shunt stopsstand out on the rim of the steering-wheel where the fingers of his lefthand can play on them. At his right hand is the midships engine leverready to be thrown into gear at a moment's notice. He leans forward inhis belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked toward theGeneral Communicator. Henceforth he is the strength and direction of"162," through whatever may befall.

  The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A. B. C. Directions to thetraffic at large. We are to secure all "loose objects"; hood up ourFleury Rays; and "on no account to attempt to clear snow from ourconning-towers till the weather abates." Under-powered craft, we aretold, can ascend to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to look outfor them accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very badly,"with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc."

  Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only warning is theelectric skin-tension (I feel as though I were a lace-maker's pillow)and an irritability which the gibbering of the General Communicatorincreases almost to hysteria.

  We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and ourturbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots.

  Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us theNorth Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round her rising andfalling--bewildered planets about an unstable sun--helpless shippinghanging on to her light for company's sake. No wonder she could not quitstation.

  She warns us to look out for the backwash of the bad vortex in which(her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.

  The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminousfilms--wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe ofpale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. Itleaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip ofour nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bowsinks as though that light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch andstumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shuntstrike chords of numbers--1:4:7:--2:4:6:--7:5:3, and so on; for he isrunning by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasyair. All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated overthis thin ice the better. Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vaultis charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin friction mayexcite to unholy manifestations. Between the upper and the lowerlevels--5,000, and 7,000, hints the Mark Boat--we may perhaps boltthrough if.... Our bow clothes itself in blue flame and falls like asword. No human skill can keep pace with the changing tensions. A vortexhas us by the beak and we dive down a two-thousand-foot slant at anangle (the dip-dial and my bouncing body record it) of thirty-five. Ourturbines scream shrilly; the propellers cannot bite on the thin air; Timshunts the lift out of five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives herbulletwise through the maelstrom till she cushions with a jar on anup-gust, three thousand feet below.

  "_Now_ we've done it," says George in my ear. "Our skin-friction thatlast slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions! Look out forlaterals, Tim, she'll want some holding."

  "I've got her," is the answer. "Come _up_, old woman."

  She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and right like thepinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her course in four ways atonce, and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and droppedinto a new chaos. We are never without a corposant grinning on our bowsor rolling head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle ofelectricity around and within us is added once or twice the rattle ofhail--hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we may breakour back, pitch-poling.

  "Air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars George above the tumult. "Aboutas elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, aint it?"

  THE STORM]

  He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on theHeavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs theHigh Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots acrosstremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of anyrudeness in the reception. Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, onecorner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into theblackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from hisknuckles at every turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head toclear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then thatGeorge, watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab hisface quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a humanbeing could so continuously labour and so collectedly think as did Timthrough that Hell's half hour when the flurry was at its worst. We weredragged hither and yon by warm or frozen suctions, belched up on thetops of wulli-was, spun down by vortices and clubbed aside by lateralsunder a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a drunken moon. I heardthe rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in and out, thelow growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the yelling windswithout, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any lull thatpromised hold for an instant. At last we began to claw up on a cant,bow-rudder and port-propeller together; only the nicest balancing oftanks saved us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days.

  "We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow," Georgecried.

  "There's no windward," I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to astanchion. "How can there be?"

  He laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red manlaughed beneath his inflated hood!

  "Look!" he said. "We must clear those refugees with a high lift."

  The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuatingin the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with movinglights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie head towind but, not being hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boathad risen to the limit of her lift and, finding no improvement, haddropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa and wasblown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she wentastern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the MarkBoat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple.

  "If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in acalm, as we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some skippers_will_ navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think sheis doing, Tim?"

  "Playin' kiss in the ring," was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-AsiaticDirect liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But therewas a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped outlike a pea from off a fingernail, braking madly as she fled down and allbut over-ending.

  "Now I hope she's satisfied," said Tim. "I'm glad I'm not a MarkBoat.... Do I want help?" The C. G. dial had caught his ear. "George,you may tell that gentleman with my love--love, remember, George--that Ido not want help. Who _is_ the officious sardine-tin?"

  "A Rimouski drogher on the lookout for a tow."

  "Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal pa
cket isn't being towedat present."

  "Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," Georgeexplained. "We call 'em kittiwakes."

  A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for oneinstant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and asingle hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to theinsurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay inabsolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere hisboat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well.

  We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours when thestorm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to northwardfilled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite dissipating itself inour atmosphere.

  Said George: "That may iron out all the tensions." Even as he spoke, theconflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the laterals died outin long easy swells; the airways were smoothed before us. In less thanthree minutes the covey round the Mark Boat had shipped theirpower-lights and whirred away upon their businesses.

  "What's happened?" I gasped. The nerve-storm within and the volt-tinglewithout had passed: my inflators weighed like lead.

  "God, He knows!" said Captain George, soberly. "That old shooting-star'sskin-friction has discharged the different levels. I've seen it happenbefore. Phew! What a relief!"

  We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. Timshut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming upbehind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and moppedhis face.

  "Hello, Williams!" he cried. "A degree or two out o' station, ain'tyou?"