Steampunk'd

by Jean Rabe

  Gavin Ulysses Densmore hardly knew where to look, whether at the engineering marvel above or at the astonishing vista spread out below. As the travel and science reporter for The New York Times, both wonders were within his assigned purview and both stories would include information which the NYT’s small, but enthusiastic, readership would find fascinating. And while the NYT was just another of a dozen or so journalistic rags competing for attention in New York City, he had a feeling that with the right story it could rise above the rest and take over the loyalties of the best educated and most discerning readers. Certainly, he was fortunate indeed to be given this assignment so as to find himself being propelled through the air at good speed toward his interview destination in the southwestern realms of these United States of America.

  He adjusted his goggles for comfort, flipping down the sun-shielding darkened glass feature, as he gazed up into the bright sky at the massive device conveying him with alacrity south and west, currently near the border of the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma. It was, perhaps, too simple to call the transport a balloon. Such huge upended bags were typically filled either with hydrogen gas (a substance lighter than air, but dangerously explosive) or with simple hot air, and had been experimented with by many, particularly the French, but without great success. Ordinary balloons floated hither and yon at the whims of the wind, which varied quite unpredictably as to speed and direction at different heights.

  While others had attempted to control balloon flight with propellers and wings, these efforts were disappointing, primarily because the altitude of ordinary balloons was also quite difficult to control. Only two means were available for achieving ascension: more lift and less weight. Neither was practical for longer flights. Adding volatile hydrogen to the balloon in flight was a fool’s errand and, while producing even a large volume of additional hot air while in flight to achieve more lift was possible, the altitude shift was slow and imprecise. True, a sudden altitude boost could be achieved quickly when needed by dropping ballast, but carrying sufficient sand to maneuver adroitly over long flights was simply not practical.

  And even if one could ascend when desired, there was still, of course, the issue of descent on command, an even more important concern given the brisk temperatures that held sway at altitudes approaching those of alpine peaks. While the ambient temperature caused hot air to cool over time, decreasing lift, there was no way to add ballast while in flight so as to be able to maneuver downward with any speed or efficiency whatsoever. Dumping hot air through an opening atop the balloon was an option, albeit often one with disastrous consequences.

  Doctor Pendleton Ambrose Merganser’s invention of the steam-powered sky-carriage had, of course, solved these difficulties. Two small modified steam engines—of the type typically used for small, narrow gauge mining railways, rather than the behemoths used for transcontinental freight and passenger travel—not only provided power for propeller propulsion and an air rudder, but they also supplied copious amounts of steam, as opposed to dry hot air, for lift. The release of steam from the engines provided a relatively quick burst of lighter-than-air hot gas at a moment’s notice. Dual engines gave a safety-conscious redundancy to the lift system. Furthermore, the selective use of one engine or the other, combined with the placement of the dual engines far fore and aft beneath the elongated ovoid balloon above, allowed the balloon to tilt downward or upward as it traveled ahead (at least until the fresh gas fully intermixed), increasing the maneuverability of the balloon in ascending and descending at will.

  All of that was interesting enough, Gavin knew, and worthy of a four-inch column in the NYT science section. But the real genius, the thing that stepped up the story from a sidebar to a Sunday supplement feature, was using steam, rather than simple hot air, to provide the large balloon’s lift. The brochure for the maiden voyage of the “Self-Regulating Steam-Powered Airborne Gasbag and Associated Sky-Carriage for Extended and Directed Flight Featuring Maneuverability Accoutrements” included a direct quote from Doctor Merganser, himself, explaining the theoretical and practical aspects of his design: “By utilizing steam, which is, after all, simply hot air with a large component of water vapor, we can easily produce sufficient quantities of lift to carry the largest and heaviest loads without difficulty as high as needed to locate winds conducive to efficient travel. The key to steam, however, is that steam carries its own ballast. As the steam cools, the water vapor, which initially was lighter than air and contributed to the lift of the device, condenses back into water, which cannot only be recycled into the steam-producing process, but which when it becomes water essentially provides its own ballast to counteract the lift of the lighter-than-air steam remaining uncondensed.”

  Two accoutrements were, the brochure explained, important to augmenting and controlling this natural steam/water dichotomy. The first was that the elongated ovoid balloon was, in fact, a ring torus, rather than a sphere—meaning that it was in essence an elongated ovoid tube with a central void. The shape allowed more surface area of the balloon to be in contact with the air, facilitating the exchange of heat at the balloon’s surface. The cool air of the upper atmosphere descending through this central void accelerated the cooling of the steam within the torus, causing water to condense, increasing ballast as lift decreased, permitting rapid descent.

  The second accoutrement was key to taking advantage of the first in a controlled fashion. This second device was an articulated panel of black canvas that could be opened up to cover the entire top of the ovoid shape of the balloon, blocking the top of the central void—in essence a giant, black canvas umbrella, albeit one that opened flat in the fashion of a geisha’s fan. This canvas impeded downflow of cold air through the middle of the balloon, slowing cooling and condensation when desired. In addition, the black canvas, when unfurled, soaked up the radiant heat of the sunlight, providing additional warmth to the balloon when employed, reversing (or at least slowing) the cooling of the hot gas in the balloon. By deploying the covering in whole or in part, the lift and ballast of the balloon could, in conjunction with steam engines, be modulated with considerable delicacy.

  Doctor Merganser’s patented invention was why Gavin was now enjoying the exhilarating experience of transcontinental flight. While the science reporter in him thrilled at the science and engineering of the airborne gasbag, the travel reporter in him was simply agog at the pleasures of air travel aboard the associated sky-carriage. Gone were the bumps and noisy vibrations of riding on the railroad all the live-long day. Gone were the monotonous and irritating clackety-clack of the rails, the dirty, dusty air at ground level, and the dreary views of weeds alongside the tracks. Up here there was fresh air, relative quiet, a soothing sway, and an unparalleled view of nature’s bounteous beauty from God’s own perspective. Not only that, but the sky-carriage was not limited by train schedules and sidings, nor by rails and stations—it could go anywhere at any time, which is how Gavin was able to arrange a brief stop at a supply depot near the Nevada-Arizona border on the sky-carriage’s maiden voyage from New York to Los Angeles. From there he would travel but a few hours by ground transport to interview the inventor himself, Doctor Pendleton Ambrose Merganser. The Doctor was squirreled away in a small town by the name of Las Vegas—meaning simply “The Meadows” in Spanish—no doubt so as to be able to work on his inventions without the constant interruption of admiring throngs.

  His stop only a few hours away, Gavin wiped the fog off of his goggles—they tended to mist up when the cool, humid air hit the glass warmed by the heat of his body—to take in the view. He had been told by his better-traveled colleagues to expect hot, arid expanses empty of life or beauty in the southwest, but they had been wrong. Everywhere he looked was lush and green and teeming with life. Perhaps he was not south enough or west enough. Perhaps they had been wrong.

  Certainly, there was heat aplenty. As the sky-carriage made its gradual, controlled descent toward his drop-off point, the temperature climbed and then climbed some more. B
oth steam engines cut off to allow the air keeping them aloft to cool faster and the central canvas was completely open, helping to hasten their descent by assisting in the cooling of the hot air and the condensation of additional ballast.

  When colleagues had described the southwest to Gavin, they had been quite clear that it was a hot place. The temperatures they asserted had been documented by actual, scientifically certified mercury thermometers were astonishing. Moreover, their tales of frying eggs on granite boulders were equally astounding, though more lacking in credibility. Still, each one had softened the tale with a wry comment: “But at least it’s a dry heat.”

  Clearly, the joke was on him, because the heat was anything but dry. A steamy haze seemed to envelop the lush ground beneath as they descended, the sort of condition he associated with the swamp of Okeefenokee, back when his journeys for a travel piece on the wonders of Northern Florida as a vacation and retirement destination had been interrupted by a most unpleasant hurricane. Certainly the vegetation reminded him of the tropics, if not the Okeefenokee Swamp. Ferns and palms competed for space amidst thick, flowering bushes, and trailing vines.

  He had thought for a bit that, perhaps, he had simply managed to find a swampy niche in the furnace of hell his colleagues had described, a jungle oasis of sorts amidst the silent sands of desolation, but his high vantage point revealed just the opposite. Vegetation had been on the upswing for hundreds of miles and extended north and south as far as he could see. Even the large, canyon-like fissure he had seen in the distance as they approached was covered with plant growth. The area was quite literally a jungle, not the desert he had been told to expect.

  A damp mugginess assaulted Gavin’s nostrils and a swarm of mosquitoes assaulted his exposed flesh as he disembarked from his transportation and stowed his luggage in the steam-powered land-carriage he had rented for the remainder of his journey. He adjusted his goggles, flipping the dark glass attachment up—no need for sun protection in the midst of the filtered daylight of a jungle—and set off for Doctor Merganser’s workshop in the little town of Las Vegas, in the southeastern corner of Nevada.

  If anything, it seemed to get hotter as he made his way slowly along the rutted roadway north. He told himself it was the lack of the cool breeze he had experienced during his flight or that, perhaps, the bone jarring rattles occasioned by the rough road made him uncomfortable and cranky and therefore more likely to notice the heat. But psychosomatics did not cause his sweat-soaked clothing to cling to his body like a jilted lover. His imagination did not generate the first-degree burn he received whenever he touched a piece of metal on his steam-powered land-carriage with bare skin. And most importantly and most scientifically, grumpiness did not move the mercury incrementally up and yet up again on his genuine, lab-calibrated thermometer, which he had placed on the seat next to him.

  It was hot and it was getting hotter.

  Just as he was sure he would swoon like an over-dramatic debutante at her lover’s sweet whisperings, he arrived at his destination: the home and workshop of Doctor Merganser. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and brow with an already soaked handkerchief and rang the bell. Besides broadcasting a deafening ‘hoo-haw,’ the bell triggered a pneumatic tube device, delivering with an audible whoosh a small cylinder containing a note. “State your name and your business on the enclosed pad. Put in cylinder. Return to tube and ring bell twice.”

  Marveling yet again at the Doctor’s resourcefulness in all sorts of labor-saving gadgetry, he did as instructed and his missive was whisked away with pneumatic efficiency at the instant of the second “hoo-haw.” He waited only a few moments before a reply was delivered to his nervous hands.

  “Let yourself in,” it read.

  Gavin opened the massive wooden door and a cold, icy blast flowed from the dim confines within and poured over his body. His goggles fogged over immediately, leaving him temporarily blind as the frigid air chilled his damp, sweaty clothing, causing his skin to turn to gooseflesh and his muscles to tense and shiver uncontrollably. If he had thought to bring in his genuine mercury thermometer with him from the land-carriage and had he not been blinded by the condensation which had formed now on both sides of his goggles, he was sure that it would show that the ambient temperature within Doctor Merganser’s workshop was at least thirty, perhaps forty, degrees Fahrenheit below that of the outside air.

  He heard a vague shuffling sound and then a voice: “You’ll see better if you remove your goggles.”

  Gavin immediately used his right hand to pull his goggles away from his face and raise them to forehead height, then let them rest there, where they might at least keep his forehead warm. In front of him he saw an unkempt old man wearing a stained gray apron over a plaid flannel shirt and heavy denim jeans, with thick black shoes beneath. The man, of course, wore goggles, as most everyone did these days, though Gavin suspected the scientist wore his more for eye protection from his experiments than from protection from the soot and particulates that so assaulted everyone in today’s steam-engine powered world when they traveled out-of-doors.

  “Haven’t solved the condensate problem when transitioning between temperature gradients,” the old man grumped. “Tried wipers, but the mechanism was too heavy and had to be manually activated. No net benefit there. Cleaning them with spit helps a mite—the saliva resists the forming of condensate, though I can’t say why.”

  “Er, n-n-no doubt an intriguing s-s-scientific question,” stammered Gavin, whether from cold or nervousness at meeting the great Doctor, he was not sure.

  “Not really,” murmured the scientist as he turned away, motioning for Gavin to follow him into the confines of his workshop. “I’ll leave that one for some Harvard student’s thesis research paper. Got more important things to work on.”

  “Gavin Ulysses Densmore, N-n-new York Times,” Gavin replied, establishing his credentials right up front so there could be no complaint that anything said was off the record. “I scheduled an interview.” As he waited for a response, Gavin’s eyes scanned the room for massive blocks of ice. He’d been in an ice house in Boston for his piece on the New England fishing business—“From Ocean to Plate”—but he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live in one, though with the heat outside, he could see the need for some respite. “I came here by sky-carriage—at least most of the way. It was quite a delight.”

  Merganser’s right hand fluttered dismissively. “Old news. Maiden flight already underway. Got all the publicity I need for that one already. You’re here to get me some press for my latest and greatest, now that it is fully perfected.”

  Gavin frowned, then shivered as a cold drip of water slid down his back. This was not going as expected. One tended to be treated as a shill for merchant interests when one worked as a travel reporter—free transport, free lodging, all expenses paid to fairs, traveling rodeos, circus adventures, and tours of places of historical significance, but not generally so when interviewing a source as a scientific reporter. It’s not that the scientists couldn’t use the huskerism, it’s just that they were a bit too intellectually caught up in their research to understand that inventions needed a market to be valuable or, frankly, interesting. Maybe Merganser’s understanding of this interplay is what made him more successful than most of his peers.

  Gavin suddenly realized that his brief reverie had led to an awkward silence. “And what’s that?” he asked. “What is your latest and greatest?”

  Merganser looked at him as if he had just passed gas and failed to excuse himself. “You’re shivering. I’d have thought you noticed.”

  “The cold?” He never had found any blocks of ice. “You can produce cold?”

  “With my invention, everyone will be able to produce cold. I call it my ‘Indoor Comfort Enhancement and Temperature Modulation Device’, or ICE TMD for short—steam-powered of course.”

  “But how?”

  “Compression, expansion, evaporative cooling. The technical details are not for publication. Som
e of my fellow inventors are, shall we say . . .”

  “Less than scrupulous?” Gavin volunteered.

  “. . . assholes would be more accurate,” grumbled the old inventor.

  “Can you tell me how efficient the process is, at least?” queried Gavin. He was a scientific reporter. He had to have some sort of scientific detail to report.

  “An astute question from such a young man. I am overjoyed to tell you that although early prototypes were only three to five percent efficient, I have improved the condensate compression ratios, achieved greater coherence from the ring valve seals, boosted fan rotor speeds to facilitate airflow rates over the evaporative cooling plates, and created miniature steam boilers with higher tensile strength capable of greater pressure containment without rupture so that the efficiency ratio is almost eight point two percent. In another six weeks, I hope to be closing in on eight point six percent efficiency.”