With this violent expulsion, the water is split apart and decomposed to a certain degree, but because of hydrogen’s attraction to the synthetic material, a large amount of the liberated gas remains behind so that the containers are to some extent filled with it at the beginning of the flight. Two inestimable advantages are thereby obtained: first, by reason of its lightness the hydrogen considerably reduces the Flying Fish’s specific weight and gives it excellent balance, and second, which is the main thing, it provides the flying machine with a gaseous substance to burn. This is used, however, only at night or in cloud-filled air. In the sunshine, the machine is provided, as are all flying ships, with concentrated solar heat, and the sunlight-collecting apparatus on the Flying Fish is in reality not much different from that on other ships.
As for the rest of the ship’s outfitting, I shall not weary you with the details, as they will be well-known to you. Its entire inner framework is fabricated of the usual hollow aluminum tubing, and Crystalline is used instead of the comparatively heavier wood. That the ship is controlled entirely by means of electrical connections goes without saying.
It was a true pleasure to see the amazement of the good citizens of Koge as Captain Bird led us from room to room and explained each detail to us, constantly pointing out how the highest degree of lightness was everywhere combined with the greatest possible strength. When, however, he proposed that the city council president and the others join him for a little dive with the accompanying take-off so they could experience for themselves a practical demonstration of the Flying Fish’s speed and solidity, the good gentlemen became rather long in the face and were suddenly consumed by a devotion to duty that required their immediate presence in various city meetings and committees. Still, I can hardly blame them. The nearest water suitable for diving was the Kattegat, and returning across the entire island of Zealand by way of the Northwest Railroad will always be associated with some difficulty and wasted time.
We would be lifting at five o’clock in the afternoon, and so I preferred to stay on board, all the more because Captain Bird and the other air officers showed themselves to be very courteous people who with great willingness provided me with all the information I might still desire. The ship travels at one hundred fifty miles per hour, can transport twenty passengers, the majority of which on this journey were reporters, and can carry up to five hundred pounds of cargo. Its wings are fifty-four feet long, eighteen feet wide at the base, and as a rule maintain a rate of one hundred twenty beats per minute. What most interested me just then was to see the hydrogen apparatus operate, separating that gas from the surrounding atmosphere and storing it for eventual need. I also admired the simple method by which the numerous egg yolks that had been brought along and which comprise the crew’s primary nourishment were transformed from a liquid to a nearly solid state and dried by the machine in the form of long, thin rods that have a more-than-slight resemblance to powdered sulfur.
At four o’clock, the electric motor’s minor-key bells announced that all was ready and that all crewmembers and passengers should be on board. Twice the long air-boat wound its way like an enormous water snake between the coast and the ship. On its first trip it brought that part of the crew that had been on shore leave, and, on its second trip, all the passengers, of whom no fewer than thirteen were reporters gathered from the world’s most varied regions. I scrutinized them closely as they passed by me in their dapper outfits and with their notebooks in their dainty hands, with the elegant carriage and coquettish haughtiness that is so characteristic of the ladies who are employed in the service of the press, and who are especially well aware that on a journey through the air, everything on both land and sea is beneath them.
How can I describe my surprise when among them I discovered Miss Anna Blue, whose acquaintance, you will remember, I made in Calcutta, and with whom I am—and I can gladly admit this to you, old friend—still undyingly in love. I felt my heart hammer more forcefully than the electric motor’s bells when I pressed her hand, and it was with feelings of fear and joy that I saw her as she paused at the door of her little cabin, which was just across from mine, wave goodbye to me with her sky-blue feathered hat, and then disappear inside.
Oh, I thought, this was the annoying thing about all our aerial vehicles—one must absolutely stay in one’s place in order not to upset the balance. Who now had, as in bygone days, an open and airy deck on which you could go walking with your beloved under your arm, listening to the rush of the wind and watching the play of the waves as they broke in rainbow-colored pearls of foam before the ship’s bow! Instead, you lie alone for thirty-seven hours stretched out on your airbed with no other pleasure than to smoke a nicotine-cigarette and stare down through the floor at the Earth’s towns and mountains racing past like telephone poles once did past a train, with nothing to enjoy but concentrated nitrogen and egg yolk. It was not a delightful prospect. Our era is practical and to a certain degree comfortable, but poetic—oh, that was in the old days!
I was distracted from these ponderings when the air-boat set out in the bay for the third time, returning with something that I at first thought was the cadaver of a man. It lay at full length—and it was very long—at the back of the boat, so that the bow actually reared up in the air like a curly-tailed seahorse. As I watched the object brought on board, there were not a few grins among the crew and no few witty remarks were heard from these lightweight fellows. Following the Captain’s order, it was taken down to the machine room where for the sake of equilibrium it was placed on the balance wagon. In case it began to move, it could quickly be pushed along the small railed track that ran through the middle deck. The object proved to be no one less than Hr. Knoll, reporter for The Caloric Howler, a humorous paper published in Copenhagen.
Captain Bird was close to despair. This one passenger weighed as much as four of his crew, and would only be of use when it was necessary for the ship to sink. An accompanying letter from Hr. Knoll’s editors announced that they were willing to pay for him by his weight in accordance with the standard rates for machine parts and house pets, and since for fear of air-sickness he had been brought on board in a hypnotized state, he couldn’t be put off. Besides acknowledging how much women are suited to being reporters because of their rich imagination and their sensitivity to impressions, I regard them as being such excellent passengers on board any and all air-ships that in my opinion these machines should be operated entirely by them. In the face of danger, a woman has a presence of mind and judgment that can be said to be proportional to the size of the threat. In addition, she weighs less and her larger chest makes her less susceptible to the devastating air-sickness that often has the effect of rendering even the bravest air-men unfit for duty. How it could occur to The Caloric Howler to inflict such an oversized oaf on us I shall leave unspoken, but we took him along as an unfortunate fact of life beyond our control and had half of our balance weights taken to shore.
There is a strangely subdued, melancholy sound in the bells that the electric motor sets in motion, in the changing signals and commands they convey when the Flying Fish begins to sink beneath the water. I made these observations in the solemn moment when I heard the ship’s hatches and bolts close and lock themselves, and it became as dark around us as the inside of a vault. Suddenly it was as though a shining strip of sunlight shot over us and enveloped everything in a blinding glare. It was the electric lantern, which had just been lit. As the electric current changed, the bells ceased and a slight yawing and trembling in all the ship’s joints could be perceived, the air grew colder and colder, and I had a vague feeling of an oppressive weight on my chest—it was the ship sinking to a depth of fifteen fathoms to ready itself for its leap upwards.
Then we felt a slight bump, the sign that the ship’s bottom had touched the seabed. Some beads of moisture, driven by the enormous pressure of the mass of water above, oozed through the all but hermetically sealed joints in the aluminum plates, and the metal sighed as though the ship w
as groaning in the water’s powerful embrace as it turned towards the light. Then it slowly began to rise with the forward end upwards. The angle became more and more inclined, at length so steep that I had to place my feet in the brackets on my airbed and with both hands take hold of the straps that dangled over my head.
All of a sudden, there was a jolt that shook the Flying Fish, leaving it trembling in all its joints. This jolt was followed by a second, then by a third—it was as though a whale’s heart was beating over my head. With each pulse the movement increased in force, and the water jet’s rhythmic expulsion was so powerful that it completely drowned out the noise of the propeller, although that was also in full operation. A huge splash and spray as though of an enormous mass of water thrown into the air; the hissing, roaring, and rattling of the water containers as they now discharged the last of their contents; the shriek of the steam whistle as it expelled its long-held breath—that and the ship’s changed angle announced that we were in the air. Soon we heard only the wings’ mighty rushing, their rhythmic stroke as they rowed us through the air ocean.
The hatches and shutters were rolled back again, the electric light was set to half-current, and I turned over on my bed to look down through the skylight. How magnificent! The waves rolled beneath our feet, the Moon had risen and was casting a wide silver streak over the bay, a three-master and a few fishing boats lay far below us, the Koge lighthouse disappeared like a shining star— there was no more doubt! We were hurtling through the skies more swiftly than an eagle.
I shall not dwell on describing for you the details of an aerial journey, which writers and reporters, poets and novelists have treated, in fact exhaustively mined, in every possible way since the first flying vehicles came into regular service. You have made a few short journeys yourself, and the air ocean’s numerous phenomena, its mirage-like vistas of clouds with their many optical illusions, will be completely familiar to you. Since I am also aware that you know only too well from grievous experience the terrible agonies of air-sickness, it will perhaps interest you to learn that in normal conditions on this new ship, one is not particularly subject to its effects, so that the very dubious chloroform sleep or the even more dubious hypnosis, which is otherwise employed on more than half of the passengers, can be easily dispensed with.
The Flying Fish moves so smoothly, so steadily, through its surrounding medium that it is tempting to believe that you are completely at rest, were it not for the wings’ buzzing beat loudly announcing that you are actually in motion. One reason that the terrible malady is more readily avoided on board the Prometheus is likely to be found in the excellence of the machinery and the use of the balancing apparatus to cushion the jolt each time the wings lift themselves for the downstroke, but the main reason, however, I would credit to the fact that Captain Bird can go much lower than any other air-captain, which alleviates all the sufferings caused by an extended stay in the thin air.
As on the other air-ships, life on board is never very comfortable since you cannot move around as on the sea, and you are largely reduced to being just so much weight on the machinery. In addition, I had brought the latest polemical pamphlet along and was so rash as to venture into its battle of Being and Non-Being, which, as you know, has split our philosophical academy and the public into two camps that are ready to devour each other. Philosophical concepts these days are so sharply expressed, dialectics and argumentation so endlessly refined and rarefied, that one often feels there is nothing left to fight over but pure air. Even this air is as a rule so thin that the blood rushes to the head, breathing stops, and one is seized by the same nervous fear that is precisely one of the most agonizing effects of air-sickness. So I tossed the book aside when I noticed the first symptoms, let being and non-being be what they were, and proceeded to look down through the skylight, glad that I could still consider myself among the being.
It was a lovely moonlight night. The island of Fyn with its woodlots, villages, estates, and market towns lay outstretched beneath our feet like an enormous map. Down below, shining like glittering stars, were one little light and one red flame after another, while smoke from towns and factories slowly rose into the air, billowing under our feet like an enormous carpet of fog. Through its loose weave, I caught a glimpse of life below. Sounds occasionally rose up to us like the calls of birds. Now it was the church bells’ rumbling bass tones, then a lively horn tattoo, then the shrill shrieks of steam whistles from the trains that, like coal-black snakes with fire-spewing heads and green and red eyes, wound their way through the depths beneath us to disappear in the darkness. Soon both Zealand and Fyn with their bustling life were out of our view. We cruised onward over the dark, brooding pine forests that cover Jylland’s former heath and took a look down at Viborg’s rebuilt cathedral. Then we flew over Skagen’s cape where numerous guano factories shone and sparkled in the darkness. From them we heard the pounding of the heavy steam hammers as they pulverized the North and Baltic Seas’ rich bounty of seaweed and shellfish.
In our unceasing flight we continued on our way over the North Sea. Its waves rolled and foamed far beneath the Flying Fish’s bow, and we were obliged to climb several thousand meters to avoid flying into the whirling of the storm that was just now raging below us. I was watching through my spyglass how a magnificent three-masted, propeller-driven steamship rode out the storm with close-reefed topsail and half-reefed foresail when I heard Captain Bird’s voice through the speaking tube asking me if I had a desire to see the ruins of London. Twenty minutes later we were hovering over the remains of the once so proud and now so desolate and unfortunate city.
The effects of the Americans’ air-torpedoes, and especially of their dynamite catapults with which they could reach into the heart of the city, were more than appalling. Entire large quarters lay not in ruins but in dust, which the night storm whirled into the air each time it blew over the Thames’s deathly empty surface. Captain Bird showed me the courtesy of allowing the Flying Fish to pause for several minutes over the burned-out city so I could convince myself of the ghastliness of the devastation, but when the vibration of the triply increased wingbeat became intolerable for me, I asked him to go on even though I could well understand the triumphant feelings with which he as an American looked down on his annihilated rival. Oh, in our days the expression “old England’s wooden walls” has lost its meaning!
A quarter-hour went by, during which we sank so low that it often appeared to the passengers’ great fright as though we would run into the rocky peaks with which Wales’ western coast is so rich. We raced over the water at a height of some five hundred feet above the proud three-masters that sailed below, most of them flying the American flag. But soon we would also see it wave over what had been formerly so mighty Albion’s land; for half wrapped in mists, rising out of the sea like an enormous, seaweed-overgrown whale, old Hibernia, now Fenianland, lay before us in the moonlight. The American Union flag flew from every fort, every harbor we passed. Fortification followed fortification on every halfway exposed point, the strains of the American freedom anthem rose up to us carried on the night wind, bayonets gleamed below, but the villages and farmers’ houses looked deserted. It will be a long time before Brother Jonathan can get Paddy back on his feet since John Bull completely cleaned him out before help could arrive from the New World.
Soon we heard a roaring in the far north. It was the surf breaking against the Hebrides’ rocky coast. From above, it looked like thin hands edged with billowing sleeves of foam reaching out. Captain Bird showed me the place where Fingal Cave had been. Now the waters had finished their work of destruction; only some black basalt columns rearing out of the foam marked its place. Meanwhile, we began to feel as though we were nearing the Atlantic’s enormous expanse. There was no more soft, warm air from the ground and the sea air now made itself felt in all its piercing freshness. Now and then we noticed slight vibrations in the Flying Fish’s hull, which showed that we were moving through agitated air masses. I remembered
the storm that had been reported to us by the telegraph station in Koge, and asked Captain Bird if he was afraid of it.
“Don’t know the meaning of the word,” he piped back through the speaking tube. “We fly faster than the storm!”
Reassured by this categorical statement, I started to close the skylight cover. As I did, I took one last look through it and saw that we had already climbed so high that there was nothing more to see, neither sea nor land. Huge moonlit clouds raced beneath our feet, first like shoals of gigantic silvery gleaming mackerel, then like jagged black mountains that the Moon’s light could not penetrate. Suddenly a sparkling, flaming flash shot out of one of those airy crags and lit up the sky around us so brightly that it almost outshone the lantern on board. Naturally, we didn’t hear any thunder, but to judge by the brilliance, the electric cloud-mountains had to have been fairly near, and you know how dangerous the discharges of these clouds can be, especially for a ship constructed entirely of aluminum.
A little frightened, particularly in regard to Miss Anna, I looked again down through the skylight and was astonished by how swiftly these colossuses sped in advance of the storm to the northwest. Then a single blast of the hurricane wind struck right in their midst, scattering them almost like a bursting fireworks display, and they whirled away until they disappeared in the distance like the fireworks’ many-colored shining stars. From the ship’s angle I could tell that we were steadily climbing, the air pressure was decreasing, and my aerometer already showed eighteen thousand feet above the surface of the ocean.
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Page 42