Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Part 29

"It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and They were only too willing to experiment on me. I thought it would be a relief, but it wasn't. Hand, heart, eyes; the things they took, that I gave up readily. Your note says you'd keep them, but I see you didn't quite manage it."

The skin of his fingers resembled the parchment of the scroll in many ways. He gently rolled the message back into its original shape and cradled it in his palm, where the gentle breeze rocked it to and fro by several millimeters.

"There are two entries in my frontal cores that state that I must not replace my heart or hands or eyes. I have sometimes wondered why I'd committed them to memory."

Her own eyes were polished ivory inlays set with carefully camouflaged lenses. Some mad artist had gone to the trouble of painting filament veins in the corners, each the size of the hair on a honeybee's leg. He smiled at her again momentarily (Matchstick girl on the streets of Oslo, December, 1889).

"I have dreamed, madam. The laboratories took so much of me, but I have experienced dreams every night, regardless of my augmentations. In some, a woman such as yourself laughs as snow falls all around us. With all that has happened today, I do believe that you and I loved once. If my banks are to be believed, I most likely loved you without reservation. Such an odd existence this is."

He reached forward, slowly, carefully, and offered her his hand. Whoever had done the work on her replacement surface had been a brilliant person; her new fingers were warm to the touch and soft as fine silk. Only their strong, calculated grip belied the artifice inherent.

"We are about to be intercepted," he said, as a high-pitched tintinnabulation increased in volume. "They say that collection is a painless process. However, should you desire, I will fight them alongside you...?"

He left the question hanging in the air.

She held his hand in hers, feeling the pseudo-pulse of Fluid 7A MagneSangue through his arterial corridors. The noise was getting louder now; wind rocked the vintage automobile and sought its way through every crevice in gla.s.s and steel.

"How long do we have?" he asked.

"A minute. Maybe less." She didn't know what she expected: a glimmer of fear, a surge of adrenaline, but he only blinked as processors shifted, calculated...

Counted down.

There wasn't enough of him left to feel anything; not fear, not remorse. Even the offer to stand and fight was born out of ages-old algorithms designed to simulate fight-or-flight responses. They did have to protect themselves, their doc.u.mentation, until the appropriate representative arrived to collect. The offer was a hollow one, an echo of shades past, of times when they'd stood back-to-back, swords in hand and pistols drawn. Perhaps somewhere, buried deep inside him, a blanked cylinder retained enough information to recall the time they'd fought their way out of the Citadella atop Gellert Hill.

Hard to forget Budapest, even without the cannon fire aimed our direction and a hundred foot-soldiers d.o.g.g.i.ng us to the border.

They were both different people then.

Corentine brought his hand to her cheek, wishing desperately that it smelled of gunpowder, cologne, blood, sweat, s.h.i.t, anything. But there were only thin traces of the alloys that comprised his entire being.

The portal was fully open now. Less than twenty seconds remained.

Her words spoke themselves. "Do you still love me?"

They both heard the last gla.s.s bead fall, pinging in his chest as he answered, "Yes."

Sound category: A child's marble dancing down the hot pavement, Brooklyn, Summer, 1909.

Corentine left Interrogation Room #14 with the barest of sighs. An arduous process, trying to explain the destruction of her pocket watch, first to her immediate supervisors and then the Review Board. Harder still to explain the total destruction of #1-17B's bra.s.s cylinders. One hundred fifty years of doc.u.mentation lost. Such a thing had not happened in the entire history of the Company.

A freak accident, of course. Memory modules had never before suffered such an explosion, forceful enough to destroy a Retriever's fingers. A pristine track record and exemplary conduct in a thousand improbably difficult situations had also bought her quite a lot of benefit of the doubt.

-bra.s.s cylinders comprised of older alloys and therefore vulnerable during the Shift.

Possible sabotage implanted by #1-17b.

The Retriever did her best to preserve the materials and suffered the loss of her hands.

Please fill out Requisitions Order 57-TP. The cost of a replacement timepiece will be docked from your wages.

Recommendation: 30 days leave with pay and secondary-level review after release from the Medical Center.

The attachment points for her replacement hands were nearly healed, but the scar on her chest would take longer. Corentine's new heart skipped a beat, unaccustomed as yet to its new surroundings. Perhaps a step backwards into sloppy humanity, but it would have been a waste to leave it there.

The last message, the one he couldn't read, had spewed forth from his frontal lobe as Doctor Gillenheimer's Weighted Miniature Artificial Morality Tabulator, Mark III shut him down for exceeding acceptable limits for falsehoods: "I kept my heart, because it was not mine to give away. It's always belonged to you."

Such a funny word, "always."

I'll always count off the seconds until we meet in the next world, my love. Corentine nodded, then adjusted the ribbon-bow in her hair, the one that reminded everyone who met her of a blood-flower in full bloom.

Flying Fish "Prometheus" (A Fantasy of the Future).

Vilhelm Bergse.

VILHELM BERGSE (1835-1911) was a Danish author, zoologist, and numismatist. In 1862, he went to Messina in Italy to study the fauna of the Mediterranean. He made observations of swordfish parasites and after his return to Denmark published a monograph about them. As a result of his continuous use of a microscope, he contracted a serious eye infection and went temporarily blind, and was forced to give up his career as a naturalist. Bergsoe then devoted himself to writing both fiction and nonfiction, mostly by means of dictation. As for the story, "Flying Fish Prometheus" was apparently inspired when Bergsoe was invited to attend the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l in 1869 much the same way his hero in the story was invited to that of the Panama Ca.n.a.l in 1969. Due to illness, he was unable to make the journey, but he did have a look at the ship's tiny cabins and his imagination provided the rest. "Prometheus" was his only venture into Jules Verne-style science fiction, and it was originally published in a Danish newspaper in 1870. Although the story has been reprinted a number of times since, from 1876 to almost the present, it has remained little-known outside Denmark. As far as anyone can tell, it has never been translated into English until now.

TANANARIVA, 19 NOVEMBER 1969.

MY DEAR OLD friend, You must be a little surprised to receive a letter from Madagascar, written in the tropical heat on Bishop King's shady veranda-but that's the way things change in this world now! In our day, one must not be surprised any more. If you are, it just shows that you aren't keeping up with the times.

Do you recall our last meeting in Frederiksberg Park, after it had been converted to those wonderful Persian gardens? I remember it as though it were yesterday, that incomparable evening when we sat on the palace pavilion's flat roof and enjoyed our nicotine-cigarettes to the sounds of Avanti's Steam Orchestra. I can clearly see the old philistine who was thrown out by the Amazon singers because he dared pollute the air with his cigar, an old-fashioned Portorico, and I can still taste the beer, that foaming San Francisco you were so liberal as to treat me.

Much has changed since that time, but then it was an entire year ago. You are now sitting in Sukkertoppen as Managing Director of the Greenland silver mines, and I have finally won out over the resistance to my underwater tunnel across the strait between Copenhagen with Malmo mounted by the scientific society and the old fogies from the extremely antiquated polytechnic school.

In April, we had reached the island of Saltholm and began to go down into its limestone. With the help of Wooley's Ultramarine Dynamite, we were boring at a rate of a hundred meters per day so that after two weeks we had already gone well past the island's old forts. Those precious old remnants from a vanished era had been especially dear to the hearts of the old gentlemen, and there was an actual storm raised in The Daily Locomotive and The Kinetic News-Pump, which tend to retail all kinds of nonsense. In particular, they harbored the childish fear that the fort under which the tunnel had been dug would be shaken down by the sixth through train pa.s.sing daily between Copenhagen and Malmo. Even if that happened, it still wouldn't mean anything since the forts have long been obsolete. One need only remember that a diamond-hard Arrow Projectile, fired with a small charge of nitroglycerin from one of Billingates' Revolver-Cannons, has penetrated granite walls twenty feet thick, and a single grenade-bomb filled with common dynamite would blow those forts' walls apart like eggsh.e.l.ls. A few articles in The Truth-Sunbeam, in which I pointedly made this clear, were enough to put an end to all the alarm.

As I have learned, the Sailors' Relief Fund, whose fortunes had increased so much during the Anglo-American War, is now in the process of buying the two forts. The honest old sea-dogs want to build a rest home in the midst of their own element, and the government will get back one of the millions it sank into the forts. As far as the undermined fort is concerned, it has of course found a use as well. The leading b.u.t.ter and fat products company has acquired a concession to build a steam b.u.t.ter-churning operation there, and it will pay the tunnel company half a percent of its profits in return for the latter's obligation to maintain the advantageous vibration.

I had gotten thus far in my efforts when I received a cable telegram from my old friend, the mining-explosives expert Joseph Spring in New Orleans, which completely confirmed the long-standing reports of a wonderful discovery that he had made. Major Spring, who, as you know, is the living spirit of the North American Explosion Society, has devoted all of his time since the war to producing an explosive with effects even greater than that of Wooley's Ultramarine Dynamite, and he had at last succeeded.

A promise that I have given him, and which I must consider binding until further notice, forbids me to go into more detail about this substance's composition. I can only disclose that its effects are so destructive that it is not possible, even microscopically, to show what became of the atoms of a twenty-cubic-meter granite block. The same goes for those of two pyrotechnicians who perished during the experiment, disappearing so completely that the Great Western Life Insurance Company considers them to be still alive and as a consequence refuses to pay the respective widows their policies. Since, as is also the case with Ultramarine Dynamite, the force of the explosion only applies in a downwards direction, it is possible that the atoms of both the granite block and the unfortunate victims have been driven so deep into the Earth's crust that no one will ever be able to get them out again.

However that may be, this new explosive has given Spring a truly inspired idea. That is, he has calculated that if detonated all at once, a two million hundredweight of this new explosive would strike the Earth such a blow that it would be driven out of its. .h.i.therto regular course and into a new solar system. Unfortunately, the cost of the new material is still too high to consider producing it in such large quant.i.ties, and the charming experiment of wandering from solar system to solar system by means of explosive thrusts must be postponed until the expense of overhead can be reduced.

But soon Spring saw another use for his remarkable explosive, which not without reason he has named Keraun.o.bolite, or "Lightningite." Unlike with us, an invention never lies fallow in North America, and eight days before it was made public, a large corporation was already formed in New Orleans for steam excavation and explosive boring with a potential capital of 200 million dollars. The project was to dig through the Isthmus of Panama in a period of eight months to a depth of two hundred feet so the American Empire's largest Monitors and Fort-Destroyers could pa.s.s through. All the earlier plans that had suffered an unfortunate delay due to the conquest of South America and England's humiliation were sc.r.a.pped, and instead of Green's proposed route, which would make the ca.n.a.l wind along the San Juan River and through Lake Nicaragua, Spring proposed one that perfectly fit his energetic character. During the stormy debate at the meeting held in New Orleans, he seized the map that had been hung up for orientation, and used his horsewhip to tear a gash through it that cut the Isthmus from Darien to the great ocean.

"This is how the ca.n.a.l will go!" he exclaimed in his stentorian voice, and those forceful words spread like wildfire through the ma.s.ses and silenced every objection. Work on what was jokingly called the "Horsewhip Ca.n.a.l" began as soon as the next day, and the results that Spring obtained have been no less than magnificent.

It occurs to me that it is now just a hundred years since the de Lesseps Ca.n.a.l was opened at Suez, and I remember reading in some old newspapers at the public library about the fuss made over that insignificant trifle. As I recall, de Lesseps spent sixteen years on an enterprise on which Sesostris, Necho, and the Ptolemies had done a great deal of preliminary work, and that in a land where there are no ma.s.ses of solid rock. Spring had now been exactly eight months on his ca.n.a.l, which was significantly shorter but on the other hand required breaking through some not inconsiderable mountains. Of course, the technical means had improved enormously since de Lesseps' time, but Spring's ca.n.a.l was still no walk in the park. The low, swampy coastland at the bend by Darien was dug out in two months by the usual centripetal steam excavator. The highlands, on the other hand, were literally torn apart for a stretch of sixteen English miles by the Keraun.o.bolite, which was laid in a single strip across the mountains and then detonated. The first attempt resulted in a trench three feet deep and sixteen feet wide. After eight more detonations, the work was so far advanced that the steam excavator could do the rest. It brought to life the old legend of Thor, who smashed mountains with his hammer Mjlnir-but this Mjlnir had cost the company more than 100 million dollars.

On the 15th of November, I received another cablegram from my American friend, informing me that the ca.n.a.l would be opened on the 20th in the presence of the leading European engineers, geologists, and naturalists, and so he was inviting me. Since I had a special connection to the great cable system on the tunnel company's account and had installed it in my house, I immediately replied that I would come with the first regular flying mail ship that left from Hamburg; but it was doubtful whether I would reach the Isthmus in time because of autumn storms and the short amount of time I had been given.

That very same evening, I received a telepistle in which he stated that none of the usual flying mail ships could reach the Ca.n.a.l in the allotted time, and that he would not have invited me had he not had a conference with the American Ministry of Flight and as a result was now so fortunate as to be able to place a special and quite splendid means of transportation at my disposal. Three weeks before, the American government had launched the newly constructed Flying Fish Prometheus, which had been much discussed in our newspapers, on its first around-the-world journey. Thus I had an excellent opportunity not just to reach my desired destination safely and quickly, but also to acquaint myself with a design originated by that aeronautic genius, Professor Swallow of Alabama. It far excelled the Albatross ships built in England, to say nothing of the Air-Castles we use but which are completely obsolete. The speed of the latter is certainly very considerable but they have always been characterized by highly irregular flight.

At the same time I received this dispatch, our Atmosphere Ministry was informed that the Flying Fish Prometheus, commanded by Captain Bird, had touched down in the Sea of Azov on the 14th. It would fly on to Copenhagen as early as the 16th, or perhaps Koge Bay instead if it turned out that the seabed at the Kallebod beach was not deep enough for it to take off again.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to take very much along on an aerial journey, and I therefore provided myself not with gold but just with American currency, which was especially appropriate since its value had lately shown a p.r.o.nounced tendency to rise. Outfitted with this and an aerometer, a spygla.s.s, and a notebook in my breast pocket, I steamed away by train that same evening to Koge Bay. According to expert opinion, that would be the body of water where the Prometheus would most likely have to touch down due to its distinctive method of taking flight.

When one is setting out on an aerial journey to the Isthmus of Panama, a trip by train to Koge is of no great significance. Still, it gave me pause when the signal whistle blew and the express train began to move. This was the first time that I would travel across the Atlantic Ocean by air, and not only that but in a machine whose means of locomotion was quite unusual. I didn't feel any fear-my previous journeys by air to Paris and London had proceeded happily-but I am not ashamed to admit that at the last moment, mostly for my family's sake, I insured my life as well as the more essential of my limbs with the Great Transatlantic Life and Limb Insurance Company.

At nine o'clock in the evening I reached Koge, which had just been electrically illuminated for the first time-an arc lamp at the end of each street. After a light supper in the hotel, I visited the new cemetery for Copenhagen and environs, where the Chief Cremator, Hr. Dodenkopf, was so kind as to show me around personally, and where I inspected the new apparatus for the rapid combustion of corpses in compressed oxygen.

Nonetheless, I shall not lose myself in digressions about a procedure that unfortunately has been all too long in coming. Instead, I shall proceed immediately to a description of my journey, which will perhaps interest you, since being so isolated where you are, you have not had the opportunity to keep track of the inventions that in the last ten years have followed one after another in rapid succession, and which have culminated in the Prometheus, one of the most ingenious and well-designed machines anyone has ever seen.

As you know, people had been extremely occupied throughout the 19th Century with solving the problem of a solid body's controlled movement through the air. I can so easily put myself in these men's thought patterns. It was inevitable, once the steam engine and the telegraph had been invented, that there would be some fools or other who were especially irritated by being forced to crawl on the ground at the bottom of the air ocean while they observed bats, birds, and even the most hideous insects cheerfully soar above it. But the 19th Century was stuck fast in an error from which we in the 20th have fortunately managed to free ourselves.

That is, men persisted in building machines following the inapplicable principle of balloons, in that they had not properly distinguished between ascent and the far more difficult art of moving independently through the aerial sea. It was actually one of our own countrymen who first led thinking along the correct path in the present century when he referred to birds as the best flying machines the earthly globe possessed. His inventions, however, could take off only from dedicated stations where their safe landings were facilitated by very expensive and time-consuming apparatus. All of the Aerial-Railway platforms, Air-Castle towers, and Flying-Ship slipways that have been built in such great numbers around the world are now unnecessary and in a few years will lie in ruins, for the American Professor Swallow must now be considered to have completely solved the problem.

While we here in Europe have always had the bird principle in mind, basing on it our Falcon Brigs, Albatross Schooners, and Stork Frigates, this outstanding scientist on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean had his eye on an entirely different model. Unfortunately, it may be found in Europe only in the Mediterranean region, where the surrounding countries remain sunken in an even deeper lethargy than they were a hundred years ago. Professor Swallow's inspiration lay in the flying fish, and he was the first, in the literal meaning of the word, to fish it up from the great sea of unconsciousness. He studied the flying fish in its two opposing elements, the sea and the air, and spent his youth's first period of bloom alone in his yacht, rocked by the Atlantic Ocean's waves and engrossed in drawings and designs that made all of America believe he was busying himself with advanced plans for establishing a cod-liver oil factory on the east coast of Newfoundland.

But it was the flying fish that was the object of his restless yearnings and aspirations. In the bright moonlit nights he observed how this remarkable fish moved in the water, how it positioned its fins when it readied itself for flight, and how it flashed through the air faster than an arrow with the help of its powerful pectoral fins, with such strength that sailors on the heaviest frigates caught them in canvas traps that they placed on high mast platforms. When he finally understood how this marvelous animal behaves in plunging down into the sea without smashing itself on the surface and without breaking either its head or its wings, he saw what form his invention should take, and with the last remnants of his colossal fortune he built the "Flying Fish," which now bears its name as a second Prometheus from place to place across the far reaches of the globe.

The principle is, as I mentioned, entirely the same as that of the fish, except that he has borrowed something of the octopus's means of locomotion as well. The ship floats on the water as lightly as a swan, sinks to a certain depth by taking in water and forcing out air, then shoots upwards at an angle by abruptly expelling the water, the last of which is discharged when it reaches the surface. The expelled ma.s.ses of water give it such momentum that the ship is propelled 200 feet into the air. Here, the wing-fin system is set into motion, the propeller tail is retracted, the steering tail is extended, and it speeds through the air ocean at a rate of 150 English miles per hour until it comes upon a body of water deep enough that it will not be smashed to pieces on the bottom when it descends. The Flying Fish can thus take off from any harbor city where the water reaches at least the minimum depth. There is no need for any stations with their specialized equipment and personnel-in short, it rightfully bears its proud name "Flying Fish Prometheus."

I did not sleep very much that night, partly because the airbeds in Koge are so poorly filled, partly because I felt a little tension about what lay ahead of me. Mainly I couldn't get Spring's explosive out of my head. I soon calculated how much work we would have saved on my Scandinavian tunnel and how much the company could have given him per cubic inch, then I went through all latest formulae for explosive gases, and at length I fell into an uneasy slumber in which I dreamed I was manufacturing more than enough Keraun.o.bolite to blow all of Germany asunder. Somewhat dizzy in the head, I awoke at five o'clock and had a proper Greenland s...o...b..th in order to thoroughly tone up my nervous system and invigorate my muscles. Then, armed with my spygla.s.s, I went up in the Nykirk's tower to be the first to greet Captain Bird when he arrived.

My eagerness had gotten me up all too early, however. The November fog lay cold and gray over the town like a monstrous spider's web in which all thought and motion were still ensnared. Only the tower watchman, a funny old fellow, was awake. I had a plain-talk conversation with him, but when in my enthusiasm I began to explain the Flying Fish, he said: "Yes, I can understand that one can fly in the air, because I have seen it. I can also understand that one can sail on the water because I have seen that, too. But what the Professor here is telling me, why, bless me, that is sheer nonsense."

"But it is indeed the truth, I a.s.sure you," I replied.

"Well, then, if I'm getting it right, it's neither fish nor fowl, this machine."

"Correct," I answered. "It's a combination of both."

"No, that could never be true," he said, "although I did read something about it yesterday. But does the Professor know what it is?"

"No, what is it?"

"It is, may the Devil take me, a lie!" he replied with all the strength of conviction, and started to go.

I held him back to give him a further explanation, but suddenly the telegraph-indicator pointed to Severe Northwest Storm, Station Sukkertoppen. The watchman went inside to telegraph Copenhagen and so our conversation was broken off. I am relating this little incident to you to show you the sluggish minds and the suspicion towards all new inventions that still stir within the lower levels of the people in our land. This man goes calmly in to report at lightning speed a storm that was only just now starting into motion from your dear old icebergs, and he still didn't believe in the Flying Fish. Well, the good people of Koge have always been a little behind the times; they were burning witches there not too many centuries ago, after all.

Towards seven, the fog lifted, the Sun was breaking through, and down on the street life and movement were beginning to stir, which showed that the Flying Fish had set the more enlightened portion of Koge Town's population into motion. Prosperous merchants on bicycles, rich landowners on quite smart steam horses, and the town's youth in California jumping boots moved with lively bustle through the streets and made their way towards the harbor. There, the submersible vessel Neptune already had its steam up in the event that the Flying Fish should meet with an accident.

Jumping boots have hardly become a universal means of transportation. At least here they are still rather new, although they give quite extraordinary results and their popularity is constantly increasing. A little practice is required to use them, of course, but once one has mastered them, they become as good as indispensable. True, it cannot be denied that the movement is somewhat gra.s.shopperlike and not entirely free of a certain comic touch, such as when people leap over each other's heads. I have incidentally seen them used on the boulevards of Paris with all the grace and elegance that are so characteristic of Parisian ladies, especially in falling down. Here in Koge, however, I saw only a few ladies, and they were starting out more on their heads than on their legs. When I caught sight of two rather stout women who leaped out over the wharf in their eagerness to reach the harbor, and shortly thereafter hopped their way homewards dripping wet and followed by the boys' cheers and laughter...well, of course I do not deny that I was annoyed on account of these female citizens of my country and began to doubt how well the devices were suited for cool and phlegmatic Scandinavians.

At about that time, a shot was fired from the harbor fort's turret, a definite sign that the Prometheus was in flight. I turned my spygla.s.s to the north, but at first saw nothing other than the sea and some scarlet cloud ma.s.ses shining on the horizon. From this suddenly burst a single, silver-gleaming point that rapidly grew in size although I was still unable to discern its form or outline. It approached at a furious speed, sparkling and gleaming in the morning sun's rays, and soon its wings became visible as a pair of thin black strips while some whitish vapor streamed behind it. In short, there was no doubt that it was the long-awaited Prometheus flying towards us.

Now it had been observed from the town as well. All faces were turned upwards, hearty cries of "Hurrah!" were heard, all the cannons of the fort gave a salute, and at the same time the line of townspeople in front of the guardhouse broke out in the well-known hymn, "Hail to Thee, Thou Eagle of the Air" (which you may remember from your schooldays in its old version as "Hail to Thee, Thou High North").

Meanwhile, I had exchanged my spygla.s.s for my watch. Just three minutes had pa.s.sed since I had first spotted it as a point-now I heard the mighty roar of its beating wings, not unlike a storm-tossed sea breaking against a rocky coast, and at the same time I saw the Prometheus at an alt.i.tude of about eight hundred feet as a shining silver, sheer-polished object in the shape of a fish with coal-black, bat-like wings and a tail whose quickly turning movement prevented any closer examination. Suddenly it stopped in the air, seemingly directly over the town. The wings moved, violently trembling, not unlike the flies that we see in summer standing almost still over a fixed location. Then the tail bent upwards; the now motionless wings a.s.sumed a slanted position relative to the ship's hull, and as the crowds on the street and by the harbor shrieked deafeningly, it shot downwards like an arrow with constantly increasing speed. It was a terrible moment! Even I, who knew with what skill Captain Bird guided his ship, truly believed that the Prometheus would smash into the ground, for from my vantage point it looked as though the Flying Fish was plummeting towards the city hall's spire.

But soon I became aware of that optical illusion. Like an enormous shooting star it plunged towards the outer harbor, and the wings closed up and slid into the cavities along the hull allotted for them. Then I heard a tremendous splash, a pillar of foam and water rose so forcefully into the air that even the ships in the harbor were flooded, and the boats needed all their power to keep from capsizing. Following that frightful moment, there was only the silence of the tomb. There was not a face, not a regard, that was not directed out over the sea-it was as though everyone was afraid even to draw a breath before the ship came into view. Then a new, mighty wave rose further out; it parted and from its interior, like a pearl from an oyster, the Prometheus emerged in all its shining, silvery glory. Like the spout from an enormous whale, a white column of steam rose vertically into the air from the Flying Fish's head. A second later the steam horn's sound reached my ears, and at that very instant a cheer broke out that seemed to go on forever. Cries of hurrah from the docks, new salutes from the fort, waving flags and scarves-the enthusiasm was, for Koge, quite extraordinary.

During all this vociferous excitement, I saw a wide gap appear in the ship's bow. It most nearly resembled a fish opening its gill slit. From it shot a long, black snake that then rested on the water, swelling until it finally proved to be the Flying Fish's longboat being inflated by the steam engine. Shortly thereafter, a hatch opened near something that in position and shape resembled a fish's dorsal fin, and resplendent in sky-blue velvet uniforms with star-studded scarves, Captain Bird and the ship's other officers stepped out on the Flying Fish's back, where they were the object of another round of the crowd's enthusiastic applause. Soon the air-boat was ready, its propeller was set to spinning, and it sped towards the docks, bearing Captain Bird and his crew while the new American flag with its shining sun and 69 stars proudly flew over its wake.

I shall pa.s.s over the dinner that the city council president and Koge's leading citizens gave at the city hall. Such affairs with their speeches are all alike. Captain Bird was an exception, however. He replied to a long and enthusiastic address by the city council president with only these words: "Upwards and ever onwards!" At that we all broke our gla.s.ses in deep silence in his honor.

One can see at once from Captain Bird that he is a true air-man. There is something in his profile and his regard that is reminiscent of an albatross, and I don't think the entire fellow weighs more than eighty pounds. The officers and crew are of the same superior breed-short, thin, beardless, with wondrously clear and far-seeing eyes, almost piping voices, and that fine, pale skin color that is characteristic of people who spend more than half their lives in enclosed machines.

After the dinner, Captain Bird was kind enough to invite the entire company on board the Prometheus. Since I think you will be curious to hear about its construction, I shall give you a detailed description while I pa.s.s over the many stupid or meaningless interjections and questions that the good citizens of Koge made to Captain Bird, and which frequently brought both him and me to hearty laughter.

When it floats on the water, the Flying Fish most nearly resembles a swordfish lying on the surface. The entire ship's outer covering consists of a four-inch-thick aluminum hull in which a high porosity has been created by letting overheated steam flow through the metal during its molten state, resulting in a correspondingly light weight. The entire surface is then ground and polished to mirror smoothness, with the result that the sun's rays are reflected as though from polished silver and the pa.s.sengers and crew within do not suffer from the sun's heat.

The wings, which are somewhat more than fifty feet long, are made of steel spars that are mounted on cross-ribs and overlap one another to give them more resistance to the air on the downstroke. During the upstroke, the wings are positioned at an angle so they slice the air cleanly with the sharp edge. They are covered with the feather-felt invented by the engineer Kolibri and saturated in an India rubber solution, and in form resemble a flying fish's pectoral fins. As with the fish, they can be folded along the ship's length like a fan, and are completely withdrawn into slots along the sides so they offer no resistance when diving.

By themselves, these black wings stand in amazingly stark contrast to the ship's silvery surface, but what makes the Flying Fish look most different from other flying vessels is its beak, or rather, its tusk, at the end of the head. This is a strong, pointed iron shaft about eighteen feet long, shaped like the swordfish's sword, and intended partly to cut through the air during flight, and as it is mounted on steel springs, partly to absorb the shock should the Flying Fish be so unfortunate as to ram into the seabed in its descent. The wings will swing out during any impact, contributing to braking the forward momentum by pressing the entire wing surface against the water.

In back of the beak, one sees on the Flying Fish's head nine small holes that resemble the gill slits on a lamprey. From these the machine exudes its superfluous oil, which contributes to keeping the wing joints lubricated as well as to greasing the outer surface of the ship so that both the hull and the wings slide more easily through the water when diving. Along the back of the ship runs a narrow crest that at first glance bears a great resemblance to a dorsal fin. This is the large parachute that when folded helps maintain the ship's balance in the air and can be opened when extraordinary circ.u.mstances demand it. Even if the wings are broken, it will keep the machine floating until it reaches the ground.

The interior is also different in so many respects from the usual aerial vehicles that I will not refrain from giving you a description of them, although most of it will already be familiar to you. Like the Hexalators, the Flying Fish is constructed with three decks: An upper deck that houses the lighter machinery, such as the solar warmth apparatus, the hydrogen generator, the hydrogen collector, and the aero-hydraulic containers; A middle deck that houses the flying machinery as well as the officers' cabins; And finally the lowest deck, especially comfortable in its furnishings, intended for pa.s.sengers as well as cargo packages that must not weigh more than ten pounds apiece.

As on other air-ships, the crew is quartered in the middle-deck room in the tail. Here is also located the electrical machinery that serves for steering, lighting, and telegraphic controls on board. The pa.s.sengers' cabins are indeed quite small but strikingly ingenious and tastefully outfitted: an airbed, a matching air canopy, and the usual parachute hanging from the ceiling are the only-but more than sufficient-furniture. The floor is made entirely of Crystalline, a recently invented synthetic substance that is both lightweight and transparent, so that during the flight one can enjoy unhindered views of the earth through several skylights built into the floor. During ascents and descents these are of course hermetically sealed, but the darkness of the night that would reign on the ship in these conditions is completely dispelled by the electric lantern installed in the ship's stern. This lantern is an outright marvel; although barely larger than a clenched fist, it gives off such a blinding light that it would damage the vision were the glare not moderated by blue and rose-colored gla.s.s plates that can be inserted according to taste in the cabin doors' light openings.

What most attracts the viewer's attention and strikes him as something new are the two aero-hydraulic containers that stretch like enormous sacks along the ship's uppermost deck. These containers rank among those inventions with which the human spirit has celebrated its greatest triumphs. They greatly resemble a bird's elongated lungs, or even better, a fish's air bladder, and are made of Ward's Synthetic Muscle Subst.i.tute. When diving into the sea with all vents open, they draw in water that fills their entire spongy and porous interior tissue; then, at the precise moment when the Flying Fish changes its downward angle of motion to an upwards one, a strong electric current from the motor contracts the containers so powerfully that the water is abruptly forced out, lifting the ship into the air.

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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 pa.s.sengers 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 sh.o.r.e leave, and, on its second trip, all the pa.s.sengers, of whom no fewer than thirteen were reporters gathered from the world's most varied regions. I scrutinized them closely as they pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sengers 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 sh.o.r.e.

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 b.u.mp, the sign that the ship's bottom had touched the seabed. Some beads of moisture, driven by the enormous pressure of the ma.s.s of water above, oozed through the all but hermetically sealed joints in the aluminum plates, and the metal sighed as though the ship was 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 ma.s.s 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.