“And the Fire Drug?” said Miser Shen.
“He did indeed, and his achievements did not stop there,” said Master Li. “The great Chang Heng was a superb poet, a competent painter, an engineer and astronomer without equal, and the world's greatest student of the phenomenon of flight. He perfected the science of latitude and longitude, determined the value of pi, revolutionized the armillary sphere, and constructed kites that could carry men through the air for long distances. One day he happened to be sitting as we are, with his back against a tree, and something brushed against his face.”
Li Kao lifted his right hand and opened it, displaying a tiny object.
“A sycamore seed?” said Miser Shen.
“Precisely,” said Master Li. “Chang Heng had seen thousands of them, but never before had he thought to examine one closely. The more he studied it, the more convinced he became that he was gazing at one of the marvels of nature.”
Miser Shen and I stared fixedly at the seed. It was nothing but a tiny stem and a circle of fan-shaped blades.
“Observe,” said Master Li.
He blew gently into the palm of his hand. The fan-shaped blades began to revolve, faster and faster, and then the seed lifted straight up into the air. The breeze caught it and away it went, spinning into the sky, sailing over the treetops, dwindling to a tiny speck in the distance.
“Chang Heng was gazing at one of the most efficient flying machines in the world, and he immediately began to build a sycamore seed that could carry a man,” said Master Li. “The emperor graciously provided pilots from the ranks of criminals who had been sentenced to death, and one after another the wailing wretches were strapped into Chang Heng's flying machines and pushed off the tops of cliffs. One of them encountered a strong updraft and actually flew for several hundred feet, but the end result was the same. The blades could not whirl fast enough to compensate for the weight, and the pilots all crashed to their deaths. Do you know what Chang Heng did then?”
“We are as ignorant as apples,” sighed Miser Shen, speaking for both of us.
“The great Chang Heng mixed sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal, and invented the Fire Drug,” Master Li said. “We use it mostly for fireworks, but he had something else in mind. By adding resin, he managed to produce a compound that would burn steadily instead of exploding, and he packed it into long tubes of bamboo. He built a wicker carriage and attached it to a revolving pole. On top of the pole he placed fan-shaped blades, and at the bottom he added a wheel to which he attached his tubes of Fire Drug. The emperor and all the top officials gathered to watch what promised to be a spectacular execution, and the weeping convict was strapped to the seat in the carriage. Chang Heng lit the fuses. There was a spurt of flame, and then another and another, and a great cloud of black smoke obscured everything. When the smoke cleared, the astonished audience saw that the contraption had lifted straight up into the air, with the blades whirling furiously. A trail of smoke and flame stretched out behind as it flew through the air, and the screams of the pilot could faintly be heard as the thing streaked toward one of the palace towers. The emperor cheered and the audience applauded madly as it hit the tower and exploded with a great roar, and it was said that pieces of pilot rained down for a week, although that may be a slight exaggeration. The great Chang Heng locked himself in his workroom, and one month later he had completed the final design of the most marvelous of all his inventions: the incredible Bamboo Dragonfly.”
Li Kao smiled happily. “The plans for which I have seen in the Forest of Culture Academy in Hanlin,” he said.
There was a moment of silence.
“You can't possibly mean…” Miser Shen whispered.
“Right above us is a circle of palm branches that are light, strong, and fan-shaped,” said Master Li.
“Surely you don't intend to…” I said weakly.
“Bamboo is all around us, and so is resin. The lava is full of sulphur. There are natural deposits of saltpeter all over China, and probably on this very island, and if a former peasant like Miser Shen can't make a little charcoal, I will be very surprised indeed.”
“But it would be suicide!” I exclaimed.
“Insanity!” cried Miser Shen.
“We will have no hope of survival at all,” Master Li agreed. “Ox, you get the palm branches and resin and bamboo. The charcoal will be Miser Shen's department, and I will search for saltpeter and extract the sulphur from the lava. I suggest that we hurry, because with every passing moment I grow closer to expiring from old age.”
For a week a series of explosions shook the little island, followed by the furious screams of Li Kao. His beard was singed and blackened and his eyebrows were nearly scorched off. So many fires had started in his clothes that he looked as though he had been attacked by a million starving moths, but finally he found the right formula and his tubes of Fire Drug began to behave. Miser Shen and I were rather proud of our handiwork. The basket was woven from reeds, and quite comfortable to sit in, and the palm-leaf blades revolved very nicely around the bamboo pole. The bamboo wheel to which the tubes were attached was balanced carefully, and although we had no steering mechanism, we hoped to be able to control our flight by shifting our weight.
“Of course this is madness,” I said as I climbed into the basket.
“Moronic,” said Miser Shen as he climbed in beside me.
“We are totally deranged,” Li Kao agreed as he lit the fuses.
He hopped into the basket, and I covered my eyes and waited for death. The basket shuddered as the tubes of Fire Drug began to spurt flames. The wheel started to revolve, and the blades began to whirl round and round. I peeked through my fingers and peered through a cloud of black smoke and saw that the grass beneath us was bending beneath a blast of wind.
“We are rising!” I yelled.
“We are falling!” howled Miser Shen.
Both of us were right. We had suddenly lifted into the air, and now we were dropping back down. Unfortunately we had also moved fifty feet to the left, and we were dropping straight toward bubbling lava.
“Lean back!” Master Li yelled.
We shifted our weight and the Bamboo Dragonfly suddenly straightened out and began to skim just above the fiery surface toward the other side of the moat, and we stared with horrified eyes at the prints of immense fingers that were eagerly pawing the salt.
The Hand That No One Sees almost got us. A slashing invisible finger ripped off one of the palm-leaf blades, which proved to be a blessing because we had apparently used one too many. As soon as it was gone our flying machine lifted into the air and began to perform very nicely indeed, except that it was flying around in circles. Around and around it flew, moving slowly across the ruins of the city, while great lunging marks of furious fingers kicked up clouds of salt beneath us.
“That horrible thing is crawling up on top of the ruins of the palace!” Miser Shen yelled. “If it gets on top of the wall and we keep circling like this we'll run right into it!”
He was right, but nothing could persuade the Bamboo Dragonfly to change course. Flames and black smoke spurted out behind us, and with one more circle we would be in the clutches of the Hand from Hell.
“Take off your tunics!” Master Li yelled. “Try using them as rudders!”
We ripped off our tunics and spread them behind us to catch the wind, and by some miracle it worked. Just as we reached the wall we suddenly veered to the left, and the Hand must have snatched at us because the slabs on top of the wall began to teeter precariously. Then the wall fell apart, and stones tumbled down into the lake of lava, and then there was an enormous splash that sent fiery molten rock a hundred feet into the air.
The monster slowly rose to the surface. What had been invisible was now covered with black lava, and we gazed in terror at an enormous hairy hand, perhaps sixty feet long. The palm was up, and the fingers were tightly clenched, and suddenly it jerked convulsively and the fingers opened. They weren't fingers at all, but the legs of a giant spider, and the heel and palm was a loathsome bloated sac! A cluster of evil eyes glared up at us, and a hideous round mouth opened and displayed a circle of gigantic pointed teeth, and then lava poured into the mouth and the Hand That No One Sees sank forever beneath the fiery surface of the lake.
The Bamboo Dragonfly flew steadily on, and the tragic shattered city faded behind us. We sat in shaken silence, and finally Li Kao cleared his throat.
“I suspect that it was simply an oversized relative of the common trapdoor spider,” he said thoughtfully.
