Magdalena argued a bit more, but the decision was out of her hands. The Monster took off from Grantville International Airport at dawn three days later. On board were Magdalena van de Passe, Vrijheer Abros Thys van Bradt and three other major stockholders in TransEuropean Airlines.
Magdalena looked over at the copilot of the week. Most flights had one experienced pilot and one less experienced pilot. The idea was that by the time the new planes were ready they would have pilots for them. “You want to take a sighting, Karl?” They had just reached their cruising altitude so it was practice time.
“Sure.” Karl bent over the periscopelike device and started fiddling with knobs as Magdalena held the plane straight and level. The knobs adjusted a couple of mirrors to align two images collected from almost ten feet apart on the front belly of the plane. When he got the best view, he looked at the dial on the knob and read off a number, which Magdalena wrote down. Some calculations with a slide rule would give them their height above ground. Those calculations would be done in a minute or so, after Karl took some more observations. He flipped a handle and looked in to the eyepiece again. This time he was looking for a landmark out in front of the plane. Anything recognizable would do; a tree, a barn, a really big rock. In this case he found a barn and called out “mark” as he clicked on a stop watch. He flipped another lever so that he was now looking straight down instead down and ahead at a forty-five degree angle, and waited for the landmark to reappear. How long it took for the landmark to show up again and how much it had shifted to the left or right would tell them, with more calculations, their true ground speed and how much drift they were experiencing from crosswinds.
“Mark!” Karl clicked the stopwatch again, then got out the special purpose slide rule. Magdalena looked over his shoulder as he did the calculations.
“First check at 8:04 AM.” Magdalena said. “What do you get for H over G? Remember, if we miss a major check point, you’re the one that’s going to have to get out and ask directions.”
Karl looked at her like she was crazy.
“We land first,” Magdalena reassured him. “But it’s happened more than once. In fact, it’s procedure if probable location permits and you’re more than half an hour past a projected major check point without finding it. So what do you get for H over G.”
After another minute with the slide rule, he gave her the answer.
“Okay. The angle is forty-five degrees so the leg that’s on the ground is the same length assuming that the ground is flat as a pancake which it never is. So, what’s our ground speed and drift?”
Magdalena watched as he set the slide rule, moved the slider, and got the numbers.
“Indicated airspeed is sixty-nine and compass heading is two eight three. So calculate the wind speed and direction, and give me our true heading.” After he’d done that she continued, “Now we know what our speed and direction were a few minutes ago. We can guess that it’s still close to that and make a guess about where we would end up if we continued on this course and the wind didn’t change.” Where they would have ended up was about seventy-five miles south of Kassel in just under ninety minutes. Since they would rather miss Kassel to the north they adjusted their course just a touch, then set about looking not so much for individual landmarks as for the general lay of the land. Patterns that would be recognizable from this altitude. Not a pond but a pond that was just to the right of a village with another village ahead of it. And a mountain peak in the background. They marked features on the map and made notes then made another set of sightings.
Aside from the sightings that they did every ten minutes or so, they took a bearing at Kassel. Which was done by looking out the window and finding Kassel, then comparing where it actually was to where they thought it should be. The sightings taken on random landmarks could give them a pretty good estimate of how fast they were going and in what direction, but couldn’t tell them where they were. Not without better maps. They took another bearing at Dortmund, a third at Arnhem and landed near Amsterdam not quite five hours after takeoff. They had been a bit off on their bearings at Dortmund and Arnhem, and had had a bit of a headwind for part of the flight.
“Now this is the way a princess should be rescued!” Maria Anna, the queen in the Low Countries, said with an arch look at her husband.
His Majesty didn’t seem overly concerned with the reproach. “But where would be the excitement in that?” He grinned, looking like a naughty schoolboy. “Besides, there’s altogether too much room. There’s an aisle between the seats.”
Magdalena looked back and forth between the king and his now blushing bride, and decided that this was not a conversation she wanted to get involved in. Luckily, His Majesty had other things on his mind. He turned to Magdalena. “It has a range of over three hundred miles?
“Yes, Your Majesty. More still if it’s lightly loaded and carrying extra fuel.”
“And you’ve contracted for more of them.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. We’ve committed to buying ten more as soon as they are ready. They won’t be exactly the same as these. We’ve been providing feedback on the performance and some problems have come up. We have a Jupiter Two and two Jupiter Threes waiting for engines now. TEA also owns a Neptune, which would be a Jupiter except that we could only get two matching engines. It’s good enough for cargo but not suitable for passengers. Also, it doesn’t have the range of a Jupiter.”
“Excellent!” King Fernando said.
They continued to discuss the ins and outs of the airline business, as well as the technology of the of the Jupiter-class passenger plane for a while. Then the king and queen took their leave. “It seems a very sound enterprise,” King Fernando said in parting. “But I don’t think the name is quite suitable. We’ll call it Royal Dutch Airlines, I think.”
It took Magdalena a few minutes to figure out the true import of the king’s parting comment. Which was probably a good thing because it wouldn’t have been a good idea to go off on King Fernando. Instead, as soon as she could find him, she went off on Herr van Bradt.
“Have you lost your mind?” were the first words out of Magdalena’s mouth when she found Herr van Bradt. “What is this business about renaming TEA Royal Dutch Airlines?”
“His Majesty wants an airline,” Herr van Bradt said. “And the last time I looked my mind was right where it was supposed to be.”
Perhaps going off on her boss and family patron hadn’t been the best idea she ever had either. “But we’re a USE corporation registered in the State of Thuringia-Franconia.” Magdalena was trying to sound reasonable but even she could tell she wasn’t doing a great job of it. “Look, Herr van Bradt. We’ve sweated blood getting TEA going. Now it’s paying off, why should we move it to the Netherlands and change the name?”
“More than that His Majesty wants to buy the airline? He doesn’t insist on owning every share, but he does insist on controlling interest.”
“So why doesn’t he start his own?” Maggie asked. “Why not pick on the Kitts? They’re an airline and an aircraft manufacturer all in one. At least according to Vanessa Holcomb.” She paused. There might be a way out of this. “I think aircraft may be one of the few technologies that the USE is unwilling to share. Would it even be legal for us to sell the airline to the Netherlands? After all, they’re neutral and it wasn’t all that long ago that they were the enemy. Can we sell airplanes to the Netherlands?”
Herr van Bradt grinned at her, but shook his head. “Nice try, Magdalena. But it won’t work for a couple of reasons. First, His Majesty has already talked it over with Prime Minister Stearns and Emperor Gustav. Second, the reason they agreed is that Muscovy already has a dirigible and is working on a bigger one. France is working on aircraft in a little town south of Paris and Austria-Hungary stole one-well, a lot of the parts to one anyway. And your Herr O’Connor went with them and knows how the Monster was built.”
“He was never my Herr O’Connor. I didn’t much like him even when he was working for Georg and Farrell. And after he ran off we found that a bunch of our information on resins and putties, and on composites in general, had gone missing. If Georg or Farrell ever get to Vienna, Neil O’Connor is liable to get his lights punched out.”
“As you’ve just pointed out, the cat, as they say, is already mostly out of the bag. There was, in fact, very little for the United States of Europe to gain by trying to tie a knot in the poor kitty’s tail. On the other hand, there was a fair amount for them to gain in terms of trust and good relations by letting King Fernando have an airline. Especially in letting him have one before his brother got one on his own. The king of Spain and his advisors aren’t happy with the king in the Low Countries and they are going to be even less happy with him when he one ups them
