Anti-Ice

“As for heat and light,” Traveller went on, “acetylene burners power the lamps above our heads, and also heat air which is passed through pipes embedded in the hull of the craft. In fact, bathed as we are in relentless sunlight, it is not cold which is our problem but the danger of being cooked. Hence the slow rotation of the craft which you have observed, and which serves to spread the burden of the sun’s radiation over all parts of the ship’s hull.”

“Then,” I said, “you see no obstacle to our surviving and returning safely to our home world.”

“I did not say that, Ned.” His cigar extinguished, Traveller lit up one of his preferred Turkish concoctions. “I designed the Phaeton to conduct observations in the upper atmosphere of the Earth. I even hoped one day to bring it into Earth orbit.” (This concept, which was new to me, was explained later by Holden; it involves the continual falling, under the influence of gravity, of a body around a planet, much as the Little Moon circles the Earth.) “But,” Traveller went on, “the Phaeton is not designed for a flight into deep space.”

He went on to describe the principles of the marvelous craft’s propulsion system. Anti-ice stoves, it seemed, were used to heat steam to monstrous temperatures. But instead of directing the expansion of the hot gas to a piston (as in the design of the land liner’s drive system), pipes led the steam to the nozzles I had observed affixed to the base of the craft, whence the steam was expelled. By hurling the superheated steam away from itself, the Phaeton drove itself forward. Thus a skater may push away his companion; the companion slides away across the lake, but the skater himself is impelled backwards by the reaction force. This is the principle of the rocket, and the “reaction mass” mentioned earlier by Traveller was the steam hurled away by the rocket.

This steam emerged from its nozzles at many thousands of miles per hour.

But even so, to enable the craft to move forwards with an acceleration of twice that due to Earth’s gravity, a full four pounds of water had to be lost to space every second.

Holden nodded gravely. “Then the weight of the completed craft can be no more than two or three tons.”

Traveller looked briefly impressed. “The weight of the craft is clearly at a premium,” he said. “And that drove my selection of aluminum as the principal construction material of the hull. It is far lighter than any iron alloy, or steel, despite its absurd price—a full nine sovereigns a pound, as compared to two or three pennies for cast iron.”

“Good Lord,” Holden said.

“My choice of water for the reaction material was driven by its wide availability and cheapness—even if the Phaeton were to crash into the sea, a tankful of brine would suffice to get me airborne again.”

I gestured to the darkened windows. “But there is no ocean out there.”

“No. We have only what remains in our tanks. And, although I cannot be sure without access to the Bridge, there lies our problem. I very much fear that our Prussian host may have exhausted our supply beyond the point at which we can turn the ship around and reverse its flight from Earth—and even if we could, there may be nothing left to work the rockets so that we could land in a controlled fashion, and not plummet like some meteor into the landscape.”

I shivered at these words, and crushed the port bulb in my hand.

6 EVERYDAY LIFE BETWEEN THE WORLDS

In our interplanetary capsule we were bereft of day and night—or rather of the Earth’s diurnal rhythms, which had been replaced by the rotation of the Phaeton; if one cared to, one could watch a sunrise every quarter of an hour. But we kept to much the same hours as if we were firmly on English soil. We slept on pallets which folded down from the walls of the Cabin. My bed, into which I bound myself each night with tightly tucked blankets, supported me as if with the softest of mattresses—although, if I worked an arm free in my sleep, it was disconcerting to wake to find it floating before my face, apparently disembodied.

At half past seven each morning we would be awoken by the soft chiming of an alarm mechanism in the Great Eastern. Pocket would lift the small blinds from the portholes, ceding entry to twin beams of sun- and Earthlight, and we would take it in turns to slip into the concealed bathtub.

The toilet facilities were necessarily of a rather crude nature, consisting of an apparatus which unfolded from the padded wall and which could be surrounded by a light but airtight screen, so that privacy and cleanliness were to some degree maintained. As Traveller had assured us, the waste materials were vented directly into space.

It was even possible to shave on board the Phaeton! Having loose whiskers floating around the craft would hardly have been pleasant, of course, but, by using an excess of shaving soap, one could trap all but a few stray wisps quite cleanly. And any floating debris and dust was swept up by the invaluable Pocket. He used a flexible hose, attached through a socket in the wall to one of the air- circulation pumps. Daily Pocket scurried around the craft with this device, probing and scooping; at first Holden and I found the sight comical, but as the days wore on we grew to appreciate the value of the invention, for without it our hurtling prison would soon have become as squalid as a Calcutta den.

Traveller maintained a small wardrobe on board the ship, as did Pocket; Traveller loaned Holden and me undergarments and dressing-gowns, and the marvelous Pocket found ways to clean (using soaped sponges and cloths) the worst from our battered launch day finery.

And so it was that we three gentlemen—a little crumpled, perhaps, but more than presentable to polite company—would take our places in our table-seats at around eight-thirty, and allow Pocket to serve us with hot tea, bacon and buttered toast.

Traveller had extensive theories about the hazards of gravity-free living, among which he listed the wasting of unused muscles and bones, and he predicted that on our eventual return to Earth we might be left so weak we would require carrying from the vessel. And so while Pocket prepared lunch—usually a light, cold snack—we would don our dressing-gowns and take part in a vigorous exercise routine. This included shadow-boxing, a novel form of running which involved pacing around and around the walls of the Cabin rather as a mouse circles its treadmill, and occasionally a little good-humored wrestling.

Holden proved to be over-ample of girth, short of breath and generally unhealthy; Pocket was wasted and rather frail; and Traveller—though willing enough, vigorous and limber—was seven decades old and a mild asthmatic, a condition not aided by the wholesale destruction of his nose and sinuses in some ancient anti-ice accident. So it was I who would work on alone in our exercise bouts, the youngest and healthiest of us all.

The afternoons we would while away with games—the Phaeton bore several compendia of games such as chess and drafts, manufactured in a special miniaturized form for ease of storage; and we would also indulge in a few hands of bridge, with Traveller’s patent magnetized card decks. Holden was a willing player but rather unadventurous, while Sir Josiah proved imaginative but rash to a fault in his play! Poor Pocket, drafted in to make up the four, knew little more than the rules of the game; and after the first few rubbers the three of us discreetly drew lots to determine who would bear the misfortune of partnering the poor fellow.

Supper was the heaviest meal of the day, served around seven, usually with wine and followed by a globe or two of port with cigars; Pocket drew the blinds at this hour, excluding the unearthly heavens beyond the hull and allowing us the illusion of a comfortable sanctuary. It was quite pleasant to sit in companionable silence, lightly strapped to our wall-chairs, watching cigar smoke curl toward the hidden air filters.

The evening would close, more often than not, with a rendition by Traveller on his collapsible piano of a few hymns, or, more likely, of some of the rowdy variety-palace numbers of which he appeared to hold an encyclopedic knowledge. With the port settling inside us we would float at all angles around the engineer, his coat tails floating in the air as he played, bawling out ditties that would have made our mothers blush!

And so for the next several days our ship traveled on, a tiny bubble of warmth, air and English civilization, adrift on a river of celestial darkness.