“Suppose we were to block the air pipes which feed the Bridge? Then our Hunnish companion would surely expire in his own stink within a few hours.”
Traveller nodded gravely. “Elegantly put. But while such a course of action would be satisfyingly vengeful, I fear it would leave us only worse off. We would still have no access to the Bridge, and would have replaced a German pilot with a dead one!”
The engineer’s calm, condescending dissection of my proposals, all delivered in the flat, nasal tones of the Mancunian, enraged me. “Then let us continue,” I said, endeavoring to keep my voice steady. “The air pumps lie within the Engine Chamber. What else is to be found there?”
“You can see for yourself,” said Traveller. “Pocket, would you raise the maintenance covers?”
The patient servant, with scarcely a nod, pushed himself from his seat and floated down toward the floor. There he tugged at the Turkish rug and oilskin which covered the bulkhead; the carpets were affixed by hooks and eyes which disengaged readily enough, but the poor man had a deal of trouble rolling up the loosened carpets in our floating condition. Pocket steadily refused all our offers of help, the only request he made of us being to raise our feet from time to time.
I never knew a man who knew his place so well, and filled it to such perfection.
At last the carpets were rolled up and stuffed into a crevice near the top of the Cabin wall. The bulkhead so revealed bore the sheen of aluminum, but it was not a solid slab; instead the bulkhead, some fifteen feet wide, was little more than a framework into which great holes had been cut, and these holes were covered by large rectangular plates held in place by wingnuts. One portion of the bulkhead was covered by overlapping sheets of rubber; this, I recalled, concealed the enclosed bath we used daily.
Now Traveller braced his feet against the ridged aluminum surface and twisted away the wingnuts restraining one of the plates. He stored the nuts neatly in a row—in thin air—while he worked, finally stowing them in a waistcoat pocket. “You need not fear a loss of air,” he said. “This bulkhead is not airtight, and the lower compartment is held at the same pressure as the Cabin.”
Holden and I peered inside the hole. The compartment revealed was some seven feet deep, and directly below the hole was a sphere perhaps four feet in diameter, held in place by a stout framework; this sphere was coated with silver plate, so that our reflections, and those of the acetylene lamps above and behind us, danced in its curving belly. This, Traveller explained, was one of the
Traveller showed us an elaborate system of rods which, he said, led through the hull to levers set in the Bridge. The rods penetrated the Dewar, said Traveller, thereby forming the basis of the system by which—under direction from the Bridge—controlled portions of anti-ice could be moved from the central Arctic compartment of the Dewar, allowed to melt and so release their heat.
Traveller told us how the anti-ice energy was used to heat water in a series of fire-tube boilers. These were metal boxes surrounding water-bearing pipes. Super-heated steam was piped out of the boilers and then back through channels cut through the anti-ice Dewars themselves.
Now, to improve the performance of his motors, Traveller ingeniously exploited that other marvelous property of anti-ice, its Enhanced Conductance.
Powerful electrical currents circulated endlessly through the anti-ice slabs. These currents generated strong magnetic fields which accelerated further the superhot steam before it was expelled from the ship’s three nozzles, which were situated beneath the Dewars. By this elaborate arrangement, Traveller said, it was possible to raise the steam’s “exit velocity” to extraordinary levels without further contact with the ship’s pipes and plates, which would otherwise surely have melted. This high velocity enabled a design requiring a comparatively small “reaction mass.”
Traveller raised another plate, and we were confronted by a jumble of piping, slim tanks each about the size of a bookcase, globes of brass, and various other pieces of machinery. The bookcase tanks contained the water which served so many of the ship’s systems, Traveller explained. Acetylene gas and air were stored in compressed conditions in the spherical reservoirs. Pumps drove fluids and gases continuously around the hull and interior of the craft, much as human organs maintain the flow of vital fluids around the body; and the pumps worked exclusively off the heat generated by the anti- ice boilers. There was also a robust hypocaust which heated the supply of bathing water.
I stared gloomily into the craft’s bowels. The machinery was markedly less pristine than the stokehold of the
And, even more depressing, I could see no opportunity to change our trapped situation, save by wrecking the very systems on which our lives depended.
“Sir Josiah,” I said, “the purpose of these removable panels must be to allow access to the equipment here, so that any repairs necessary can be effected in flight.”
“Correct.”
“Where, then, is your tool kit?”
For the first time the engineer, floating above the disassembled bulkhead, looked a little chagrined. “The tools I carry are not stored in this compartment, nor in the Cabin, as perhaps they should be. They are on the Bridge.”
I slapped my forehead with frustration. “Then there is a perfectly good tool kit aboard, which might be used to force access to the Bridge, and it is stored not ten feet from here—but it is sealed with that deranged Hun behind the upper hatch!”
Holden floated with his arms folded, his several chins resting on his vest, and his legs stuck straight out before him. “Sir Josiah, you have shown us the anti-ice propulsive system and the water supply. What else is stored in this Engine Chamber?”
Traveller clapped his hands together. “Pocket?” As the manservant moved to unscrew the wingnuts restraining the cover of another subcompartment, Traveller said, “What I will show you now is an experiment of mine, yet to be made fully functional. You can see that I have designed for access to the engine section in case of some internal breakdown during a flight. But I have also imagined the circumstance in which some damage is done to the ship’s exterior, by an untoward event.”
I was mystified by this. “But we travel through empty space, sir—a vacuum, if your ideas are correct. What agent is available to do such injury?”
Traveller frowned, and his face, with its platinum centerpiece, became a mask of intimidating grimness. “Outer space is far from unoccupied, young Ned; for meteors lance constantly through its darkness.”
“Meteors?”
Holden interjected, “Fragments of rock or dust, Ned; they travel at several hundreds of miles an hour, and, when they encounter Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up, forming the phenomenon of shooting stars with which you are familiar. According to the newest theories several tons of this interplanetary dust—both meteors and their heavier kin, meteorites, which can cause impacts large enough to leave craters—fall to Earth every week!”
Traveller locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in mid-air, quite at ease. “The subject is fascinating. Traces of carbon have been detected in meteorite fragments; and carbon, of course, owes its origin solely to the action of living organisms, proving that the domain of life must extend beyond the limits of Earth. For example, the French have—”
“Sir Josiah, please! Can we return to the point? The scientific interest of these meteor objects is no doubt enormous, but I’d just as soon do without the blighters, for they sound more than a little dangerous to me!”
The aluminum walls suddenly seemed as frail as the canvas of a tent, and I pictured hundreds of rock fragments traveling with the speed of bullets. I reflected ruefully that perhaps the Lord had thought I had not had enough to worry about already.
Traveller’s subsequent words, though, reassured me to some extent. “One should not worry unduly,” he said, “for space is large, and the chances of such a collision are vanishingly small. But it seemed to me that I should essay preparations for such an eventuality—or for other disasters which might affect the exterior of the craft.”
