Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (57 page)

There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire, but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair by the screen.

‘Don’t think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but – but I’m all in the dark, you know, and
you
can see.’

In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer I would stay since it was the last time.

‘You think it is wrong, then?’ she cried sharply, though I had said nothing.

‘Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right… I am grateful to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only …’

‘Why?’ she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. ‘Oh, I see,’ she went on simply as a child. ‘For you it would be wrong.’ Then with a little indrawn laugh, ‘and d’you remember, I called you lucky – once – at first. You must never come here again!’

She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound of her feet the out along the gallery above.

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL: A STORY OF 2000 AD

From ‘The Windsor Magazine,’ October, AD 2147

AT 9.30 p.m. of a windy winter’s night I stood the lower stages of the GPO Outward Mail Tower. My purpose was a run to Quebec in ‘postal packet 162, or such other as may be appointed’; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the Despatching-caisson at the foot of the Tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags were packed close as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our GPO stilt calls ‘coaches.’ Five such coaches were filled as I watched, and were shot up the guides, to be locked on to their waiting packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.

From the Despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully learned official – Mr L. L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route – to the Captain’s Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the Mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He introduces me to the captain of 162 – Captain Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark, the other large and red, but each has the brooding, sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals, from L. V. Rautsch to little Ada Warleigh – the fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space.

On the notice-board in the Captain’s Room the pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators register degree by geographical degree the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word ‘Cape’ rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: that is all. The South African mid-weekly mail is in at theHighgate Receiving-Towers. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers’ lofts notifies the return of a homer.

‘Time for us to be on the move,’ says Captain Purnall, and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to the top of the Despatch-towers. Our ‘coach’ will lock on when it is filled, and the clerks are aboard …

Number 162 waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes her rack a little in her holding-down clips.

Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, 162 comes to rest level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and fifty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-four of any crack liner, and you will realise the power that must drive this hull through all weathers at more than twice the emergency speed of the
Cyclonic.

The eye detects no joint in her skin-plating, save the sweeping hair-crack of the bow rudder – Magniac’s rudder, that assured us the dominion of the unstable air, and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli’s ‘gull-wing’ curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch, and 162 will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her full helm, and she returns on her track like a whiplash. Cant the whole forward – a touch on the wheel will suffice – and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the full circle, and she presents to the air a mushroom head that will bring her up all standing within half the mile.

‘Yes,’ says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought. ‘Castelli thought that he’d discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes, when he’d only found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion, and Magniac he wentout of his mind because he said he couldn’t serve his country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we’re really doing.’

‘If you want to see the coach locked, you’d better go aboard. It’s due now,’ says Mr Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but the GPO serves them raw under a lick of grey official paint: The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an aperture – bottomless hatch at present – into which our coach will be locked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr Geary satisfy themselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. ‘Pleasant run,’ says Mr Geary, and disappears through the door which a foot high pneumatic compressor locks after him.

‘A-ah!’ sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with a tang. We are clear.

Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which I watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postal packet’s light ploughing through the white fleece, For an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the Highgate ReceivingTowers. ‘The Bombay Mail,’ says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. ‘She’s forty minutes late.’

‘What’s our level?’ I ask.

‘Four thousand. Aren’t you coming up on the bridge?’

The bridge (let us ever praise the GPO as a repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson’s legs where he stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. ‘It’s steep tonight,’ he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. ‘We generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time o’ the year. I hate slathering through fluff.’

‘So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin’ for a slant!’ says Captain Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp Night Mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea in half-an-hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly – nosing to every point of the compass as she rises.

‘Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred’ – the dip-dial reads ere we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keys down the governor on the switch before him. There is no sense in urging machinery when Eolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now – our nose notched home on our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamondlight to the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David’s Head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way. There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not affect The Leek.

‘Our planet’s over-lighted if anything,’ says Captain Purnall at the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. ‘I remember the old days of common white verticals that ’ud show two or three thousand feet up in a mist if you knew where to look for ’em. In really fluffy weather they might as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming home then and have some fun.
Now
it’s like driving down Piccadilly.’

He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore through the cloud-floor. We see nothing of England’s oudines – only a white pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variously coloured fire – Holy Island’s white and red – St Bees’ interrupted white, and so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois Brothers who invented the cloud-breakers of the world whereby we travel in security!

‘Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?’ asks Captain Hodgson. Cork light (green fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Purnall nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts – the bank beneath us is streaked with running fissures of flame, where the Atlantic boats are hurrying Londonwards just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed to have the five-thousand foot lanes and above to themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with English air. 162 lifts to a long-drawn wail of the air in the fore-flange of the rudder, and we make Valencia (white-green-white) at a safe 7,000 feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet.

There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream round Dingle Bay show where the east-driven seas hammer the coast. A big SATA liner
(Société Anonyme des Transports Aériens)
is diving and lifting half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid west wind. Lower still lies a Dane in trouble: she is telling the liner all about it in International. Our General Communication dial has caught her talk, and beginsto eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to cut it off, but checks himself. ‘Perhaps you’d like to listen,’ he says to me.

‘
Argol
of St Thomas,’ the GC whispers. ‘Report owners three starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, but impossible further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?’

The liner acknowledges, and recommends inverting the bearings. The
Argol
answers that she has already done so without effect, and begins to relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-bearings. The Frenchman assents cordially, cries: ‘
Courage, mon ami!
’and switches off.

Their lights sink under the curve of the world.

‘That’s one of Lundt and Bleamer’s boats,’ says Captain Hodgson. ‘Serves ’em right for putting German compos in their thrust-blocks.
She
won’t be in Fayal tonight! By the way, wouldn’t you like to look round the engine-room?’

I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation, and I follow Captain Hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge of the tanks. We know that Fleury’s gas can lift anything, as the world-famous trials of ’78 showed, but its almost indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank room. Even in this thin air the lift-shunts are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still 162 must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder, or our flight would become a climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an over-lifted to an underlifted ship, but no two captains trim ship alike. ‘When I take the bridge,’ says Captain Hodgson, ‘you’ll see me shunt forty per cent of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper rudder. With a swoop upwards instead of a swoop downwards,
as
you say. Either way will do. It’s only habit. Watch our dip-dial. Tim fetches her down once every thirty knots as regularly as breathing.’

So it is shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the arrow creeps from 6,700 to 7,300. There is the faint ‘szgee’ of the rudder, and back slides the arrow to 6,500 on a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots.

‘In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well,’ says Captain Hodgson, and unclipping the jointed bar which divides the engine-room from the bare deck, he leads me on the floor.

Here we find Fleury’s Paradox of the Bulkheaded Vacuum – which we accept now without thought – literally in full blast. The three engines are assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 to the Limit; that is to say, up to the point when the blades make the air bell – cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely as do overdriven marine propellers. 162’s Limit is low on account of the small size of her nine screws, which, though handier than the old colloid Thelussons, bell sooner. The ‘midships engine generally used as a reinforce is not running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers draw direct into the return-mains.

The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched expansion-tanks on either side the valves descend pillar-wise to the turbine-chests, and thence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of set blades with a force that would whip the teeth out of a power-saw. Behind, is its own pressure, held in leash or spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the vacuum where Fleury’s Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled tourbillons of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for an instant), and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the Ray intently. It is the very heart of the machine – a mystery to this day. Even Fleury, who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire, could not explain how that restless little imp pirouetting in the U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike down the furious blast of gas into a chill greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous – one had almost written sagacious – state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper-tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid) and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury’s Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury’s Ray. If a speck of oil – if even the natural grease of the human finger touch the hooded terminals,Fleury’s Ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously built up again. This means half-a-day’s work for all hands, and an expense of one hundred and seventy odd pounds to the GPO for radium-salts and such trifles.