“What?”
“I will fly the ship. Now, kindly vacate my couch so that we may proceed—”
I studied him with the deepest suspicion, but on his long face I could read only a new determination. “Traveller, why would you do that? Why should I not suspect you of some trickery?”
He visibly drew together some shreds of patience. “You may suspect what you like. I am not given to trickery, Ned; and I was quite sincere when I said that you will destroy this craft in seconds if you proceed unaided.”
“Then assist me. Tell me how to fly the Phaeton.”
“Impossible.” He counted the points on his long fingers. “It would take several days to impart even the basics of the flight control system design. Even,” he added without irony, “to the brightest student. Second. Consider the demands of piloting a flighted craft through the atmosphere. Ned, the Phaeton is not inherently stable; this means that—unless you want to blast straight up in the air, like our French colleague—the pilot must be constantly responsive to the attitude of his craft; otherwise she is just as likely to flip upside down and plummet with all the force of her motors straight into the ground. This is the only flying vessel in the world, and I am the only man with experience of such arts. Third. You will recall that the Phaeton is a prototype. She therefore has various quirks and peculiarities which only I can anticipate and control—”
“All right!” The strain of maintaining an even pressure on the rocket levers was turning my hands into crabs of tense muscles.
Then, unexpectedly, he grinned, his hair drifting from his scalp. “You ask why I will fly the ship. I do not want you to ruin my craft, boy; that is one clear objective. Other than that—
“Well, old Glad Eyes has made it clear enough that his rocket-shells will be built with or without my participation. Now you’ve forced me to think about it, if anti-ice is to be used again as a weapon of war, perhaps I should witness the consequences of my own actions, rather than read some inaccurate account in the Guardian three days later.
“Ned, my mind is made up. Let us go seek your precious lady; let us make for Paris, the Queen of Cities!”
I searched his face again. There was no sign of guile or deception; in fact I was reminded of the impulsive enthusiasm I had reawakened in him in those last minutes of our approach to the Moon. And so, at length, I nodded.
Traveller clapped his hands together. “I have told Pocket to shelter within the house, and so we are all prepared to leave. Now then, Ned, if you would vacate my chair—release those levers as slowly as you are able—”
And so, within a few minutes, the noise of the rockets rose to a roar; the covering tarpaulins ripped and fell away, and the Phaeton soared high over the Surrey countryside.
Traveller, with skill and grace, flew at a height of about half a mile above the land. He tilted the engines, explaining that by doing so the rockets could not only support the weight of the craft in the air, but also impart a significant sideways acceleration.
And so we sped southwards.
I stood with my face pressed to the windows. At such a height the land, when not obscured by clouds, takes on the appearance of a toy layout featuring beautifully detailed houses, trees and glistening rivers. It was something of a shock when we abruptly sailed over the gunmetal-gray waters of the Channel.
After perhaps an hour we reached the French coast. A harbor town lay spread out like a diagram below us, and Traveller compared the view through his periscope with the contents of a map spread over his chest. At last he nodded in satisfaction. “We have reached Le Havre. Now it is but a short hop to Paris herself!”
I imagined the simple fisherfolk below peering up and wondering at the screaming, fire-belching monster which streaked across their sky.
Our guide now was the Seine; we followed its silver course upstream through Normandy. Smoke spiraled from scattered cottages and farmhouses and, under the influence of the prevailing winds, streamed like feathers to the east. From this godlike perspective there was no sign of the war.
At one point we sailed high over Rouen—the old streets looked like a child’s maze—and I recalled that it was here that we English had burned to death the Maid of Orléans. I wondered what that brave warrior would have made of our great aluminum air-boat. Would she have thought it one more vision of the Lord?
At last, at about two in the afternoon, we reached the outskirts of Paris herself.
From the air Paris is a rough oval through which the Seine cuts neatly from east to west. With the periscope we could quite clearly see the islands which lie at the heart of the city, and we studied the elegant roof of the Cathedral of Notre Dame—untouched as yet by the Prussian artillery which had been brought into close order around the city. Just to the north of the water, we could make out the Rue de Rivoli which runs parallel to the river. Tracing the road to its western extent I found the Champs Elysées, and I puzzled over fallen trees scattered over the roadway, looking like spilled matchstalks. I wondered if they had been felled by German artillery, but Traveller suggested that the grand avenue was being cut down in order to supply firewood for the city’s beleaguered citizens.
Around the brown-gray carcass of the city lay the main defensive fortifications: we tracked twenty miles of walls from the Bois de Boulogne in the west to the Bois de Vincennes in the east. And, in the countryside beyond the walls, we could clearly see the encampments of the besieging Prussian armies. Officers’ tents lay like scattered handkerchiefs among the woods and fields; and—when we descended a little lower—we could make out the pits in which artillery pieces had been lodged—hundreds of them, all with their sinister snouts trained on the hapless citizens of Paris. And we could even espy the flashing red, blue and silver uniforms of the Prussian soldiery themselves.
As I stared down at the wondering, upturned faces of these conquering Germans it occurred to me how simple it would be for me to drop, say, a Dewar-ful of anti-ice among them—with quite devastating effect. The Prussians could do nothing in response; we could easily rise above the range of their guns, even if they could be trained on an object floating in the air.
I shuddered, wondering if I had had a vision of some future war.
Now we were fascinated to see, rising from the brown mass of the city, the bulky, ponderous form of a hot air balloon. The Manchester newspapers had been full of the Parisians’ brave attempts to communicate with the rest of France by means of such vessels, and by the even more desperate expedient of carrier pigeons; but nevertheless the actual sight was quite startling. The clumsy vessel resembled a patchwork quilt in its jumble of colors and roughly-cut panels, and it bobbed uncertainly in the brisk westerly winds which soared over the roofs of the city, but off to the east it sailed with a semblance of grace, crossing the city walls in minutes.
We scanned the horizon with Traveller’s telescopes—but of the Prince Albert there was no sign. Traveller frowned. “Well, Ned, what next?”
I shook my head, baffled and disappointed; the scale of the martial drama laid out below me was so great that my impulsive dreams that one man could alter the course of unfolding events, even armed with such a tool as Phaeton, seemed foolish fantasies. “I don’t know what we can do here,” I said at length. “But I think I should still very much like to find Françoise.”
Traveller pulled at his chin. “Then we must gather more information as to the Albert’s whereabouts.”