“We’ll have to wait out here another ten minutes or so, give them a little more time to cut up the Bantag telegraph lines just to make sure.” Even as he spoke he turned the wheel hard over to the right.
Hans grasped the edge of the forward panel, sparing a quick glance to his right as the aerosteamer went into a sharp banking turn. A mile or more below the ocean sparkled, catching the light of the late-afternoon sun. He tried not to contemplate just how far down it was, how long the fall would take.
Jack grabbed the speaking tube to his topside gunner and blew through it.
“You still with me up there? Tell me if everyone turns on me, and I want a count off.”
Hans uncorked his own speaking tube to listen in as the Roum gunner counted off the ships, still holding at eleven Eagles, and all were turning.
As Jack had predicted the one with the leaking hydrogen bag had turned back after only an hour. After leaving the coast of Rus behind and crossing out over the Inland Sea for the run to Tyre the topside gunner had excitedly reported that one of the ships had burst into flames and gone down. Two more just seemed to have wandered off.
The ship bumped through another bubble of air, and Hans was again leaning out the side window, gagging.
They spiraled through half a dozen banking turns. Hans looked around bleakly. He guessed it should be a beautiful sight. Puffy clouds seemed to dance and bob around them, the aerosteamers pirouetting in circles like butterflies in a field of white flowers. They slipped through the edge of a cloud, the world going white, the air colder, the ship bobbing up and down. Suddenly the world exploded back into blue, the turquoise blue of the ocean below, the crystal blue of the horizon, the darker sky above.
He could hear a moaning curse echoing through the speaking tube connected to the compartment holding their passengers. A small hole had been left in the floor for the men to relieve themselves but from the shouts and curses only minutes after they had taken off he could figure easily enough that it didn’t work thanks to the forty-mile-an-hour breeze whistling through the compartment. Someone apparently had missed the target yet again. Jack chuckled at their distress.
“We should have papered over the compartment at least. Those boys must be freezing back there.”
Jack pushed his ship through one more slow banking turn, gaze fixed on the eastern horizon.
“They must have cut the telegraph lines by now; we gotta head in if we want all these ships down by dark.”
Hans sighed with relief as they leveled out, again picking up a southeasterly heading.
After several minutes he could finally distinguish the eastern shore of the Inland Sea, recognizing the point north of Tyre and the gentle curving coast of shallows and mud flats that finally led down to the rise of ground and narrow harbor. Jack edged the elevator stick forward, easing back slightly on the four throttles. They thumped through another small cloud, which was beginning to glow with a pale yellow-pink light. The summits of the Green Mountains, fifty miles to the north and east, were cloaked in the clouds and what appeared to be a dark thunderhead.
Jack pointed out the storm.
“Get caught in one of those, and you’re dead,” he shouted.
Hans nodded, breathing deeply, struggling against the urge to get sick yet again.
Scanning eastward, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks or could he actually see the distant shore of the Great Sea nearly a hundred miles farther east. The two oceans, back on the old world they’d more likely be called great lakes, were closest together at this point. Long before the wars there was even a trade route going overland from Tyre eastward to the small fishing village of Camagan.
Back in the old days of the Great Ride, the eternal circling of the world by the hordes, this region between the two seas was usually disputed by the Tugars to the north and the Merki, making their long ride farther south through Tyre and from there around the southern end of the Great Sea and then up into Nippon and the edge of the vast populous lands of the Chin.
He took the field glasses, which rested in a box between his seat and Jack’s, checked the map, then raised the glasses to scan the coast. After months in the siege lines of Tyre he knew it all by heart, the outer circle of the Bantag lines, half a dozen miles from the city, the inner line of his own works, the ancient whitewashed walls of the town clustered around the harbor. He caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off the wings of a Hornet out beyond the enemy line, held it for a second, then lost it, wondering how Jack could so easily spot such things from ten, even twenty miles away. He again looked eastward with the glasses, but they were lower now. It was hard to tell just how far he could see out across the open brown-green prairie.
He studied the harbor again, bracing his elbows on the forward panel containing the pressure and temperature gauges for the four engines. The machine was bobbing up and down too much, though, for him to keep a steady lock, and another wave of nausea started to take hold. Taking a deep breath, he settled back in his chair.
The air was getting warmer, humid.
“I see transports in the harbor. Hope they’re the right ones, or we’re finished.”
Hans nodded, closing his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, wishing they were higher up again, where the air was cooler. The minutes slowly passed. He finally got his stomach back under control. He opened his eyes again. They were just a couple of miles out from the harbor, flying parallel to the coast.
He spotted the aerosteamer landing field, south of town, right on the coast. There was already one airship down.
“We got more ships to the north.” It was the top gunner.
Hans looked over anxiously at Jack. Several seconds passed.
’“Four engines, must be the ones from Roum.” Both breathed a sigh of relief. The Bantag had committed only a couple of ships to that front, and both had been aggressively hunted down over the last week and destroyed, but there was always the prospect that Jurak had moved reinforcements down there.
From due east he could see two Hornets coming in as well, one of them trailing a thin wisp of smoke. They passed directly west of the harbor, and Hans saw half a dozen ships tied off at the docks. Several land ironclads were on the dock, puffs of smoke rising as they slowly chugged along, joining a long column of machines weaving up through the narrow streets of the town. At least that phase of this mad plan seems to have gone off, he thought.
They passed the airfield on their left and a quarter mile in from the coast, Jack looking over at it, then at the ocean below.
“Bit tricky, crosswind coming off the sea, about ten knots or so. Keep both your hands on the throttles. Remember the two to the left are for port engines, the two on the right for the starboard. It takes several seconds for them actually to change anything, so be damn quick.”
Hans shifted uncomfortably, doing as ordered. Jack started into a shallow banking turn to port, altitude still dropping. As they got halfway through Hans looked up through the topside windows, which were now angled down toward the horizon, and saw the other aerosteamers bobbing along like moths, following in a ragged line stretching ba?kT half a dozen miles or more.
Jack gradually started to straighten out, having drifted past the airfield, turning slightly to port to compensate for the crosswind. Hundreds of antlike figures ran about along either side of the field-the ground crews. It was going to be a tricky balancing act.
They had started out heavy, but after close to fifteen hours of flying they had burned off hundreds of gallons of fuel. They could have dumped some of their hydrogen to compensate, but orders were not to do that since it would be impossible to cap off all the hydrogen needed if the ships were to be turned around quickly. The center air bag was filled with hot air, drawn off the exhaust of the four engines. On the way down Jack had dumped all of it. In the fine balancing act between hydrogen bags, hot air, and the lift provided by the bi-level wings, the ship should have a stall speed of only ten knots or so, about the same as the crosswind. That meant they would touch down almost standing still, then ground crews would have to snag lines and secure tie-downs. If not, the ship would start drifting backwards, drag a wing, and within seconds be destroyed.