Fiona and Sorensen were walking forward, down the length of the platform, and as he hastened to catch up to them, he saw their goal — a pair of autogyros. Just beyond them were half-a-dozen biplanes, each painted with a seemingly haphazard camouflage pattern of sky blue and cloud gray, lined up in two rows, as if ready for take-off. As he got closer, Newcombe saw that each of the compact twin-winged aircraft sported a machine gun, just above the top wing.
“You have planes, too?”
“The autogyros are useful as utility aircraft,” Sorensen explained, “but in the event that we run into other kinds of trouble, we have the Sparrowhawks.”
“They’re marvelous to fly,” Fiona added, “but getting them back aboard is a little tricky.”
Sorensen pointed to the autogyros. “Take the front seats, gentlemen. Mr. Lafayette, you’re with me in the lead.”
Newcombe climbed into the front cockpit of the second gyro, threading his lanky body in between the four struts that supported the rotor axle. Fiona slipped into the cockpit behind him. He felt both apprehension and excitement about the impending flight. Even though it was technically his second time aboard one of the autogyros, the first flight hadn’t exactly made an impression in his memory.
He had logged a lot of new experiences since meeting Dodge Dalton.
Fiona leaned over his shoulder. “Captain Sorensen told a wee fib. We actually come down to about 10,000 feet for the inspection flights; the gyros perform better at lower altitudes. So it won’t be quite as cold as he said, but you’ll want to bundle up all the same.”
Lafayette stalled and equivocated a while longer, and then struggled to squeeze his bulk into the front seat of Sorensen’s gyro. When at last the writer was buckled in, Sorensen waved to one of the crewmen.
Majestic opened up to the sky.
The lower half of the tail section split into four equal wedge-shaped pieces and spread apart like the petals of a blossoming flower. Newcombe felt a chill wind sweep through the interior of the airship, and reluctantly removed his glasses in order to snug his goggles into place.
There was a noise like a gunshot as Fiona fired the starter, and the gyro began to shudder as the Armstrong-Siddeley Genet Major 140 horsepower engine turned over. Through the spinning disc of the front rotor, he saw a blurry movement as Sorensen’s gyro shot forward down the length of the platform. A moment later, Fiona engaged the rotor, and the three-blades overhead began to chop the air. When they were turning faster than the eye could follow, Fiona tilted the rotor hub forward and the autogyro began to move.
Newcombe found himself gripping the sides of the cockpit as the small aircraft rolled down the platform, seemingly not much faster than a car on the open road. In his head, he automatically began calculating how fast they would need to be going to maintain lift.
Then, the gyro shot through the opening and Newcombe’s stomach leaped into his mouth.
They didn’t fall exactly. Rather, Fiona guided the craft into a swooping dive that increased their airspeed enough to maintain the spin of the rotor-wing. The maneuver lasted only a few seconds, and then the gyro rose again, banking right to swing back around, giving Newcombe his first good look at the airship.
He experimented with holding the spectacles up to the lenses of his goggles — difficult with his fingers encased in the heavy leather gloves — and by adjusting the focal length, he brought the world into clear view.
Majestic certainly lived up to its name. It was massive, dominating the sky like a great gray thundercloud. Although similar in shape to the zeppelins that had been the pioneers of trans-Atlantic air travel, Barron’s airship was broader and flatter, more like a wing in profile than the traditional cigar shape. Always the scientist, he immediately saw the advantage to this design, both for improving the lift characteristics of the ship and for accommodating the internal runway. As Fiona drew along the starboard side, he could make out the engine nacelles — three in all, one set about fifty yards back from the nose, one amidships, and the last about a hundred yards from the tail — beating the air to pull the ship through the sky. The propellers were all set at slightly different heights, and Newcombe noted a stubby wing protruding from the dirigible behind each of them, utilizing the airstream from the propellers to provide additional lift like an airplane.
Their approach seemed slow, almost walking speed, but he knew this was an illusion; both the gyro and the airship were moving at close to a hundred miles per hour.
Fiona brought the autogyro in close to the gray ship, seemingly close enough to touch, in order to carry out the primary purpose for the excursion. When she completed a pass, she peeled off and raced back to the Majestic’s tail to do it all over again. They made several such passes, each time at a slightly higher altitude, until Newcombe finally got a look at the top of the airship. At first, the scientist thought it had been painted black, but then he realized that the dark matte surface was actually a collection of solar photovoltaic cells; Barron had figured out how to harvest massive amounts of electricity from the sun. He was busy estimating the maximum voltage output of the solar array when he spied several small protrusions dotting the skin of the ship, like the spiny scales on the back of a crocodile. He adjusted moved his spectacles a little closer, and brought them into focus.
They were gun ports.
It made sense that Barron, an arms manufacturer, should festoon his dirigible with firepower, but the realization was nonetheless disconcerting to Newcombe. Majestic was no mere pleasure craft. The guns were almost certainly intended as a defensive measure, but their very presence felt like a declaration of hazardous intent.
But guns on the top? Those will only be useful if Majestic was attacked from the sky… by planes… military planes… Who is he expecting to need to defend against?
Fiona finished her final pass, and then indulged herself with a few aerobatic maneuvers, culminating in a sweeping corkscrew around Majestic, and Newcombe’s worries about the guns were swept away in a surge of adrenaline.
Sorensen’s gyro was lining up for its approach to the open landing bay, and as Fiona swung them onto the same course, Newcombe saw the first gyro move effortlessly into the gap. It was only as the opening loomed ahead on their own approach that Newcombe saw just how little room for error there was. The rotor disc was nearly forty feet across; how wide was the opening? Newcombe had no idea, but a single untimely gust of wind might push the spinning blades into the airship’s shell. Even if that initial crash didn’t kill the occupants, there would be no rescue from the subsequent plunge into the sea, ten thousand feet below. Newcombe held his breath as they passed under the fixed portion of the tail section, releasing it only when he felt the bump of the wheels on the platform.
Fiona engaged a rotor-brake and the axle in front of Newcombe stopped turning. Two crewmen had finished lashing down the wheels of Sorensen’s gyro, and as Fiona taxied into position they quickly moved to secure hers as well. By the time Newcombe extricated himself from the front seat, both aircraft were tied to the platform. As he hopped down, he noticed his exhalations turning to fog in front of his face. The air on the landing deck was as chilly as it had been outside during the flight, and a scrim of ice had formed on the platform.