Everything about the air base was neat, almost fanatically so, the grounds swept, every piece of wood painted and every metal part polished or oiled or enameled. Ig natius profoundly approved, as a soldier and an engi neer and a monastic as well. Physical things were like time-both belonged ultimately to God; sloth and waste were a form of stealing from Him.
"Well, we've got twelve pedal sets on either side," Hanks said, returning to the cleric's question and pointing upward. "Set up recliner-fashion, that gives you maximum output."
Ignatius nodded, following the finger. The airship had an aluminum-truss keel along the bottom of the shark-like gasbag; that made it semirigid. The gondola below was covered in thin doped fabric, for streamlining, but enough panels were unlaced for maintenance that he could see the spiderweb scantiness of the interior structure as technicians made their final checks and fastened the sheets once again. Idle now, a twelve foot propeller stood at the rear, behind a long wedge of rudder.
"The rudder is worked from a wheel at the prow of the gondola. She carries twenty-four pedalers, and an other six reliefs who act as the deck crew-you can see their positions at the rear there, like a semicircle-plus the captain and second in command."
Ignatius smiled to himself. Hanks had not answered the question. The engineer caught the smile and shrugged.
"Well, in a dead calm, they can get her up to about the speed of a trotting horse."
"And against the wind?"
The engineer shrugged again, and smiled himself, a little bitterly. "You go up or down trying to find a wind going in the right direction. Or anchor and wait it out. Trying to fight a breeze in this thing is like trying to hammer a nail through a board."
Ignatius raised his brows. "Not very difficult, you mean?"
"Only the nail's made out of candle wax."
They shared a chuckle, and Hanks went on: "That's the downside. The upside is that you can stay aloft a lot longer than a glider can. Less speed and control than a glider, but a hell of a lot more than an ordinary balloon. If only we had a goddamned engine…"
Ignatius nodded. He recognized the engineer's bitterness without sharing it. The man had grown up before the Change, and like many such-particularly those who'd worked much with machines-he resented the limitations of the new world with a savage passion.
God must have His reasons for it, Ignatius thought. Though it would have been interesting to have such possibilities open…
He didn't voice the thought; it would be futile, and would serve only to further disturb the middle-aged engineer's soul. Instead he asked a technical question about the gearing. Hanks brightened, and they talked ratios and aspects and hollow-cast driveshafts for a few happy moments.
Outside an observer keeping an eye on the wind sock shouted, "Clear!"
Hanks strode away, and Ignatius stepped back po litely; the ungainly craft had to be brought out quickly, lest a cross wind catch it and smash it up against the edge of the big hangar's doors. The ground crew were all hefty looking young men, and they tallied onto the long metal tube skids beneath the gondola and simply walked the craft out into the open by main force, before hooking a long cable onto a ring at the front of the gondola. It stood bobbing at head height as they tallied on and pulled until the LeMay 's nose was close to the base of a tall metal pole.
"Crew aboard!" Hanks shouted.
Most of the crew were women, which surprised the monk for a moment. Then he took a long look at their builds underneath the gray overalls as they scrambled up the rope ladders. Every one of them was slender and wiry enough to be assembled out of steel cables and springs.
Ah, he thought to himself. Maximum leg strength with minimum overall weight per pound of leg muscle. This is an instance in which a female's relative lack of upper body mass is an advantage rather than a hindrance. Interesting.
Also very interesting to watch; he'd sworn celibacy, but found inner disinterest much more difficult. He sighed and closed his eyes for a second, praying for strength.
"You interested in a ride, padre?" Hanks called.
"Thank you!"he said eagerly. After all, it's not as if I'm deliberately looking.
And while he'd been aloft in balloons and gliders once or twice, he'd never been up in a powered craft. It would be like a little hint of the fabulous days of old. His grandfather had been a helicopter pilot in a place called Vietnam, and the old man had lived through the Change, lived long enough to tell stories of marvels to a young boy then named Karl Bergfried. He had never seen his grand mother, though it was her inheritance that gave the slight umber tone to his skin and the tilt to his dark eyes.
The boat-shaped open gondola dipped and swayed beneath him as he kirted up his robe and climbed care fully into it, stepping onto the aluminum treads of the central catwalk. The crewmen-crew-women-were settling into the seats and pedal sets on either side, strapping themselves in. Their positions left them facing backward, and he noticed that a few wore crucifixes. Not an ounce of spare weight otherwise, though there were clips above each position for a bow and quiver, and a bundled parachute strapped ready.
Hanks sat behind the wheel, his feet on rudder pedals, and a board with control levers and dials beside him.
"Water ballast, emergency valves, ballonet superheat and venting," he said, indicating them. "Altimeter-that's from a small airplane-airspeed indicator, rpm on the propeller shaft, main cell pressure, reserve tank pressure. We can switch the torque on the main shaft to a compressor that takes hydrogen from the lift cells and pumps it into metal tanks just above the keel. It's more economical than venting if we have time."
"Fascinating!" Ignatius said again, his eyes taking the instruments in greedily.
"No, when we hit clear air turbulence, that's fascinating," Hanks said cheerfully. "So what say you strap in too, eh, padre?"
There was a seat on the other side; Ignatius took the suggestion. Hanks turned his head.
"Bosun, drop keel weights three through fifteen!"
The noncom went down the walkway, stopping at every second square of flooring to raise it and flip some thing underneath. Solid thumps sounded from under neath the gondola, and the blimp bobbled very slowly upward until it hung at twice a man's height from the ground.
"Lead ballast," Hank explained. "It counterbalances our fixed weight. We drop some of 'em at the beginning to set basic load for the trip, so we've got neutral buoy ancy at about ground level. The rest are for emergencies, and the side ballast-"
He pointed to aluminum water tanks along the rail.
"-is for ordinary maneuvering. We try to avoid valving gas or dropping ballast as long as we can-hydrogen isn't cheap."
Then, louder: "On superheat!"
One of the crew fiddled with something amidships. There was a thump and a muffled roar as a compressed gas burner went on. That made him itch a little, until he reflected that if it leaked at all, hydrogen leaked up.
And only a mixture with air is really dangerous, he told himself stoutly. And I do have this parachute.
The hot air went up a tube into the central body of the gasbag above. As the hot air ballonet expanded the outer skin creaked a little inside its netting. A sensation of lightness put a grin on Ignatius's usually solemn face; the ground was beginning to slide away beneath them. The anchor cable rose off the ground and ran up the mooring pole; then it dropped away as Hanks pulled a lever.
"All ahead full!"
"All ahead full!" the bosun cried, in an alto roar.
There was a mass grunt as the crew pushed at the ped als, fighting the inertia of the system-it was as light as possible, but Ignatius did a quick mental calculation and realized that it must still mass a fair bit in absolute terms. The big propeller at the rear of the gondola started to turn, slowly at first and then shifting into a flickering circular blur. Wicker and rope creaked and metal com plained as the thrust surged through gondola and keel and pushed the gasbag against the resisting air.