The Black Star Passes Part 5

The work the next day was rushed to completion far earlier than Arcot had dared to hope. All the men had been kept isolated at the farm, lest they accidentally spread the news of the new machine. It was with excited interest that they helped the machine to completion. The guns had not been mounted as yet, but that could wait. Mid-afternoon found the machine resting in the great construction shed, completely equipped and ready to fly!

"d.i.c.k," said Morey as he strode up to him after testing the last of the gyroscopic seats, "she's ready! I certainly want to get her going--it's only three-thirty, and we can go around to the sunlight part of the world when it gets dark at the speeds we can travel. Let's test her now!"

"I'm just as anxious to start as you are, Bob. I've sent for a U.S. Air Inspector. As soon as he comes we can start. I'll have to put an 'X'

license indication on her now. He'll go with us to test it--I hope.

There will be room for three other people aboard, and I think you and Dad and I will be the logical pa.s.sengers."

He pointed excitedly. "Look, there's a government helicopter coming.

Tell the men to get the blocks from under her and tow her out. Two power trucks should do it. Get her at least ten feet beyond the end of the hangar. We'll start straight up, and climb to at least a five mile height, where we can make mistakes safely. While you're tending to that, I'll see if I can induce the Air Inspector to take a trip with us."

Half an hour later the machine had been rolled entirely out of the shed, on the new concrete runway.

The great craft was a thing of beauty s.h.i.+mmering in the bright sunlight The four men who were to ride in it on its maiden voyage stood off to one side gazing at the great gleaming metal hull. The long sweeping lines of the sides told a story of perfect streamlining, and implied high speed, even at rest. The bright, slightly iridescent steel hull shone in silvery contrast to the gleaming copper of the power units'

heat-absorption fins. The great clear windows in the nose and the low, streamlined air intake for the generator seemed only to accentuate the graceful lines of the machine.

"Lord, she's a beauty, isn't she, d.i.c.k!" exclaimed Morey, a broad smile of pleasure on his face.

"Well, she did shape up nicely on paper, too, didn't she. Oh, Fuller, congratulations on your masterpiece. It's even better looking than we thought, now the copper has added color to it. Doesn't she look fast? I wish we didn't need physicists so badly on this trip, so you could go on the first ride with us."

"Oh, that's all right, d.i.c.k, I know the number of instruments in there, and I realize they will mean a lot of work this trip. I wish you all luck. The honor of having designed the first s.h.i.+p like that, the first heavier-than-air s.h.i.+p that ever flew without wings, jets, or props--that is something to remember. And I think it's one of the most beautiful that ever flew, too."

"Well, d.i.c.k," said his father quietly, "let's get under way. It should fly--but we don't really know that it will!"

The four men entered the s.h.i.+p and strapped themselves in the gyroscopic seats. One by one they reported ready.

"Captain Mason," Arcot explained to the Air Inspector, "these seats may seem to be a bit more active than one generally expects a seat to be, but in this experimental machine, I have provided all the safety devices I could think of. The s.h.i.+p itself won't fall, of that I am sure, but the power is so great it might well prove fatal to us if we are not in a position to resist the forces. You know all too well the effect of sharp turns at high speed and the results of the centrifugal force. This machine can develop such tremendous power that I have to make provision for it.

"You notice that my controls and the instruments are mounted on the arm of the chair really; that permits me to maintain complete control of the s.h.i.+p at all times, and still permits my chair to remain perpendicular to the forces. The gyroscopes in the base here cause the entire chair to remain stable if the s.h.i.+p rolls, but the chair can continue to revolve about this bearing here so that we will not be forced out of our seats.

I'm confident that you'll find the machine safe enough for a license.

Shall we start?"

"All right, Dr. Arcot," replied the Air Inspector. "If you and your father are willing to try it, I am."

"Ready, Engineer?" asked Arcot.

"Ready, Pilot!" replied Morey.

"All right--just keep your eye on the meters, Dad, as I turn on the system. If the instruments back there don't take care of everything, and you see one flash over the red mark--yank open the main circuit. I'll call out what to watch as I turn them on."

"Ready son."

"Main gyroscopes!" There was a low snap, a clicking of relays in the rear compartment, and then a low hum that quickly ran up the scale.

"Main generators!" Again the clicking switch, and the relays thudding into action, again the rising hum. "Seat-gyroscopes." The low click was succeeded by a quick shrilling sound that rose in moments above the range of hearing as the separate seat-gyroscopes took up their work.

"Main power tube bank!" The low hum of the generator changed to a momentary roar as the relays threw on full load. In a moment the automatic controls had brought it up to speed.

"Everything is working perfectly so far. Are we ready to start now, son?"

"Main vertical power units!" The great s.h.i.+p trembled throughout its length as the lift of the power units started. A special instrument had been set up on the floor beside Arcot, that he might be able to judge the lift of his power units; it registered the apparent weight of the s.h.i.+p. It had read two hundred tons. Now all eyes were fixed on it, as the pointer dropped quickly to 150-100-75-50-40-20-10--there was a click and the instrument flopped back to 300--it was registering in pounds now! Then the needle moved to zero, and the mighty structure floated into the air, slowly moving down the field as a breeze carried it along the ground.

The men outside saw it rise swiftly into the sky, straight toward the blue vault of heaven. In two or three minutes it was disappearing. The glistening s.h.i.+p shrank to a tiny point of light; then it was gone! It must have been rising at fully three hundred miles an hour!

To the men in the car there had been a tremendous increase in weight that had forced them into the air cus.h.i.+ons like leaden ma.s.ses. Then the ground fell away with a speed that made them look in amazement. The house, the construction shed, the lake, all seemed contracting beneath them. So quickly were they rising that they had not time to adjust their mental att.i.tude. To them all the world seemed shrinking about them.

Now they were at a tremendous height; over twenty miles they had risen into the atmosphere; the air about them was so thin that the sky seemed black, the stars blazed out in cold, unwinking glory, while the great fires of the sun seemed reaching out into s.p.a.ce like mighty arms seeking to draw back to the parent body the ma.s.ses of the wheeling planets.

About it, in far flung streamers of cold fire shone the mighty zodiacal light, an Aurora on a t.i.tanic scale. For a moment they hung there, while they made readings of the meters.

Arcot was the first to speak and there was awe in his voice. "I never began to let out the power of this thing! What a s.h.i.+p! When these are made commercially, we'll have to use about one horsepower generators in them, or people will kill themselves trying to see how fast they can go."

Methodically the machine was tried out at this height, testing various settings of the instruments. It was definitely proven that the values that Arcot and Morey had a.s.signed from purely theoretical calculations were correct to within one-tenth of one percent. The power absorbed by the machine they knew and had calculated, but the terrific power of the driving units was far beyond their expectations.

"Well, now we're off for some horizontal maneuvers," Arcot announced.

"I'm sure we agree the machine can climb and can hold itself in the air.

The air pressure controls seem to be working perfectly. Now we'll test her speed."

Suddenly the seats swung beneath them; then as the s.h.i.+p shot forward with ever greater speed, ever greater acceleration, it seemed that it turned and headed upward, although they knew that the main stabilizing gyroscopes were holding it level. In a moment the s.h.i.+p was headed out over the Atlantic at a speed no rifle bullet had ever known. The radio speedometer needle pushed farther and farther over as the speed increased to unheard of values. Before they left the North American sh.o.r.eline they were traveling faster than a mile a second. They were in the middle of the Atlantic before Arcot gradually shut off the acceleration, letting the seats drop back into position.

A hubbub of excited comments rose from the four men. Momentarily, with the full realization of the historical importance of this flight, no one paid any attention to anyone else. Finally a question of the Air Inspector reached Arcot's ears.

"What speed did we attain, Dr. Arcot? Look--there's the coast of Europe!

How fast are we going now?"

"We were traveling at the rate of three miles a second at the peak."

Arcot answered. "Now it has fallen to two and a half."

Again Arcot turned his attention to his controls. "I'm going to try to see what the ultimate ceiling of this machine is. It must have a ceiling, since it depends on the operation of the generator to operate the power-units. This, in turn, depends on the heat of the air, helped somewhat by the sun's rays. Up we go!"

The s.h.i.+p was put into a vertical climb, and steadily the great machine rose. Soon, however, the generator began to slow down. The readings of the instruments were dropping rapidly. The temperature of the exceedingly tenuous air outside was so close to absolute zero that it provided very little energy.

"Get up some forward speed," Morey suggested, "so that you'll have the aid of the air scoop to force the air in faster."

"Right, Morey." Arcot slowly applied the power to the forward propulsion units. As they took hold, the s.h.i.+p began to move forward. The increase in power was apparent at once. The machine started rising again. But at last, at a height of fifty-one miles, her ceiling had been reached.

The cold of the cabin became unbearable, for every kilowatt of power that the generator could get from the air outside was needed to run the power units. The air, too, became foul and heavy, for the pumps could not replace it with a fresh supply from the near-vacuum outside. Oxygen tanks had not been carried on this trip. As the power of the generator was being used to warm the cabin once more, they began to fall. Though the machine was held stable by the gyroscopes, she was dropping freely; but they had fifty miles to fall, and as the resistance of the denser air mounted, they could begin to feel the sense of weight return.

"You've pa.s.sed, but for the maneuvers, Dr. Arcot!" The Air Inspector was decidedly impressed. "The required alt.i.tude was pa.s.sed so long ago--why we are still some miles above it, I guess! How fast are we falling?"

"I can't tell unless I point the nose of the s.h.i.+p down, for the apparatus works only in the direction in which the s.h.i.+p is pointed. Hold on, everyone, I am going to start using some power to stop us."

It was night when they returned to the little field in Vermont. They had established a new record in every form of aeronautical achievement except endurance! The alt.i.tude record, the speed record, the speed of climb, the acceleration record--all that Arcot could think of had been pa.s.sed. Now the s.h.i.+p was coming to dock for the night. In the morning it would be out again. But now Arcot was sufficiently expert with the controls to maneuver the s.h.i.+p safely on the ground. They finally solved the wind difficulty by decreasing the weight of the s.h.i.+p to about fifty pounds, thus enabling the three men to carry it into the hanger!

The next two days were devoted to careful tests of the power factors of the machine, the best operating frequency, the most efficient alt.i.tude of operation, and as many other tests as they had time for. Each of the three younger men took turns operating, but so great were the strains of the sudden acceleration, that Arcot senior decided it would be wisest for him to stay on the ground and watch.

In the meantime reports of the Pirate became fewer and fewer as less and less money was s.h.i.+pped by air.

Arcot spent four days practicing the manipulation of the machine, for though it handled far more readily than any other craft he had ever controlled, there was always the danger of turning on too much power under the stress of sudden excitement.