Harry Takes Off: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 1) Read online

  I relayed the first instruction from our flight plan: one that took us south-east and away from densely populated areas. Should the Albatross crash its “fireworks” would explode with nightmarish ferocity. Our altitude increased steadily, as did our airspeed; soon we were at 200knots and climbing at a comfortable 2000ft/minute. In just half an hour we were set to reach our target of 75,000ft.

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 08:03

  We achieved 75,000ft. Europe was laid out below us, with heavy cloud cover over Spain and the southern parts of France. Ishar boiled a kettle and we had some tea. I could have taken something a little stronger but at least Ishar makes tea in the British fashion, not the devilish substance they drink in the sub-continent.

  We verified the status of each system before we activated the first set of rockets. We had tested them in level flight several times, and I have to say that the acceleration was quite strenuous. If you will excuse the levity, I will say it is best not to be drinking tea at that point, and to be firmly strapped in. The addition of straps on our seats ensured there was no repeat of the earlier incident with Dr Cholmondley and the rabbit.

  Every action we must carry out had been written out in painstaking detail, derived from the extensive knowledge of the Royal Navy Air Corps then refined and added to by our own experiences. But we had reached the end of our list; from now all experiences would be new, for we were to undertake activities that no man had performed before.

  The Captain ordered us to strap in and put on the light-defeating goggles. These goggles, devised by Cholmondley but based on those used by metal smelters, are very thick and heavily tinted. The Doctor claims they block light from the infra-red to the ultra-violet, and that this will be necessary once we have exited the protection of our atmosphere. Despite the fact they make it difficult to see anything properly, there was no one to gainsay it, and his description of how the light of the Sun would burn out our eyes was sufficient threat.

  Ishar closed off the chemical intakes, the thrust during this stage makes handling the furnace too risky, and we ran on the remainder of the steam pressure and batteries. I ensured Jezebel was switched off to prevent battery drain; she was sturdy enough to withstand the acceleration without further attention.

  We reached the penultimate stage, and the Captain disengaged the propellers. This step was found to be necessary after the damage caused to the turbines on an earlier flight when our extreme rocket-propelled velocity forced the propellers to turn the engine instead of the other way around. We were lucky to return on that occasion though, as it was, we were forced to set down on a public beach.

  Through the porthole the propellers continued to turn slowly driven by our movement through the thin air.

  “Engaging rockets in 3… 2… 1… engage.”

  It was always a shock, even though I knew what to expect. First there was the muffled roar as the rockets ignited. Then the pressure as we were forced back into our seats. I saw the indicators on the Captain’s board, five lines of three lights apiece—representing the five sets of three rockets—the first line flickered to orange and, as the thrust increased, one turned green; the other two followed quickly.

  In all previous flights the Captain kept us on a flat trajectory during the rocket burn: the horizon in my nearby porthole always a horizontal line across it. But this time he wrestled with the helm. He pulled it towards his chest, expending considerable effort. The pressure descended from my back to my seat and I was pressed downward. The Earth’s horizon had become a diagonal slash across the porthole.

  The seconds ticked away and rockets continued to burn. Curiously the pressure moved again, returning to my back. I realised the effect must be related to our primary direction of travel rather than our orientation to the Earth.

  “500 knots, 100,000ft!” Called the Captain, I could hear the strain in his voice. We had climbed a third of our altitude again in only seconds. Through the goggles the sky seemed darker, almost black. The burn ceased and our weight disappeared – completely! I felt as if I were falling, and yet I would have been floating if our straps did not hold us firmly in place.

  “What is this?” I cried out, then caught myself, pushing down my panic.

  “No weight,” said Ishar’s quiet voice behind me. He was right, of course; Cholmondley had postulated such a thing. We were on a ballistic trajectory, falling yet still ascending. I knew the mathematics but the experience was quite another thing.

  “Engaging second burn in 3… 2… 1… engage.”

  It seemed to me that this burn was even more powerful, driving me back into my seat, but applying the power of reason to the question I realised that the atmosphere was now so thin there was no resistance to our flight and the vessel was prey to the full force of the rockets. I confirmed the truth of this by peering through the porthole; the rotors were entirely motionless despite our vast velocity.

  Looking out, I was struck dumb with astonishment. We know our Earth is a ball floating in the Void, but now I could see its horizon curving across the view. The scale of it, and its wondrous beauty, stole all thought from my mind.

  A minute later and we were once again weightless. The Captain ordered the furnace to be fired and pressure brought up. I enquired as to our height and speed. The Captain unstrapped himself and floated free of his chair. He retained a grip on the shoulder strap. I stared. To see a man float in the air exceeded my understanding.

  It was shock upon shock. I shut my eyes and felt only my heart thumping in my chest. The sensation of falling did not diminish but the thundering of my heart slowly eased to a mere martial beat. I opened my eyes again and felt a little more comfortable.

  “It is strange, is it not?” said the Captain.

  I nodded my head perhaps a little too vehemently. The Captain smiled and glanced out of a porthole. “We must be travelling in excess of two thousand miles per hour and still increasing in altitude. However I would like to know our heading and I believe that is your post, Mr Finley-Blythe. You are our navigator.”

  Methods for determining our course, altitude and velocity had been discussed at length between Dr Cholmondley and I, along with trusted navigators and computationers. We had some ideas as to approaches that might work so I set about the task.

  “Mr Ram?” said the Captain. “How is the furnace? Do we have pressure?”

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 08:15

  I carefully unstrapped myself from the chair—and immediately floated out of it. The sensation was astonishing: as if I were flying. It was the dream of mankind down the ages made manifest. To be like a soaring bird, to be one with the angels, to fly!

  However I soon discovered this state of having no weight is not how one might imagine flying to be. There was no sense of orientation except that provided visually by one’s surroundings. Whether one was aligned normally to the cabin or, at the gentle thrust of one’s hand, turned vertically upside-down, it felt no different within oneself. And thus was revealed the nature of living on a planet, where one is forever commanded by gravity to be in a certain orientation. It is a dictatorship—of a type. Yet when one is unbound from those constraints, one immediately feels lost.

  However the Captain had given me a command and I could not shirk.

  Beneath the vessel a glass and steel bubble had been constructed specifically for the purpose of allowing me to observe the planet below with the intention of determining our course, altitude and speed. I braced my feet, undogged the hatch in the deck and pulled it open. A short ladder was provided but was superfluous in this environment.

  I allowed my feet to rise “above” me and pulled myself through into the observation bay head first.

  If my sensation of falling had been bad before, it now struck me like a blow to the stomach. For beneath me (or above me, for direction had no meaning), through the thick glass, lay Mother Earth, the place of our birth, with the great curve of her horizon running across the sky.

  At first I was unable to determine our position. Not only was I breathless
watching the huge swirls of cloud that hung below us, but there were no reference points I could recognise. There was a great expanse of blue beneath us, a brilliant white glow to one side, and a vast region of brown.

  I closed my eyes to more easily visualise our original trajectory and extrapolate it. I was unprepared for the truth, but once I aligned my thoughts I opened my eyes and could see it clearly as a map. The whiteness was the southern polar ice-cap while the vast rust-red land with green edges was Australia. The far south of that continent was hidden by cloud and I could imagine the storm raging beneath it.

  It was then I saw it: The thing that should not have been.

  That the Void contains objects both great and small is well known. There are the eight planets, of course, and many of them possess their own orbiting families of satellites, like our own moon.

  Between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars are the asteroids: the wreckage of the cataclysmic destruction of an entire planet so many millennia in the past.

  Then there are the smaller objects, shooting stars for example, which we now know are rocks falling into the cloak of our atmosphere and burning with a fierce fire, and the comets of which we know almost nothing.

  But what I saw was none of these.

  I breathed out with a suddenness that revealed I had been holding my breath. The Sun glinted on the metallic surface rotating below me, and somewhat to our stern. It could not be anything except a man-made object—or, if the imaginists are to be believed, the product of some alien intellect. I am too sensible to believe such a thing.

  And yet, we were the first humans to have ventured beyond the atmosphere and into the Void. We British possessed the most advanced industry in the world and the Royal Navy the most powerful vessels.

  And yet, there it was, mocking everything I held to be true.

  “Captain.”

  There was no response and I realised I had barely spoken above a whisper. I did not wish to return to the cabin as I feared that if I took my eyes from the anomaly it would vanish never to be seen again.

  “Captain!” I shouted with as much volume as I could muster.

  There was a pause in which I wondered whether I had been heard or, in a strange panic, if I were suddenly alone in the Void. But then there was the sound of movement at my feet.

  “Mr Finley-Blythe? Is there a problem? Have you determined our position?”

  I did not wish him to prejudge the matter so I spoke carefully. “There is something I need you to see, sir.”

  “If you were to leave your position that would be simplest.”

  “Yes, sir. However I would ask that you humour me, and come down here next to me.”

  I knew what thoughts would now be marching through his mind. Dr Cholmondley had warned us to be alert for signs of mental derangement in one another. There was no knowing what result might come from the strange experiences we were undergoing, or indeed from energies and particles of which we know nothing.

  The object continued to approach and it was clear it would not be hard to see as it turned and glinted. But just as I had decided to leave my post and let the Captain replace me, he determined to follow me down. I squeezed over to the side to give him room.

  Women are never concerned about the closeness of others of their sex, they will gladly link arms and embrace their friends and cousins, but it is difficult for men to be in close proximity without great embarrassment. This was such a moment.

  After a few moments the Captain had squeezed in beside me.

  “What is it you wanted me to see?” he asked.

  I did not reply as he cast his eyes about the heavens, the tremendous sight of Mother Earth caused him to sigh. And then I heard a sharp intake of breath as he saw the object.

  Sept 3rd, 1874, 08:25

  We reconvened in the main cabin.

  “Gentlemen,” said the Captain. “This is an intriguing situation.”

  Captain Chingwell was an officer with more than 10 years’ experience commanding flyers of a wide variety of types and had seen active service in Crimea. And yet I could not help but feel he was unsure of our next move.

  “We have believed that the Albatross would be the first vehicle to be thrown into the Void,” he paused. “It appears we were incorrect in that assumption. And we are in the presence of a man-made construction that will pass us in…?” He looked at me.

  “I estimate fifteen minutes, sir.” It was a guess; there was no time to prepare a computation for my Jezebel.

  “We have two choices: We can hope it passes us by without striking, perhaps make evasive manoeuvres as needed; or we intercept it and see what we can discover of its nature and origin.”

  “I do not wish to be branded a coward, Captain,” I blurted out. “If we return safely to our home and must report we hid inside our metal bird, we will not be able to hold our heads up. It may be there is great danger here but I believe we should investigate.”

  The Captain smiled and nodded. “A valid point, Mr Finley-Blythe, though I think you forget we are the first three Navy officers to brave the Void. I do not think your bravery would be questioned.”

  I felt the heat rise in my cheeks at his words. I remembered the farewell my Beloved had given me, and her words of encouragement. But the Captain continued.

  “There is, I believe, a more compelling argument. This object demonstrates there is a power on our world, or beyond it, that possesses a level of industry at least the equal of Her Majesty’s best. Such a power may be a threat to our nation and its colonies. It is our duty to investigate and report what we find as best we may. Mr Finley-Blythe, if you would be so kind as to turn over your first set of notes to Mr Ram for the safe box. Then determine how we may best achieve a rendezvous with the object.”

  Much thought had been given to how we might send messages back to the Earth even if we were unable to return ourselves, but all ideas were in vain. One cannot simply drop a message out of the ship in the vain hope it returns to Earth at a location where it may be found. The best idea we could manage was to provide a space in the vessel that would survive any sort of crash landing–as long as we were able to crash somewhere we would be found. So, though we might lose our own lives, we could still pass on such knowledge as we were able.

  With that morbid thought in mind I collected my notes, gave them to the engineer who opened the safe box, and placed them inside, while I set about the calculations as best I could.

  Once more in the observation area I was astounded by the ship–for such it was–because it was quite enormous. Great riveted and welded plates made up the bulk of its shape. It lacked the smooth contours that assisted atmospheric travel, but instead it was cubic though elongated along one axis. Even its shortest dimension exceeded the not-inconsiderable wingspan of the Albatross.

  The whole thing rotated slowly. As I took my measurements and scribbled them on a notepad, one of the longer sides turned to face me and revealed a huge opening with a colossal hatch hanging open like a limp lip. Finally the rear came into view where wide ports for some form of propulsive exhaust stood cold and dark.

  Its design suggested only one thing to me: This vessel was never intended to enter the atmosphere. I became cold at the thought. The builders of this Void ship were so confident in their skills they built vessels meant only for the Void itself. As if this were their natural environment.

  The brightness of the Sun flashed on the windows of the vessel once more and my eye was drawn to a painted sign on the front, a pictorial representation of an erupting volcano, and the words neatly formed in English: Voice of Krakatoa. It was shock upon shock. The builders spoke our native tongue as their first language.

  I took a breath and focused my thoughts to the order I had been given. Within a few minutes I had completed my computations then returned to the Captain with the news of my discoveries and the result of my calculations. The Captain accepted my report with equanimity; he wore his command with confidence.

  “If you would take your seats,
gentlemen.”

  At the Captain’s order we strapped ourselves in. Mr Ram had run the furnace hot to build up steam for the coming manoeuvres and then shut it down. I offered up a prayer to a God I hoped would listen to a miserable servant such as I.

  According to the design of Dr Cholmondley, the gyroscopes of the Albatross could be used to alter its attitude to any direction once in the Void, and our vessel had been equipped with steam thrusters for small changes of direction, in order to facilitate our return through the atmosphere. The arithmetic of such manoeuvres was my responsibility.

  We had passed across the Antarctic whiteness and emerged near South America. We could see the line of night approaching, we was imperative we perform this manoeuvre soon or we would lose the light.

  I had not stowed my pencil and it floated in front of me. When the Captain applied rotational stress to the gyroscope it began to rotate–or rather, we rotated around it. Through the front canopy the image of our Earth traversed as if it were orbiting about us.

  And then the view was fully taken up by the lifeless vessel. It was so close I gripped my knees in terror. I heard the Captain swear under his breath but he did not panic as I had done. I watched him operate the steam-thruster controls, following my prescribed plan, and I was pressed into my seat as we rose above the slowly turning monster. The Earth came back into view. The Captain slowed our passage through the Void by driving the rear thrusters and I imagined the bulk of the derelict slipping away beneath us.

  Then he rotated us again until we could see the vessel glittering against a black sky filled with stars. He gently nudged the Albatross closer and closer until the firmament was hidden by the enormous bulk of the other vessel.