*
Accompanied by two guards and, of course, by Gay Gordon, the dour, one eyed Scot who was to remain our overseer for the duration of the demonstration, K and myself were led from the palace back into the grey ruins of London.
Positioned at one end of an area that had been largely cleared of rubble was the gyro-plane itself. Seeing that machine then, heavy and squatting, crowned by its drooping rotor, all sheathed in the hushed twilight, I must admit I had my doubts that it could achieve flight.
The gyro-plane was not at all like the rudimentary aero-planes I had seen illustrated in the periodicals of my own time. Those machines, though seeming wondrous, had been little more than powered box-kites with a pilot and an engine perched precariously on their skinny, spider-delicate frames.
This gyro-plane was all silver steel-clad fuselage, as large and as sleek as an express train, with only stubby little stabilising wings and rudders breaking its smooth lines. From the top of the craft, a good six feet above my head, the mighty horizontal dual-bladed air-screw, at least 20 feet in circumference, hung limply under its own weight. A smaller four-bladed screw, still a good five feet from tip to tip, was positioned vertically at the flying machine’s nose.
It was powered not by clockwork, of course, but by the infernal combustion engine, fuelled by motor-spirit distilled from the crude mineral oil with which the Texian desert was so rich. The supply of this rare commodity was, K had intimated, Beau Riche’s promised reward for a successful demonstration of The Eye’s power today.
Rather than boarding the flying machine immediately, we had been halted before it while Gordon paced up and down, fiddling with his hands, rolling his shoulders and stretching out his limbs, all the time mumbling incomprehensibly under his breath. I hoped my slighter frame looked rather more appealing in its pevecy suit than did this lumpy Scot’s. K stood in silence, eyes lowered, all trace of her former false bonhomie having drained from her in the short walk from the palace. For my part, I must admit to a certain excitement, though in equal parts trepidation and confusion, about whatever it was we were to achieve that day.
Beau Riche and Ben Landon were not to be seen. I wondered how it was they were to witness the demonstration and commented on this to K.
“Oh they’ll see, all right,” she replied, dispiritedly, “don’t you worry about that.”
“Time tae board noo,” Gordon growled nervously. “Whadye’ waitin’ fo’? Move!”
And with that he prodded us up the ramp into the cabin.
This cabin was not open to the elements but enclosed like a coach, with a glazed window at the fore and several portholes along each flank. The rigid steel skeleton of the fuselage was exposed along the internal walls and against these ribs, on either side, were fixed hard metal benches, with webbing to harness each passenger in place. At the bow end of the cabin, arrayed beneath the windows in front of the pilot’s seat, were an esoteric assortment of dials and switches and one large column like lever for steering the machine.
The Eye had already been loaded and sat towards the aft, above a trapdoor in the floor of the craft, in a small cage cantilevered to the gyro-plane’s frame. It looked disappointingly dull now, like a songbird that had sung so sweetly in freedom but which refused even a single miserable chirrup in captivity.
Gay Gordon escorted K to the pilot’s seat. He stood over her, mumbling inaudible threats, as she, with crestfallen indifference, prepared the instruments arrayed before her. His two cronies pulled me to a bench and proceeded to bind the constraining webbing around me. They then alighted from the cabin, pulled the boarding ramp away and sealed the cabin door.
With a final huffed warning to K, Gordon deposited himself on the bench opposite my own. He impatiently tugged the harness around his shoulders and, after giving me a friendly scowl of encouragement, sat there, eye closed and head bowed, working his thumbs around each other uncomfortably.
K twisted a lever and adjusted a dial and the mighty air-screws atop and afore began to rotate. They turned somewhat slovenly at first, making a ‘whapping’ sound with each quickening rotation, and sending juddering throbs through the aircraft’s frame. Soon that ‘whapping’ had become a whapwhapwhap as the air-screws spun at greater frequency, the juddering in the cabin steadied to a constant humming vibration and for the first time in my life I felt the exhilaration of take-off! The gyro-plane lifted gently from the ground and moved hoveringly forwards and upwards, increasing in speed in both directions with every second.
K turned her head and glanced at Gordon. His head now rested back against an upright although his eye remained closed and his hands now grasping like talons the bench edge to either side of him. His lips grimaced even more than usual and his complexion had turned a sickly yellow. In contrast, when she turned her gaze briefly at me, I was beaming.
“Please keep your seat-belts fastened and make sure all hand luggage is securely stowed,” K advised with a smile that, if not exactly full, was at least honest. I, of course, had no luggage at all, and I do not believe I could have unfastened my harness even had I wished. But I’m sure it was good advice, all the same.
Gripping both hands around the steering column, she pulled it back firmly and sent us soaring up into the grey expanse of that future sky. I gasped. Gay Gordon moaned.
As we approached altitude, K levelled off the gyro-plane.
“You may now unfasten your seatbelts,” she said.
She turned and winked at me. Then, quite casually, released her grip on the steering column and stood up.
Gordon had opened his eye at K’s words. Now, it bulged like some unhealthsome hard boiled egg squeezed through his eye-socket.
“What – What are ye doing, ye mad lassie bitch,” he stammered. “Ye’ll kill uz all!”
Despite his airsickness Gordon had managed to release the webbing from his shoulders and stand, if a little unsurely. He took a hulking step towards K. But, quick as a flash, K darted around the Scot and locked her arm around his neck. I just sat there, stricken.
“The column,” she barked at me. “Grab the bloody column! Just keep it lev-”
But before I had chance to contemplate any action, the gyro-plane lurched forward, its nose rapidly dipping into a sickening dive, sending Gordon, with K attached, stumbling towards the bow. The airscrew began to whine as the gyro-plane began to drop. K, her arm still around Gordon’s throat, groaned as she was forced against a steel upright by the weight of the struggling Scot. She hung on to him still, though he scrabbled more successfully at her loosening grip, and shook his whole body from side to side, gurgling and gasping for air, trying to throw her from his back. She was thudded once more, twice, against hard steel and released a more pitiful moan with each impact.
I scratched at the unfamiliar fastenings of my harness and, by luck, managed to loose one arm. My fingers pulled and pinched at the tight straps around my other shoulder. Wrench frantically as I might I just could not free it.
Every rivet creaked as the gyro-plane shuddered into a sharper dive.
My frenzied scratching must have loosened the harness! But, oh briefly won fortuity! Unconstrained, I was flung from my bench and found myself introduced unceremoniously to the grated steel of the deck. My elbows and knees seemed to peel and bloom with pain until, my head reverberating with a growing numbness, my physical suffering was overtaken by a more terrible stupefaction.
I stared helplessly up at K as I slipped prostrate down the shuddering floor toward the bow. She was a poor rag-dolly hanging from the neck of the bucking Scot. I knew she could not keep her hold much longer. But what did it matter? The air-craft whined in to a steeper still descent. I did not hear K moan as, somewhere beyond me, she was crushed against angular steel once more.
Doomed. All three of us.
I closed my eyes.
* * *