Bell looked for the source. It sounded loud enough to rouse a sleeping firehouse. Oddly, none of the mechancians and birdmen in the infield paid it any mind. The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

“What was that?”

“Platov’s thermo engine,” said Archie. “A crazy Russian. He’s invented a new kind of aeroplane motor.”

Still watching the sky for Josephine, Bell let Archie lead him to a three hundred length of rail at the beginning of which perched a strange mechanism. Mechanicians were assembling a large white biplane beside it.

“There’s Platov.”

Women in long white summer dresses and elaborate Merry Widow hats were gazing spellbound upon the handsome Russian inventor, whose thick, curly dark hair, springy as a heap of steel shavings, spilled from a straw boater with a bright red hatband, and tumbled down his cheeks in equally curly mutton-chop whiskers.

“Seems to have a way with the ladies,” said Bell.

Archie explained that they were competitors’ wives, girlfriends, and mothers traveling aboard the support trains.

Platov was gesturing energetically with an engineering slide rule, and Bell noted the gleam in his dark eyes of the “mad scientist.” Though in Platov’s case, the Russian appeared less dangerous than eccentric, particularly as he was busy romancing his admirers.

“He’s prospecting for investors,” Archie said, “hoping some fliers will try it in the race. So far, no one’s ready to give up propellers. But his luck might have changed. That fat fellow in white is a Mississippi cotton farmer with more money than brains. He’s paying to test the motor on a real flying machine. Mr. Platov? Come tell my friend Mr. Bell how your contraption works.”

The inventor touched his lips to several of the ladies’ gloves, tipped his boater, and bustled over. He shook Bell’s hand, bowed, and clicked his heels. “Dmitri Platov. De idea is dat superior motor-powering fly machine Platov is demonstrating.”

Bell listened closely. The “thermo engine” used a small automobile motor to power a compressor. The compressor forced liquid kerosene through a nozzle. An electric spark ignited the volatile spray, creating thrust.

“Is making jet! Jet is pushing.”

Bell noticed that the voluble Russian appeared to be well liked. His fractured English provoked snickers among the grease-stained mechanicians who gathered to watch, but Bell overheard them discussing the new engine with respect. Just like mechanicians at an automobile race, they were tinkerers, always on the lookout for ways to make machines faster and stronger.

If it worked, they were saying, the thermo engine had a good chance of winning because it tackled head-on the three biggest problems holding back flying machines: excess weight, insufficient power, and the vibration that threatened to shake their flimsy frames to pieces. So far, it was tethered to a rail, down which it had “flown” repeatedly at a high rate of speed. The real test would come when the artificers finished assembling the cotton farmer’s airship.