8.
Airship to Swindon

. . . There is no point in expending good money on the pursuit of an engine that can power aircraft without propellers. What is wrong with airships anyway? They have borne mankind aloft for over a hundred relatively accident-free years and I see no reason to impugn their popularity . . .

Congresswoman Kelly, arguing against parliamentary
funds for the development of a new form of propulsion,
August 1972

I TOOK a small twenty-seater airship to Swindon. It was only half-full and a brisk tailwind allowed us to make good time. The train would have been cheaper, but like many people I love to fly by gasbag. I had, when I was a little girl, been taken on an immense clipper-class airship to Africa by my parents. We had flown slowly across France, over the Eiffel Tower, past Lyon, stopped at Nice, then traveled across the sparkling Mediterranean, waving at fishermen and passengers in ocean liners who waved back. We had stopped at Cairo after circling the Pyramids with infinite grace, the captain expertly maneuvering the leviathan with the skillful use of the twelve fully orientable propellers. We had continued up the Nile three days later to Luxor, where we joined a cruise ship for the return to the coast. Here we boarded the Ruritania for the return to England, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay. Little wonder that I tried to return to the fond memories of my childhood as often as I could.

“Magazine, ma’am?” asked a steward.

I declined. In-flight airship magazines were always dull, and I was quite happy just to watch the English landscape slide past beneath me. It was a glorious sunny day, and the airship droned past the small puffy clouds that punctuated the sky like a flock of aerial sheep. The Chilterns had risen to meet us and then dropped away as we swept past Wallingford, Didcot and Wantage. The Uffington White Horse drifted below me, bringing back memories of picnics and courting. Landen and I had often been there.

“Corporal Next?—” inquired a familiar voice. I turned to find a middle-aged man standing in the aisle, a half-smile on his face. I knew instantly who it was, even though we had not met for twelve years.

“Major!—” I responded, stiffening slightly in the presence of someone who had once been my superior officer. His name was Phelps, and I had been under his command the day the Light Armored Brigade had advanced into the Russian guns in error as they sought to repulse an attack on Balaclava. I had been the driver of the armored personnel carrier under Phelps; it had not been a happy time.

The airship started the slow descent into Swindon.

“How have you been, Next?” he asked, our past association dictating the way in which we spoke to one another.

“I’ve been well, sir. Yourself?”

“Can’t complain.” He laughed. “Well, I could, but it wouldn’t do any good. The damn fools made me a colonel, dontcha know it.”