Pantaleon Quiroga cranked the handle on the front of the Flanquin and the engine fired into life. The Aero-mobile shuddered and quivered, as if suddenly animate. The chain drives to the propeller mountings hummed and clattered on their sprocketed wheels. Carriscant and Pantaleon stepped back and looked on in a moment of amazement before Pantaleon beckoned Carriscant round the thrumming machine to where the spinning bosses of the pushing propellers (yet to be mounted) were fixed. Carriscant rested his hand gently on a panel of stretched and doped silk and felt the powerful vibrations travel up his arm. For the first time he sensed that Pantaleon’s dream was not a deluded fantasy after all, the fellow might actually be on to something.
“Two propellers pushing,” Pantaleon shouted, twirling his fingers in illustration. “But I’m a little concerned about the allowances I made for the fuel tank and the radiator. They were heavier than I thought.”
“Is that bad?”
“We’re getting close to the maximum weight if my calculations are right. Very close.”
Pantaleon walked forward and slung a long leg over the forward of the two bicycle saddles mounted above the four-wheeled carriage the machine rested on. He reached over and adjusted the throttle control on the engine and the noise slackened as the motor idled. He listened to it for a moment, his head cocked, and then switched it off.
Carriscant peered over his shoulder at the two wooden levers that were mounted in front of him and the pedal controls that were operated by his feet. Above his shoulders were two other levers sticking forward, like handles on a wheelbarrow, from the leading edge of the upper wing.
Pantaleon saw him looking and explained. “The whole front edge is hinged,” he said, gripping the handles and demonstrating. True enough, he could move a front flap of wing up and down through an angle of forty-five degrees. “On leaving the ground it is pushed up to the full extent to provide maximum lift. Once we are in the air I can pull it down to reduce resistance, or up if we need to be more…” he searched for a word, “…buoyant.” Carriscant had a sudden perception of a vocabulary adapting itself, creating itself. Like medicine and surgery, new discoveries enriched the language—germ, appendix, bacillus, phagocyte, micro-organism…
“I call it the air-catcher,” he said. “I’ve applied for a patent. If it works, who knows? I might—”
“If it works? My dear Panta, you can’t possibly take such a risk.”
“On the gliding models it seems fine. But once we’re up with a machine of this weight…” He turned and pointed to the second bicycle saddle behind him, with its own set of levers. “That’s why I’ve reproduced the tail-warping mechanism here.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to move seats in mid—” he was about to say ‘journey’ but it seemed wrong, “—while the machine is in the air? In its aerial trip?”
“No, no. My fellow-flyer—my co-flyer, indeed—will be controlling the warping while I deal with the elevators,” he pointed to his foot controls, “and the air-catcher.”
“I see. I suppose it makes sense.” Carriscant frowned: he had grown used to the Aero-mobile by now, with its fragile, translucent ugliness, but these controls seemed unnecessarily complex. Surely there must be a simpler way? All these moving surfaces—warping, elevating, catching—all these levers, struts and wires. When you saw a bird fly it seemed…He stopped. Pantaleon was looking fixedly at him, his eyes wide, strange.
“What is it?” Carriscant said.
“I was wondering, Salvador, if you’d do me the honour.”
“Of what?”
“Of joining me on this historic flight.”