Free The Red Journey Back by John Keir Cross

she nodded; and
then all three women (I mean Katey and Mother and Jacky) dissolved into floods
of tears, floods and floods of them, and all us men went off to the lounge and
had something to drink.
    Now
of course it’ll maybe seem crazy, but even though we’d been to Mars and through
all those marvels, Jacky and I were really just as excited at the notion of
flying to America! We’d never been, you see; and there was Mike, nearly two
years younger than me, and he’d been—we could just picture him boasting and swaggering about the place thinking
he’d put one over on us.
    So
wham!—off we go: zoom!
    I
wish I’d time to tell you all about this part of it—I mean the flight to
America, and America itself. But it isn’t part of the story, really, so I’ll
have to keep that for another time. Suffice it to say etc., etc. (as they put
it in books), that we got there without any trouble—that is, the whole bunch of
us except Mr. Mackellar, for he wasn’t coming. We had to leave him behind in
England for he was all tied up with the airstrip job for the Government. The
last we saw of him he was standing on the runway with Mum and Dad as we went
out to the big American plane at Northolt, and he was positively stuffing
himself with snuff, clouds and clouds of it, and offering some to Dad and Mum,
and Dad was even absent-mindedly taking some and then sneezing like mad, but I
think it was just a good excuse to pretend that that was why there was just a
hint of tears in his eyes, and I don’t mind confessing (off the record) that I
could have done with a small pinch of snuff myself for the same reason.
    Ah
well.
    We
got there—I mean America—and we met Dr. Kalkenbrenner, and there was Mike,
beside him, strutting about like a young peacock! You’d think he’d invented Dr.
Kalkenbrenner. (It’s an awfully long and queer name to write down every time,
and I refuse to be as vulgar as Mike and call him “old Kalkers,” so I’ll simply
say “Dr. K.” from now on and you’ll know who I mean. His other names were “Marius
Berkeley,” so taking it all in all he was a bit of a mouthful—but a really
decent chap all the same: about forty-five, and very tall and distinguished-looking,
with a little pointed beard and a deep voice and a nice friendly smile. We took
back all we had ever thought about him in the days when he wasn’t “on our side”
after we came back from Mars last time.  . . . )
    As for the Comet  . . .  !
    I’ve
got to confess that fond as I was of the old Albatross ,
it really wasn’t a patch on Dr. K.’s job. Of course, it’s understandable
enough—Dr. K. had had much longer to work on it than poor old Doctor Mac had
had, and he had bags more money. There were what are called “Very Big Interests”
behind Dr. K., and he had much of Doctor Mac’s research to build on and improve
on. We know all that, and it doesn’t take away one whit of poor old Mac’s
achievement, but the Comet really was something all the same. If you can picture the Albatross as, say, a good solid seagoing tramp,
with just a bit of a homemade touch about it, then the Comet was almost a full-fledged liner.
    To
begin with, it was a different shape altogether from our old craft. The Albatross had a kind of bulbous nose, then
tapered away to the tail—we used to say it was like a fish, and so it was, of
course, but maybe it would be better to compare it to a kind of gigantic
tadpole. The Comet wasn’t a bit like that: it was very long and slender, and went to a most
delicate point at the nose end, then bulged out very slightly in the middle and
went to another long slope- away at the back—like a cigar, really. In fact, it
was much more like the usual idea of a rocket than the Albatross ever was, and with three huge fins, set like arrow feathers, which had enormous
extending brackets ,
I suppose you could call them, which folded out when you weren’t in space, and
made it possible for the whole affair to stand up on