Free The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock Page B

arranged with the first-class deck at the bottom and the third-class deck at the top. This single great gondola was, in fact, indivisible with the “hull” (as the gasbag was called). At the front, in the ship’s tapering nose, was the control bridge where, for all the delicate machinery ‘thinking’ for the ship, there were more than a dozen officers on duty at any one time.
    The Light of Dresden needed three mooring masts to keep her safely near the ground and, when I first glimpsed her at the Calcutta Airpark (which was, in fact, about ten miles from the city) I gasped, for she made all the other ships—and there were some largish ones moored nearby—look like minnows surrounding a whale. I had already heard that she could carry four hundred passengers and fifty tons of cargo without trouble. When I saw her, I believed it.
    I went aboard the airship via a lift which bore me and several other passengers up through the metal cage which was the mooring mast and set us off level with a covered catwalk leading into the passage below the ship’s bridge. I was traveling first class with my ‘guide’, a Lieutenant Jagger, into whose keeping I had been put until we reached London. The amenities on the ship were astonishingly luxurious and put to shame anything to be found on the finest ocean liners of our own time. I began to relax somewhat as I looked around me. And when, later, the Light of Dresden let go her moorings and began to sweep with magnificent dignity into the sky, I felt almost safer than I had felt on land.
    The journey from Calcutta to London took, with short stops at Karachi and Aden, seventy-two hours! Three days in which we had sailed over India, Africa and Europe, over three great oceans, through most kinds of weather. I had seen cities laid out before me. I had seen deserts, mountains, forests, all speeding past below. I had seen clouds which resembled organic objects. I had been above the clouds when it had rained, drifting tranquilly in a blue, sunny sky while the people below were drenched! I had eaten luncheon at a table as steady as a table at the Ritz (and laid with a meal almost as good as one would receive there) while we crossed the Arabian Sea and I had enjoyed my dinner while flying high above the burning sands of the Sahara Desert!
    By the time we got to London, I had become quite blasé about flying. It was certainly the most comfortable form of travel I had ever experienced—and also the most civilized.
    I was, I will admit, beginning to count myself the luckiest man in the history of the world. I had been taken from the grip of a deadly earthquake in 1902 and placed in the lap of luxury in 1973—a world which appeared to have solved most of its problems. Was not that the best kind—the most unbelievable kind—of good fortune. I thought so then, I must admit. I was yet to meet Korzeniowski and the others...
    I apologize for the digression. I must try to tell my story as it happened, give you an idea of my feelings at the time things were happening, not what I felt about everything later.
    A t sunset of our third day, we crossed the Channel and I had the experience of seeing the white cliffs of Dover far below me. Shortly after that we circled over the indescribably immense airpark at Croydon in Surrey and began our mooring manoeuvres. Croydon was the main airpark for London because, naturally, a big airpark can hardly be placed in the middle of Piccadilly. The Croydon Airpark was, I discovered later, the largest in the world and had a circumference of nearly twelve miles. The airpark was crowded, needless to say, with scores of airships both large and small, commercial and military, old and new. Those of us who had journeyed all the way from India had no need to pass the Customs inspection and we went through the reception buildings and took our places on the special monorail train for London. Once again I was dazed by all that was going on and was grateful for the steady, solid