Free Battle Hymn by William F. Forstchen Page B

told you before I thought you had consumption, and I'm telling you now that you do."
    Ferguson nodded calmly. "I knew that all along, sir."
    "Well, now. You can live to a ripe old age if you take good care of yourself and follow my orders exactly. We'll talk more about it later."
    "Sir, a few things I'd like you to see," Chuck said, ignoring Emil.
    "All right, but you're too valuable to be out here in the middle of nowhere," Andrew replied. "You're heading back to Rus with me tomorrow."
    Chuck looked as if he wanted to protest, but a sidelong glance to Varinia, who was smiling at Andrew's orders, stilled him.
    "This way, sir."
    Andrew and his companions followed Chuck down the hill and into the shops. Ferguson had insisted on working out at the new airship station, but Andrew could see from Emil's worried expression that it was time to end that.
    Ferguson led them into a room that was brightly lit by a row of kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling. Half a dozen draftsmen labored at long tables.
    "We're working on some new airship designs," Ferguson announced, pointing to a drawing.
    "This one here will be twin-engined, giving us an estimated speed of twenty-five miles an hour at cruise and forty in a pinch. It's designed for quicker maneuvering, sort of a fighting ship to hunt down other ships. We'd also have a fallback if there's an engine failure. I'm planning this with a three-man crew—a pilot, an engineer who would act as a rear gunner, and a gunner on top."
    "How far along are you?" Andrew asked, leaning over the table to study the drawings.
    Ferguson smiled. "Nearly done, out in hangar five right now."
    "Let's go see it."
    "But there's something else first," Chuck added. He reached into a drawer in his table, pulled out a roll of paper, and pinned it to the board.
    "This is the real beauty."
    The reality of it didn't hit until Andrew saw the scale line at the bottom of the drawing. "Good heavens, Chuck! You're talking about an airship over four hundred feet long."
    Chuck grinned. "It'll be powered by four engines mounted two fore and two aft. Now that we've got a good supply of hydrogen we can completely eliminate the hot-air bag. That'll give us even more lift. It'll have a pilot, an engineer, and three gunners."
    "But whatever for?" Andrew asked.
    "Range and lift, sir. Our old ships had a radius of operation of less than two hundred miles. I expect the two-engine machine can do four hundred. I'm looking at eight hundred miles with this, maybe twelve hundred when the new engines are perfected. We could fly it clear from here to Rus and carry close to a ton of either passengers or munitions at forty miles an hour."
    "Trains do it better," Pat sniffed, "and a damn sight safer."
    "Trains don't go south or east yet," Ferguson replied. "Sir, even with the older engines we could fly this damn near all the way down into Bantag country. If it was stripped down to just a pilot, an engineer, and one gunner and all the rest of the weight was fuel, I guarantee you it'd get there and back. We'd have photographs sitting on your desk of what they were doing in their camp less than forty-eight hours after they were taken. It could solve once and for all the question of whether they were heading east and leaving us alone or stopped and preparing to turn north. And another thing, sir. We can't send a boat up any of them rivers without maybe triggering a fight. If we fly this thing and keep it at ten thousand feet, hell, sir, there's nothing they can do. No shots are exchanged and those worrywarts back in Congress won't have a fit."
    Ferguson leaned forward.
    "Sir, it'll end the questioning once and for all about what's going on down there. With luck, maybe we'll find nothing and that will end it. That will mean their patrols are just trying to make sure we stay at a distance. Hell, it might even mean they're afraid we're coming after them. But if we do find something, it will end this deadlock with Congress and we can be ready for