The Twenty-One Balloons PMC

by William Pene du Bois

  “But this spell, as you call it, seems a little unreasonable to me for the simple reason that it challenges a will of human nature that is far greater than the will to be rich, this being obviously the will to live. How can you live happily here under the constant threat of being blown sky high? Now that I think of it, this whole Island is like a turkey stuffed with nitroglycerin. The surface of the earth here which is right at this moment moving us gracefully up and down is obviously activated by molten lava. A crack in the earth’s surface and the cold waters of the Pacific would rush in. Imagine what would happen then, cold water coming suddenly in contact with molten lava. This hollow rumbling shell would suddenly find itself like a covered kettle of boiling water on a stove—the resulting steam would cause pressure enough to blow the top right off the whole Island. No one could survive such an explosion. What good would your diamonds do you then?”

  “We’re all only too much aware of this possibility. It troubles me just to hear you mention it. We have come to look upon it this way:

  “If it should happen with the speed with which you have just described it, nobody here would have time to think or know what was happening to him. It would mean painless death. However, if we have a warning, which we all somehow expect to have, there is a quick escape from Krakatoa. Given as little time as ten minutes to get off the Island, we’ll all be safe and on our way to some other country. This escape, and the fact that Krakatoa has been here an uncalculated length of time without blowing up, makes living here under the ever-present threat of extinction possible.”

  “What is this escape?” I asked. “Do you keep the freighter always steamed up and ready to go?”

  “It would take the freighter longer than ten minutes to leave here,” said Mr. F. “It’s not that, it’s the other invention I promised to show you yesterday. This is an invention we all worked carefully on for many months, starting right after the big explosion in 1877. Our lives depend on it, but due to its huge size and its motivating power, we are unable to try it out. There is no reason why it shouldn’t work, and when I say this I mean no reason ‘on paper’; its maiden voyage will have to prove its worth. It’s a flying platform, a huge platform big enough to take us all swiftly into the air within ten minutes of a warning from the mountain.”

  “A platform capable of lifting twenty families of four?” I asked. “This makes child’s play of flying carpets. How do you hope to get it off the ground?”

  “With balloons,” answered Mr. F.

  This idea appealed to me immensely. The idea of the lives of eighty people being entrusted to such fickle and unpredictable traveling companions as balloons was quite frightening but thoroughly enjoyable.

  “You are all prepared to risk your lives in a balloon contraption. I like this very much. A little while back I was starting to think of Krakatoans as being greedy, calculating, and traditionally dull billionaires. Now I find you are incurable romantics. Tell me, how can such a massive weight as that of twenty families be lifted off the ground?”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Mr. F., “but we are not risking our lives on any foolhardy conveyance. The balloon platform must work! It’s got to work. It can’t help working. Look, I’ll show you.”

  I walked over to where Mr. F. was lying, sat down beside him, and watched him as he sketched the platform in the sand. He made a bird’s-eye view of it and drew the twenty balloons around its outside edge. It was rectangular in shape. He started writing numbers in the sand. “I don’t know how much the actual platform weighs by itself,” he said, “it is made of the lightest pine wood in the world imported by us especially for this purpose from South America. It is made of light beams, and the floor boards are laid with spaces between them for greater lightness. The balustrade around the platform is of hollowed wood —the woodwork couldn’t possibly have been made lighter. Before I tell you about the balloons I want to make it clear that I am going to give you the figures in round numbers with the margin of error all in favor of the success of the machine; thus the lifting power of the balloons will be calculated as a little less than it actually is, and the weight we are carrying will be computed as heavier than it would actually be. There is really no accurate way of planning balloon inventions. Too much depends on atmospheric conditions, the purity of the hydrogen used, and weather conditions. I will give you the roundest of figures.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “The balloon platform is lifted by ten large balloons of 32,400 cubic feet each; and ten balloons, half as big as the larger ones, of 16,200 cubic feet each. The larger balloons will fly higher than the smaller ones which will be situated in the spaces between the larger ones thus alternating around the platform, one large, one high, and one small, one low, etc.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “The total hydrogen needed to fill all twenty is 486,000 cubic feet. Free hydrogen has a lifting power of roughly 70 pounds per thousand cubic feet. The twenty balloons have a combined lifting strength of 45,360 pounds.”

  “How much do you figure the eighty people will weigh?”

  “Well,” he said, writing down more figures in the sand, “if you divide the eighty people by sexes, half are women. If you divide them by generations, half are children. One hundred and thirty pounds per person is a safe figure under these circumstances. The eighty people will weigh 10,400 pounds. But let me see, how much do you weigh?”

  “In the roundest of numbers,” I answered, “I weigh 180 pounds.”

  “All right,” said Mr. F., “that makes 10,580 pounds, leaving 34,780 pounds over to take care of the total weight of the platform.”

  I agreed that this all sounded very reasonable. “But one thing bothers me,” I said. “How do you get the balloons filled with hydrogen and the platform off the ground in ten minutes?”

  “That was our most difficult problem. Come with me, I’ll show you the platform and how we think we have solved the question of a fast getaway.”

  I put my bathrobe on and followed him through the jungle fringe. After a good long walk, we came to a clearing which was as far away from the mountain as it was possible to get on the Island. The huge platform was situated here. I remembered having seen it from the Balloon Merry-Go-Round the day before. I had thought then, seeing it from the air, that it was some sort of outside dancing floor with a bandstand in the middle. What I thought was the bandstand turned out to be a large steel cylinder.

  Mr. F. showed me four great wooden vats, one on the ground near each side of the balloon platform. There were hoses leading from the vats to the balloons in what Mr. F. described as “pitchfork connections.” The hoses were large and single as they left the vats, then branched off into smaller hoses, each one attached to a balloon.

  “This is how we believe we have solved the problem of a quick takeoff,” he said, “compressed hydrogen. Each of these vats contains three hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen compressed at sixteen hundred pounds to the square inch. The hydrogen is kept in steel cylinders which are submerged in water in the vats to keep leakage down to a minimum and keep the hot rays of the sun from direct contact with the cylinders. In the event of an emergency we will all rush to the platform, jump on, and each family will stand by a balloon. The big valves in the four vats will be turned on full force. Each family will have to see that its balloon is carefully handled so that the tremendous rush of hydrogen into it won’t cause any tears, rips, or snarls. The smaller balloons will fill first. There is a lever near each balloon loon which controls the valve allowing gas to enter it. When the small ones are three quarters full their valves will be shut off. Shutting off the smaller balloons’ valves will speed the filling of the big ones since they will be receiving all of the pressure.”

  Mr. F. then picked up one of the hoses and showed it to me. There was a sort of ball-and-socket connection in each hose. He explained that it took a hundred-and-fifty-pound pull to separate the hose at this connection. “Each hose has a connection such as this,” he explained; “twe
nty hoses makes a total pull of three thousand pounds. The balloon platform isn’t tied down with ropes before the takeoff, it is held down only by these hoses. Gas rushes into the balloons until the platform rises and there is a three-thousand-pound pull on the twenty hoses. The platform then tears itself away from the hose connections and leaps into the air as if it were given a huge boost. There is a valve in the ball end of each ball-and-socket connection. It allows gas to be forced into the balloon but prevents gas from escaping when the connection with the vats is broken. When the balloon platform is in the air, the hoses will be pulled in and attached to hoses from this smaller compressed hydrogen tank on the platform itself. It is with the hydrogen on the platform that flight will be controlled.”

  “How can you control the flight of the platform?” “By adding hydrogen to the balloons we can go higher to a certain extent. By detaching the hoses from the tank on the platform and releasing hydrogen from the balloons, we can make the platform descend. Where we go is, as usual, left entirely to the winds. However, since we carry our own hydrogen supply, there is no reason why, with any sort of a wind and a minimum of luck, we can’t travel a tremendous distance.”

  “How do you keep the platform level?”

  “We plan to do that in much the same way as we keep the Balloon Merry-Go-Round level, only the process will be reversed. We have no desire to take long trips in the Balloon Merry-Go-Round so we keep it level by releasing hydrogen from the high side until it is even with the low side. On the balloon platform, we will add hydrogen to the low side to bring it up level with the high side so that the platform as a whole will gain altitude instead of descending. Each family will stand near its balloon on the platform, thus distributing the weight fairly evenly. There is a lever near each balloon, as I have already shown you, which controls the gas going into the balloon. The boy in each family will control the lever because of his greater experience with the Balloon Merry-Go-Round. When his balloon is a little lower than the others, he’ll add more gas to it and bring it up even with them.”

  I walked around on the platform. The floor boards were springy underfoot and you could see grass underneath through the spaces between them. I tried to imagine this huge floor in flight, looking through the boards at a city underneath. How frightening and incredible it would be, to be moving through space on such a huge piece of construction with eighty other people. The balloons were carefully folded and under tarpaulins. I took a look at several of them. They were magnificent, made of beautiful rubberized silk, and each balloon was painted many different iridescent colors. I tried to picture the reaction of people in other countries if they were suddenly to look up in the sky and see the balloon platform, its white latticed floor bordered by a graceful balustrade over which were leaning the richly clothed Krakatoans; the twenty brilliant balloons above and the frightening silence with which such a huge airship would seem suddenly to make its appearance. There is no noise in balloon travel. In any other form of travel you are warned by some sort of noise of the approach of whatever the conveyance. Even ships cause a ripple of waves in the calmest of waters. Balloons are silent except on rare occasions when you might possibly hear the ghostly whistle of the wind through the ropes. There is no nicer way of traveling than in some form of lighter-than-air craft.

  “The balloon platform would certainly make a delightfully attractive appearance if it should have to fly over any foreign country,” I remarked.

  “Its appearance played a big part in its planning,” said Mr. F. “It wasn’t really necessary to go to all the trouble we did in making the handsome hollow-carved wooden balustrade, or to put so much thought, work, and time into the painting of the balloons—a lighter, simpler balustrade and plain balloons would have made the platform fly just as well. If we should have to land in other countries we want to be welcomed as extraordinary visitors who have gaily announced their arrival, rather than be suspected of being invaders in some sort of aerial Trojan Horse. By the way,” he added, “have you a parachute?”

  “Of course not,” I answered, “I threw everything overboard on the Globe. I didn’t carry one anyway, I didn’t feel I needed one.”

  “Each family here has a family parachute, another invention of ours. A family parachute is so built as to keep a family of four together during a descent.”

  “Isn’t it possible to land the balloon platform?”

  “Hardly so,” said Mr. F. “In the first place, it would be hard to find enough level space in which to land such a huge aircraft; and in the second place, it wouldn’t be possible to deflate the balloons fast enough to prevent the wind from blowing it and dragging it across the countryside. We would have to deflate them slowly in order to make a reasonably smooth landing, and before we would be able to collapse them, the wind would drag us off, ripping the platform into splinters and endangering our lives. We wouldn’t dare risk a landing in this; we plan to jump off, picking our countries and spots with care—if we ever have to take a trip on it. Professor Sherman, I would advise you to get a parachute as soon as you possibly can.”

  “How can I get one in Krakatoa?” I asked.

  “See Mrs. M. She and her husband designed and made the family parachutes. I am sure she has enough silk left over to make you an ordinary one.”

  We went together to the M.’s Moroccan house and I told Mrs. M. my problem.

  “Why, certainly,” she said, “I can make you a parachute. But it will take me about two weeks. But then I doubt if you’ll be needing it before then. I hope not anyway,” she said, laughing.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Take your time—there’s no rush at all.”

  X

  What Goes Up Must Come Down

  I SPENT THE MORNING OF AUGUST 26, 1883, or “D” Day of the Month of Lamb in Krakatoa, as I had spent the morning before, swimming and sun bathing on that delightful little fine coral beach. After having had a day of light eating at the C.’s Chinese restaurant, I attacked a Dutch breakfast at Mr. D.’s with gusto, a breakfast which included many cups of the richest, most delicious hot chocolate I have ever had the pleasure of drinking. I was afraid to go in swimming after such a huge meal, so I took a sun bath with my good friend Mr. F. for an hour or so when we reached the beach. I was pleased to see that I was getting quite tan. I got my first real burn when I made my bizarre nude arrival on Krakatoa, added to it the day we flew in the Balloon Merry-Go-Round, and considerably darkened it the morning before on the beach so that I was fast losing my comparatively pale appearance which so distinguished me at first from my fellow Krakatoans.

  “Up to now,” said Mr. F., as the movement of the earth’s surface rolled him over near me, “you have asked me many questions which I have done my best to answer.

  I think you now know just about all there is to know about life on the Island. Now I am going to ask you to tell me all you can think of in the way of news about my native city San Francisco, a city from which you have just arrived and which I haven’t seen in over seven years.”

  “That’s fair enough,” I said. I then started to think of how best to do this. As a schoolteacher I was pretty well tied down to a rather monotonous form of urban life, but I did get to know a lot of people. I conducted classes for children between the ages of ten and fifteen, which was the ages of the children of the Krakatoan families. I reasoned therefore that the parents of the children I taught must have been the same age as Mr. F. I described San Francisco to him as a social columnist would, telling him about these people as if they were my closest friends, telling him what they were doing in terms of parties, minstrels, circuses, theaters, dinners, and whatever social functions I could remember having attended with any of them. This proved to be an excellent idea, for he had known some of the people I mentioned and had heard others talked about by friends of his on Krakatoa, I suppose one doesn’t think of one’s home town in terms of streets and buildings as much as one does of personal associations, friends, and relatives. Whenever I mentioned a friend of his, his eyes l
it up and he started firing all sorts of questions at me. He was amazed at the many details, stories, and anecdotes I could tell about their children. “You must be very fond of children,” he said; “you seem to take such a humorous and sympathetic attitude toward stories of their classroom tricks and pranks.” I still had no intention of telling anybody on the Island that I had been a schoolteacher but, of course, in telling Mr. F. about his friends in San Francisco, I had clearer memories of their children, to whom I was subjected every day, than of their parents, whose homes I only visited on rare and usually trying and formal occasions. “Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’ve always been close to children.”

  I continued, mentioning more people Mr. F. knew and recounting as many incidents as I could recall about them. I must say Mr. F. was a good listener. He had been lying down flat on his back. He was now propped up on his elbows and seemed completely fascinated with my account. “Just a minute,” he said, “I hate to interrupt you but I have a wonderful idea. Everybody here is from San Francisco and I am sure they would get the same thrill hearing of their old friends and of their friends’ children as I am getting now. Would you possibly consider giving us all a talk, just like this one, in the dining room after lunch?”

  “I would be only too delighted,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” said Mr. F. “You can’t imagine how much they’ll like this. Our conversation here always seems eventually to get around to San Francisco and we haven’t had any real news of our old friends in years.”

  We took a swim, let the sun dry us off, and returned to Mr. F.’s house. While I was dressing, Mr. F. ran around to all the houses preparing everybody for the talk I was going to give. I was very pleased that in this simple way I was perhaps going to be able to repay them somewhat for their fabulous hospitality.