Ghosts of Engines Past

by McMullen, Sean

  “Between us alone, sire, yes,” said Raimond hoarsely.

  “What was it like?” asked the king eagerly.

  “Death's hand rested upon my shoulder while I was aloft, I felt the chill of his fingers like knives of ice.”

  “I would like to know the feeling, Raimond.”

  “No you would not, sire.”

  By the time Lady Angela rode across the drawbridge Baron Raimond was waiting to greet her. Dismissing their escorts they rode away together, alone, and initially in silence.

  “You brought my theories to life,” Angela remarked guardedly as they reached the trees. “You are indeed remarkable.”

  “Not so, my lady. My friend Alren the Moor studied your work and helped me render your designs into silk, pine and wicker.”

  “Alren!” exclaimed Angela.

  “Given the circumstances, we decided it was not wise to reveal just why he was studying in the Tower of Wings.”

  “Understandable,” replied Angela frostily, her eyes narrowing.

  “I provided the gold to build the devices, and—Ah, and here is the engine itself, with Alren standing guard.”

  Alren was standing beside the flight engine, but he avoided Angela's eyes as she dismounted. She put her hand out to grasp a wing, but being lighter than she realised, the flight engine swayed alarmingly. She drew back, thinking she might have damaged something.

  “By trial and error we learned to build much lighter and stronger than your drawings specified,” explained Alren. “And we used flexible wicker joints so that the wings would bend instead of being torn off during the launch.”

  “At first we launched it weighted only with sandbags,” added Raimond. “There were crashes, but presently the engine flew straight and gently.”

  “But today the flight engine was being controlled!” said Angela firmly. “Somebody was lying within the wicker cradle. Alren, it was you? It must have been you.”

  “Ah ha ha, but I have no courage for such feats and adventures, excellent lady. It was Baron Raimond who flew both trial flights, then again today.”

  “Raimond, two flights?” echoed Lady Angela, staring at the baron.

  “You witnessed the third,” said Raimond.

  Lady Angela turned back to the silken wing, running her hands over what she could scarcely bring herself to believe could exist.

  “So much risk... but why?”

  “Why, to win your favour, my lady. Compliments, feats of arms and jewelry cannot move your heart, that is well known. Thus I complimented you by bringing your design to life. Rather than trying to prove my bravery in battle, I flew your flight engine instead.”

  “Oh, and instead of jewels you give me the completed flight engine,” said Angela hopefully, caressing the wing teasingly instead of falling into Raimond's arms.

  “Ah, that and more. Instead of jewels, I give you the idea of launching flight engines with a trebuchet. I am not sure that any man has ever given his beloved an idea as a gift before. Are you pleased?”

  Lady Angela stared past Raimond for a moment, her eyes unfocussed, then she put a hand above her left breast, swallowed, and gasped loudly.

  “Are you not well, my lady?” asked Raimond, full of concern.

  “It is no serious matter, my lord,” she said, now smiling and without guile. “My heart has just been moved, and the feeling is quite new to me.”

  Raimond felt as if his body was a fist unclenching. He knelt in the grass, took Angela's hand and kissed it.

  “Edward Longshanks was delighted when I delivered the Tower of Wings to him without loss of life or damage,” explained Raimond, still holding her hand. “He will shield you from charges of witchcraft, he gave me his word on it.”

  “My lord, thank you indeed. In all the world I thought it impossible such a man as you could exist, yet... here you kneel before me. For me you studied, for me you flew, and most incredibly of all, for me you actually thought.”

  She drew him to his feet and at last they embraced, standing beside the red, silken wing of the flight engine. Alren stood with his arms folded and his back to them, his face impassive. Presently Raimond rode off to fetch men to dismantle and carry away the flight engine. While she and Alren waited, Angela made a pretense of examining the wingtip flaps.

  “Did—did you tell him?” she asked.

  “Tell him what, excellent lady?” asked Alren, his back still turned to her.

  Angela rocked the wings in a parody of flight.

  “About... that I weakened.”

  “Did you want me to tell him?”

  Unable to allow herself to approach him, Angela brushed her lips against the silk wing that his hands had helped to fashion.

  “In all the land, only Raimond could teach you anything of chivalry, most gallant Moor. Keep my books when you return to Spain, and my blessing as well.”

  Angela and Raimond were married late in that same summer, but Angela died in 1305. Church chronicles claimed that she had been beaten to death as a witch, all accounts of the flight engine were sponged from the contemporary chronicles. The distraught Raimond never remarried, and made sure that their two sons were brought up to be models of medieval nobility. When Angela's grave was opened in the Nineteenth Century, her skeleton was found to have no less than seventeen fractures. This was consisten with being beaten to death, yet it was strange that the Latin inscription on her tomb declared I DIED CONTENT.

  Alren returned to Spain after the Tower of Wings was surrendered, and he took with him Angela's books and his own chronicle of the siege. Until his archives were rediscovered there had been nothing at all known of the fantastic experiments by Lady Angela, Baron Raimond and Alren himself. Only now was the mystery of Angela's death finally put to rest. She had died violently, yet she had died content. That could only have happened if she had died at the controls of a flight engine, having learned for herself how it feels to fly.

  8. SVYATAGOR

  It is 1969. If the Soviets had been a little better at quality control, the race to the moon might have been a real race.

  I often wondered how the space race would have looked if it had been more like a real race.

  In 1838 two steamships raced to be first to cross the Atlantic by steam power alone. The little Sirius ran out of coal just short of New York, but the captain had the fitting, spars, furniture, and even paneling chopped up and fed to the furnace. It was worth it, and Sirius beat the much bigger and faster Great Western to New York by a few hours. Shortly after the Soviet Union's unused moon landing technology was finally revealed, I read a description of their one-man lander by a western expert. He said the interior was like the cabin of a steam train, with astonishingly simple controls. Before I had even finished the article I was mapping out this story. What if the Soviet N 1 and the American Saturn 5 had been launched only hours apart in July 1969? It would have been a real race to the moon, with steampunk against cyberpunk.

  ~~~

  This time there was no explosion as the enormous N1 moon rocket thundered up into the clear blue sky above Baikonyur, and the only people not watching the 338 foot cone ascending ponderously on the fire of its thirty engines were the two cosmonauts aboard.

  “Thrust will be reduced at 25 seconds while Svyatagor passes through the period of greatest dynamic pressure,” the television commentator announced to the world.

  The rocket continued to perform flawlessly as the seconds ticked past. At sixty five seconds the announcer's voice returned, although he was now too absorbed to disguise the tension that was gripping him.

  “Svyatagor is throttling back up to full power.”

  This was the nightmare point of greatest danger, where aerodynamics and mechanical stresses were at their worst, yet the immense cone of Svyatagor continued to ascend. Near its apex, Ilya and Nikolai breathed a little easier in spite of the acceleration pressing upon them.

  “Svyatagor, you can now take control,” mission control announced calmly. “Proceed according to plan.”r />
  “Acknowledged, Baikonyur,” said Nikolai, then he switched off the radio link. “Telemetric link failed,” he said to Ilya.

  “A little early … for failures,” grunted his companion.

  “Any failure always... too early. Still... happier as pilot... than passenger—”

  There was a thump that they felt rather than heard. It was followed by rough shuddering. It was not pronounced, but quite distinct.

  “Lost an engine!” rasped Nikolai.

  “Still... feeling happy?” asked Ilya.

  The shuddering ceased for some moments as the KORD failover system balanced Svyatagor's thrust by shutting down the big Kuznetsov engine on the opposite side of the base. The shuddering began again.

  “Losing another engine!” exclaimed Nikolai, this time with far more alarm.

  Seconds later the ride became smooth again as the corresponding opposite engine was shut down. The G-force from the acceleration was noticeably less.

  “Twenty six engines, we can fly on that,” said Ilya.

  “Not long to go. Only seconds.”

  For a third time the shuddering returned.

  “Must have been an explosion,” said Nikolai. “Or a fire, spreading, killing other systems.”

  “... 91, 92, 93, not long now,” replied Ilya.

  “Can’t chance it. Have to separate early, on manual.”

  “... 103,104, 105—”

  “Separation! Second stage ignited!”

  Again the ride became smooth. There was a much louder and sharper thud as the protective fairing split off and fell away with the escape tower.

  “Baikonyur, separation at 105, as planned,” reported Nikolai to the control room.

  The code words 'as planned' had replaced 'normal separation' in his report. This meant that there had been a serious problem, preventing them from separating at 110 seconds. There were unalarming code words for every possible type or malfunction, all for the ears of unfriendly listeners.

  “Confirmed, Svyatagor,” was Baikonyur’s reply.

  Nikolai shivered. 'Confirmed' instead of 'Acknowledged' meant that his action had been judged correct. What had the ground staff seen that he had not? Perhaps his action had been merely judged prudent, in view of the string of engine failures. They had scraped up enough velocity to continue the mission, provided that they had flawless burns with the remaining stages.

  “I think the first stage exploded after separation,” commented Ilya.

  “They would never tell us,” replied Nikolai.

  “True. What we don't know will not make us wet ourselves.”

  The eight engines of the second stage continued to burn smoothly, and there was no more shuddering.

  “Requesting extension estimate for second stage, Baikonyur,” Nikolai asked over the radio.

  “Extension four, Svyatagor. Repeat, extension four.”

  “Confirm extension four, Baikonyur.”

  “We run the second burn to 134 seconds,” Nikolai said once the radio was off. “The reserve fuel may allow us to save the mission.”

  The following two minutes seemed to pass as if they were hours, but the second stage engines burned smoothly. At 134 seconds there was a heavy thud as Nikolai separated the second stage, followed by a few moments of intense fright before the four engines of the third stage ignited.

  “Baikonyur, reporting a perfect separation and third stage ignition,” reported Nikolai.

  “Very good Svyatagor, continue flight plan optimum.”

  “The optimum plan,” said Ilya once the radio was switched off. “That means burn to flameout on the third stage.”

  “That can mean a rough stop.”

  “The radar must show our velocity to still be below what is required. We need the dozen or so extra dozen seconds to make up for the failure of stage one.”

  “We are hanging on by our fingernails, comrade.”

  “Better than falling.”

  The third stage burn was the longest, scheduled to be 400 seconds. A failure now was likely to be less dangerous, but would still end the mission. Six minutes passed. Six and a half.

  “... 380, 381,” said Nikolai. “Not long now.”

  There was a sudden change in the note of the rumble coming through Svyatagor's frame, but no shuddering followed.

  “Loss of power, but we still have a burn,” said Nikolai.

  Ilya said nothing, and tried to concentrate on his breathing while the pressure from the acceleration continued. The 400 second mark passed. They reached 410, then 420, 430 and 440.

  “449, 450,” reported Nikolai. “Must be problems with a fuel pump.”460... 465—”

  There was a brief shudder Svyatagor was wrenched about by the imbalance of one of the four engines running out of fuel. Nikolai killed the others at once. They felt the weightlessness immediately, and the background rumble of the engines was replaced by the whispering of air pumps. Nikolai jettisoned the third stage.

  “Baikonyur, pleased to report that Svyatagor is in Earth orbit,” reported Nikolai. “Proceeding at optimum normal.”

  “Very good, Svyatagor. Baikonyur out.”

  “Optimum normal?” asked Ilya. “Are we in so much of a hurry? The Americans are not due to launch Apollo 11 for another nine hours.”

  “There is a little unspent fuel and oxidant left in Stage 3, along with a defective pump. If a leak allows them to come into contact, there could be an explosion. That means a lot of debris.”

  “Serious problems with two out of three stages,” muttered Ilya. “This does not inspire confidence in the remaining five stages.”

  “The Americans have spent thirty times more money on their Saturn rockets and Apollo moon landers than it cost us to develop Svyatagor and Cloudfall. They are already ahead of us, even though they have not yet launched. Two of their Apollo spacecraft have even orbited the moon. We are flying against the better judgement of our finest engineers, relying upon the crossed fingers of the entire population of the Soviet Union, and using a craft that would make American safety inspectors throw up their hands in horror.”

  Svyatagor had been scheduled to make two orbits of the Earth, but a mere seven minutes after the burnout of the third stage, Nikolai ignited the fourth. With a scheduled burn time of eight minutes, it was the longest burn of the mission so far. As with the second stage, the burn was flawless, and the two cosmonauts were greatly relieved as the single NK-31 engine shut down. They exchanged a conversation with Baikonyur in code, preparing for the news conference to come. The coded messages were not encouraging. Both the first and third stages had exploded, and American radar had monitored the demise of the third stage. Tass had declared the explosion as a 'planned self-destruct for safety reasons', but the Americans were not convinced.

  “Our news conference is scheduled for ten minutes before the American launch,” said Ilya as they sat with the radio off, preparing to face the international media through their tiny television camera. “They cannot be feeling happy.”

  “True,” replied Nikolai. “Thanks to orbital dynamics and Comrade Newton, they cannot reach the moon before us unless we screw up the landing.”

  “Unless I screw up the landing,” Ilya reminded him. “Remember, I have to fly two more stages than you, both highly unreliable.”

  The news conference was chaotic at first. The launch of Svyatagor had not been announced in advance, in fact even those in charge had not been entirely sure that they would launch at all until ninety minutes before the deadline. The latter fact was not mentioned, of course. The first half of the interview was conducted in Russian, then it was the turn of the English speaking reporters. Both cosmonauts could speak English.

  “Angela Branston, BBC!” barked a female voice. “Can you explain the name of your rocket for the audience outside the Soviet Union?”

  Svyatagor's command module had no display screen. Ilya replied to the woman that he could not see.

  “Svyatagor was a mighty giant in our folklore, and a friend
of the great warrior Ilya Muromyets. Our moon rocket is named after Svyatagor because of its great power. Cloudfall was Ilya's horse. He was as intelligent as a human, and could speak. Ilya had the strength of thirty three men. I am not so strong, of course, but I shall be riding Cloudfall down to the moon.”

  “So, is it a coincidence that another Ilya is riding Cloudfall?”

  “No. I chose the name.”

  “Jim Jenkins, ABC Network. As we all know, Apollo 11 is about to launch. Do you have anything to say, any message for the astronauts?”

  “We wish them luck in their mission. It is the same as ours, and no less dangerous. They need luck just as much as we do.”

  “What is your reaction to the NASA plan to cut seven hours off their flight schedule?”

  “To beat us to the lunar surface, the Apollo mooncraft must cut nine hours from its outward trip. We are too far ahead.”

  The news conference ended soon after that. Nikolai flicked the switch of the radio with considerable relief.

  “No, the Americans need considerably less luck than we do,” he sighed as he floated in his straps.

  “Not entirely,” replied Ilya. “Now they are cutting corners, like us. If we have to make one or two lunar orbits too many before landing, they could beat us to the surface.”

  Svyatagor's trip to the moon was uneventful, compared to what was going on behind them. Apollo 11 had been launched on schedule, had left Earth orbit early, and had burned all its reserves of fuel. In the case of the Soviet design there was no transposition and docking manoever, so Svyatagor would keep the same configuration all the way to lunar orbit. The American mooncraft's change in configuration was covered in the most intimate detail possible, yet the world was ravenous for more news. The Svyatagor cosmonauts were saying little, so rumours grew and flourished continually. They were dead, their craft was disabled, the command module had exploded like the discarded third stage. Then would come the next transmission, and a short news conference. Each time the news was the same: all was well on Svyatagor. The fact that they were slightly off-course was raised, but Nikolai just shrugged. A minor correction was needed, he said without any apparent concern.