Ghosts of Engines Past

by McMullen, Sean

  “But you could have done that without spying on him,” I pointed out, not following his logic. “Why bother employing me?”

  “Because I had to be sure that Walter had a dream that he was truly passionate about. Now that I know he values this, this steam aircraft, I can threaten to take it away.”

  “What of me? I did everything you asked.”

  “And you did splendidly. You papers are with my solicitors, and you will be given permission to claim them before I leave tomorrow.”

  I should have been overjoyed. Instead I felt as fearful as a woman in a death cell, awaiting the hangman. My life was at the crossroads. I could tell Tommy the truth that very hour, but he would hate me for using him to spy on his master. That meant losing him. I could burn the papers I had worked so hard for, marry Tommy, and live out my life as a housewife who was unusually good at adding up and multiplying. That meant losing my career. Whatever I did, I lost something dear to me. Mathematics could not tell me what to do, but it could help me to run away from horrible decisions for a few more hours.

  All day I went about my tasks with numbers pouring through my mind. While scrubbing floors, I worked out the torque that would be produced by a ninety thousand horsepower steam turbine. I concluded that the lightweight gearwheels and axles that I had seen in Walter's diagrams would disintegrate long before full power was achieved, provided the turbine blades did not shatter first. As I boiled water for the laundry I calculated flow rates for liquid oxygen and paraffin, and the volume and temperature of the resulting exhaust gases. I concluded that the metals currently available for the construction of turbines would fail catastrophically under such an onslaught. As I dusted, I pondered the impossibly large weight of Walter's aircraft. While having a cup of tea, I wondered whether the technology of the steam turbine had actually eluded Walter, and that he was keeping his defeat a secret.

  At noon there were raised voices upstairs, and I knew that Lord Raslin had delivered his threat. Walter stormed out of the mansion, and through a window I saw him turn and shake his fist at the upstairs balcony.

  “Aye, I'll preserve the family name all right!” he shouted to his father. “After tonight the family name will live on long after even the queen herself is forgotten.”

  He then called for Tommy to raise steam in the shunting engine, and within a quarter hour he and Tommy were towing the long wagon away to Doncaster, with two tanks, the steam pump, the metal cabin and the steam chamber loaded aboard.

  It shames me to say that I was glad to have Tommy away from Wallsford, so that I could continue to hide from my inevitable decision behind figures and equations. Afternoon became evening. Tommy came back from Doncaster on the shunting engine an hour after sunset, leaving Walter to whatever he was doing at the liquid air factory. Like the coward that I am, I feigned a headache and hid in my room, calculating, worrying, and thinking about horsepower.

  In his notes to the draftsmen and engineers, Walter kept describing the steam engine's output in horsepower, and power is a measure of work. Work is the amount of motion a force imparts to an object over some measure of time. All steam engines produce torque because they turn machinery which ultimately turns the wheels that the locomotives sit upon. Walter's notes and diagrams only ever concerned the explosive generation of steam, and occasionally had the words 'Capable of producing ninety thousand horsepower' in the space where the turbine was meant to go.

  Nothing made sense. Walter had told his men that his engine would burn paraffin and liquid oxygen to produce steam and carbon dioxide, eliminating the need for a boiler. There would be no soot to befoul Britain's cities and countryside. He had to be lying, because the engine was designed to burn four tons of paraffin and liquid oxygen in just thirty seconds. This was ludicrously impractical, yet I kept feeling that I was missing something important.

  The steam chamber had pipes for admitting liquid oxygen and paraffin into a space for combustion, and a large nozzle for taking it out to drive the turbine, yet no turbine smaller than a house could make use of so much steam and carbon dioxide heated to over two thousand degrees Celsius. It made more sense to eliminate the turbine altogether and just use the exhaust gases alone to propel...

  Suddenly I had it! The notes about the turbine, the featureless boxes on the diagrams where the turbine was meant to go, even the comments about ninety thousand horsepower, all of it was a ruse. The ninety thousand horsepower turbine did not exist, it was camouflage to disguise the true nature of Walter's engine.

  With the fictitious turbine removed I now did new calculations to determine the raw thrust produced by the steam chamber. It did not take long, but the conclusion was quite a shock.

  “Sixty-one thousand pounds!” I exclaimed, staggered by the figure. “God in heaven, the steam chamber is the engine.”

  If there was no turbine to turn them, why have the airfans? They were a ruse too. What of the wings? With twenty-seven tons of thrust pushing it, the thing could obviously become airborne, yet all the drawings were of a vehicle with iron wheels designed for rails. It could take off readily enough, but landing it on a pair of rails would be an impossibly precise feat of flying. As a thought experiment, I allowed the wings to be yet another ruse. What would be left?

  “A streamlined locomotive driven by a monstrous steam and carbon dioxide rocket,” I concluded aloud.

  The weight of the long wagon was no more than fifteen tons when loaded with just the cabin, tanks, fuel, oxidant and wheels. Perhaps it was as little as half that. As the propellants were burned, it would become lighter and accelerate faster. I frantically scribbled more figures, refused to believe my own calculations, then did them again. The second answer was identical to the first, and there was only one conclusion. Depending on its actual weight, and providing that the axles and bearings of its wheels did not melt, the Hellfire could probably reach a thousand miles per hour. At the Hellfire's controls, Walter could travel faster than sound.

  Now I had my answer, but along with it came a very important conclusion: the Hellfire was already complete. It could be tested at any time. It could be tested that very night.

  I dashed out of my room and ran through the house, then clattered up the stairs. I was stopped by Lord Raslin's butler in the upstairs drawing room.

  “His lordship is not to be disturbed,” the man declared in a most condescending tone.

  I sorted through the possibilities as I stood confronting him. I could try to reason with him, but he was not aware of who I was. I could try to explain, but my story was quite fantastic, and I doubted that a butler would have a good enough grasp of the mathematics, physics or engineering to understand what I was saying. I could also resort to direct action.

  Dashing across to a sideboard, I began to snatch up expensive glassware and crockery and fling it at the mirrors and windows, screaming as loudly as my lungs would permit all the while. At first the butler was stunned into inaction, but after a moment he came after me. I dodged around the table, still screaming, but I was in skirts and he was faster and stronger than me. Tipping the table on its side, he managed to grab my arm, then he lifted me from the ground. At that moment Lord Raslin came out of his study.

  “What the devil is the meaning of this?” he shouted.

  “Walter completed his engine—” I cried before the butler clamped a hand over my mouth.

  “I'm dreadfully sorry sir,” said the butler, but his lordship now saw who I was.

  “Harrison, put her down and stand aside,” said Lord Raslin. “Now young lady, explain yourself.”

  “Walter is not building a flying machine!” I cried. “The thing that was towed to Doncaster today, the long wagon, is his real vehicle.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lord Raslin. “The long wagon cannot move by itself.”

  “The long wagon is a new type of steam engine, lordship. It will burn all four tons of liquid oxygen and paraffin in half a minute, generating twenty-seven tons of thrust.”

  “You mean Walter
is trying to... er, well, precisely what is Walter trying to do?”

  “Lordship, I don't know all the weights and variables, but twenty-seven tons of thrust for thirty seconds could propel that thing faster than sound. It is almost ready for use, he only has to have the streamlined shell bolted onto it. He is probably doing that as we speak.”

  “What else have you worked out?”

  “I think the Hellfire will shatter long before it reaches its top speed because of the air rushing past. If a hurricane of a hundred miles per hour can tear buildings and ships to pieces, imagine what a seven hundred and sixty miles per hour wind can do. Walter is going to die.”

  Lord Raslin went as white as chalk.

  “Die?”

  “Yes! He has built a cabin for the front of that thing and he intends to be the driver. It's certain death. If by some miracle it doesn't fall apart from the air's buffeting, the brakes will melt at that speed if he tries to stop.”

  “But Walter must know all this. What does he think he is doing?”

  “He's taking revenge on you for the death of his sweetheart, lordship.”

  “How dare you accuse me of that!” shouted my employer, although he looked as guilty as a dog with a string of sausages.

  “I don't, but Walter does, and he's committing suicide to strike out at you. You want your family name to live forever through Walter's children, but Walter took you at your exact word. The family name will certainly live forever if he becomes the first man to travel faster than sound. Then he will die. You will have no grandchildren, but the name of Shelton will never be forgotten. That is his revenge.”

  Lord Raslin considered my words for no more than a few seconds.

  “Harrison, I have to go to Doncaster,” he cried to the butler, pointing to the door. “Tell Parker to have the shunting engine ready.”

  “Very good sir,” said the butler, who left at once.

  “But lordship, Master Walter's rocket train will be on that same track,” I warned.

  “I'll have the signals set to stop all northwards traffic,” he said. “Miss Dobrinsky, come into the study.”

  I watched as he took a paper from his coat pocket, dipped his pen in an inkwell and scratched out his signature.

  “Take this to the offices of Cripps and Costigan, they will give you the strongbox with your papers. That was brilliant work, young lady, brilliant work.”

  With that he hurried out.

  Now I had no idea what to do with myself. I had my future as a mathematician in my hand, but that would be at the price of humiliating Tommy. He loved me as an ignorant maid with promise, but I was a spy who had been using him. I needed a plan to explain myself, but for all my powers of logic and reasoning, I could think of nothing. The balcony window was open, and I went outside for some fresh air to clear my head. The night was quite cold, but I noticed that a chair had been taken outside and that Lord Raslin's pipe was on the balustrade. Beside the pipe was a large clock. Why had he been out there?

  The clock began to chime. On the stroke of midnight a green flare streaked into the sky to the south, and almost simultaneously there was a bright glow from the direction of Doncaster. I knew that had to be the Hellfire's engine being ignited at the Liquid Air Works, five miles away. The clock clacked out the seconds.

  At four seconds Walter and the Hellfire were already traveling at over a hundred miles per hour, and he was the fastest man alive. At the eighth second the Hellfire's speed was over two hundred miles per hour. As it burned its propellants it grew lighter and accelerated faster. At eleven seconds the glow in the south was still steady, which meant that the Hellfire had survived to pass three hundred miles per hour. At fourteen seconds I wondered what Walter was thinking at that moment, for he was hurtling toward us at four hundred miles per hour.

  All the while there was silence at the manor, except for the ticking of the clock. Sound travels at just seven hundred and sixty miles per hour, so the first rumblings of the engine would take twenty-five seconds to arrive from Doncaster. The light from the engine's exhaust remained steady at seventeen seconds. Walter's machine had passed five hundred miles per hour but remained intact. The force of the increasing acceleration would have doubled or tripled his weight. Could he raise his hands to work the controls? Was he afraid?

  The clock ticked the twentieth second. At six hundred miles per hour the Hellfire was blasting through a windstorm unmatched by nature in all the history of the world, yet the light from it remained steady. I heard a distant rumble at twenty-five seconds. The sound from the Hellfire's ignition at Doncaster had reached me at last, but the machine was traveling at seven hundred miles per hour and would soon overtake its own sound. I felt sure that Walter was smiling his demonic smile through the single window of the streamlined cabin.

  Over the next few seconds the Hellfire passed the speed of sound and kept accelerating. Walter must have told his father to sit on the balcony, with a clock, at midnight. He wanted an audience as he streaked past, it was the key to his revenge. Even had he seen the signals flagging him to stop, he may not have been able to reach forward and draw back the throttle because of the acceleration pressing upon him.

  The Hellfire streaked past the manor, and although the light from the trackside lamps was dim, I could see that its wheels were at least a yard above the rails. I later calculated that it had been traveling at eight hundred miles per hour. Forty-four years later, Walter Shelton's secret speed record still stands.

  The shunting engine had just pulled out onto the main track when the Hellfire arrived.

  I saw a brilliant flash of light, then the shockwave and blast flung me back through the doorway, so that I lay senseless for some minutes. I was not really conscious of hearing the explosion, but I certainly felt it. By the time I returned to the balcony, the sheds, factory and offices were blazing fiercely.

  Only now did I realise that Tommy would have been on the shunting engine. The shock was like a sliver of ice piercing my heart, yet I became curiously numb. Nothing could have survived that impact, the equations describing the inferno were cold, unyielding and absolute. Tommy was dead, and so was Lord Raslin, his son and the butler. My problems were over, I had my papers, and Tommy would never know who I was or why I was there. Lady Caroline's problems had been solved too, for she was the sole heir to the Raslin estate and fortune. The difference was that she hated Master Walter, while Tommy was my friend. I had lost the only man who had ever treated me with kindness, and all my years of logic and mathematics provided neither equations nor solutions for that. I do not know how long I stood at the balcony, but it could not have been more than minutes, because the fires had not begun to die down when I finally turned away. I had accepted that Tommy was dead.

  I had reached the front door when I heard Lady Caroline and Tommy talking outside. I froze, terrified. He had to be a ghost.

  “They're gone, Ladyship!” he was saying. “Lord Raslin was driving. He and his butler, they were in the shunting engine when the explosion happened.”

  “And Walter?” she cried.

  “I don't know! Lord Raslin had me get off the engine and go to the signal box to switch the signals. He said there was no time to lose, and that he would drive the shunting engine to town without me. I switched the signals, I really did, but there must have been a wagon full of liquid air left on the main line and his lordship drove into it.”

  “So he is dead?”

  “I fear so. I must go now, and help fight the fires. Please, tell Jane that I'm alive.”

  “I'll do that.”

  Tommy was alive, but I had accepted that he was dead. I had grieved in error, yet now I could not accept that he was alive after all. I only stepped outside once he was gone.

  “Jane, Jane, don't worry, Tommy's alive!” Caroline cried as she ran towards me.

  I held up my hand to stop her, and I kept my expression as cold as snow upon the wind.

  “I am not what I seem, ladyship,” I said, making up my story as I spo
ke. “I am... in the pay of a firm of solicitors. I was hired by Lord Raslin to work here as a maid, and discover what Master Walter was doing. I did indeed learn the truth, but I was too late.”

  “I don't understand—”

  “Good, and keep it that way.”

  “No! The explosion, the fire! What happened? Did you see anything?”

  “I saw everything. Master Walter was testing his Hellfire engine on the main line and when Lord Raslin drove the shunting engine onto it. They collided at a speed that defies comprehension, and... and you are now a very rich widow.”

  That was putting it a little too bluntly, for Lady Caroline fainted into my arms. I dragged her onto the lawn and fetched some water from the fountain to splash on her face. When she revived I explained a little more of what had really happened. As I expected, she did not make any pretense of grief over Walter's death.

  “Tonight I shall vanish from your life,” I said as I helped her to her feet. “Tomorrow evening you will report to the police that five hundred pounds is missing from the house. You will blame me.”

  “What? No! You haven't taken anything, have you?”

  “Just do as I say, ladyship. It will cause me trouble otherwise.”

  “Very well, if that is your true wish, but I don't understand.”

  “I must to break Tommy's heart to save him from a life of sadness.”

  “Jane! What is this? You're talking nonsense.”

  “Ladyship, I can tell you no more without telling you everything, and I certainly cannot do that. Now I must go.”

  “Wait!” she said, taking hold of my arm. “Come inside with me. If I am to accuse you of theft, you might as well have the money.”

  I have only shadowy, flickering, fire-lit impressions of leaving the estate that night. Every window in the manor house had been shattered, and I later learned that wreckage from the Hellfire was found as far as two miles down the track. The factory was burned to the ground and destroyed, along with the drafting rooms. Newspapers reported that fifteen men had died. Walter had secretly positioned a dozen official witnesses and timekeepers at the five mile marker to record the seconds between the green flare and the Hellfire's arrival. The fireball from the crash had killed them all. The Liquid Air Works in Doncaster was burned out by the time I walked past, an hour before dawn. It had been set alight by the flames of the Hellfire's exhaust.