The Revolt of the Machines Page 7

  One would attain almost a sixth of the velocity of the Earth rotating on its axis. If, departing from a point on the equator on Sunday morning, for instance, one traveled westwards, one would reach the same point on Saturday evening, but one would have gained a day en route, in the same way as any voyage in that direction around the equator. It would be Friday for the traveler at the moment of his return, and Saturday for the inhabitants of the point of his arrival and departure, who would have seen six sunsets while the traveler would only have seen five.

  The Universel published a detailed account of the journey. It challenged the railway companies to deny or affirm its exactitude in accordance with the observations of their agents. At first the companies remained silent, but the Universel returned to the charge with so much insistence that they ended up issuing short statements declaring that the information that had reached them did not differ significantly from those that had been published.

  Serious anxiety gripped them. A slightly more marked diminution was manifest in their share prices. It was not much as yet, but it would probably be sufficient for the accursed inventor to put a dirigible nacelle into the air to start a panic that would lead to a general disaster.

  A new article in the Universel, while increasing their fears for the future, gave them a temporary respite. It announced that, because of the preparations that were necessary, the next public demonstration would not take place before the end of August.

  VIII. The Ship

  The administrator had previously been charged with a triple mission.

  He was to organize the manufacture, in conformity with the plans, drawing and instructions addressed to him an apparatus that it is necessary to call a ship, for want of a more exact expression, a description of which will be found further on.

  He rented a small house beyond the heights of Meudon, with rather extensive grounds, around which he had six-meter high walls built, enclosing an uninterrupted curtain of tall trees.

  He hired three men selected with particular care. Many candidates, especially aeronauts and mariners, offered themselves in response to advertisements published in the Universel. A considerable number of the applicants were not solicited by any need to earn their living, but merely by an ardent curiosity and spirit of adventure.

  He rejected, by reason of his age, a former colonel of the cavalry, of the stripe of those whom Napoléon I made Maréchals de France at forty. He gave preference to a railway engineer whose composure was the equal of his courage. He placed under his orders two former seamen, one of whom had belonged to the navy and had been decorated in the aftermath of several striking actions, the other celebrated in the merchant marines for the number of rescue medals he had earned. Those two men possessed, as the conditions required, Herculean strength and gymnastic skills. The first received the title of conductor, the others those of servants. The aerial navigator intended to fulfill the functions of captain of his ship personally.

  When everything was ready the conductor and the servants had several training sessions, mainly by night, in the enclosure hidden from all eyes. Their part in the operation of the ship was, in any case, negligible. Their real utility was to inspire enough confidence in passengers, merely by reason of their presence, for the latter not to fall prey to vain terrors. Nothing was revealed to them about the methods or the identity of the inventor. They only ever saw him masked, arriving and departing on an upper section of the apparatus, containing the organs of locomotion, which could be attached to it and detached again at will, and without which the ship remained on the ground as an inert mass. Most of all, they practiced fitting and detaching the connections and flying a few meters above the ground in order to familiarize themselves with that mode of locomotion.

  All of that lasted fifteen or twenty days longer than they might have wished. It was not until the twentieth of August that the Universel published the following announcement:

  On Sunday the third of September, an aerial ship will navigate above Paris and its suburbs from eight o’clock in the morning until five o’clock in the evening.

  The ship is designed to carry approximately fifty passengers, but on this occasion, it will only carry, in addition to the aerial navigator, a conductor and two servants, its journey having the sole objective of demonstrating the possibility to persons who desire to participate in the following experiment, fixed for Sunday the tenth of September.

  From the fourth to the ninth of September, the ship, deprived of its organs of locomotion, will be exhibited in a location near to the offices of the Universel. There will be an entry fee of two francs for anyone wishing to visit it.

  The experiment of the tenth of September will be organized as follows: Thirty-four places on the ship will be put at the disposal of the public; the price is fixed at 1,200 francs each.

  People desiring places must register in the offices of the Universel before the eighth of September and place the price of their reservations in the hands of the newspaper’s administrator, who will issue them a receipt, and then will deposit the funds every day in whichever public treasury the authorities care to designate to him.

  The aerial navigator will give preference, for the definitive allocation of places, to the following categories of individuals:

  The government, in the person of those of its members holding the most elevated positions. If several of the same rank present themselves—several ministers, for example—their names will be drawn by lot.

  The army, again in the person of the highest-ranking officer, preferably a Maréchal de France or the general of a division, and with the same tie-breaking sequence;

  The Navy, following the same order of preference;

  The principal branches of science, with preference for members of the Institut, represented by one physicist, one chemist, one astronomer, one geographer, one statistician, one economist and one physician.

  Letters, with preference for a member of the Académie Française;

  Journalism, represented by the editor of a newspaper other than the Universel, for whom a place of favor is reserved

  The arts, represented by a painter, with preference for a member of the Institut;

  Industry, represented by one shipbuilder, one machine maker, one administrator or director of a railway company and one aeronaut.

  Seventeen places, or a larger number if all the abovementioned categories are not represented, will be attributed to persons chosen by lot among those who have registered their names.

  Twelve gratuitous places will be reserved for musicians organized as an orchestra, with preference for a military band if any presents itself.

  Two other gratuitous places will be reserved for simple workers designated as observers by elected trade union negotiators.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, definitive tickets will be issued to the persons admitted, with useful instructions for embarkation and the voyage. The funds paid out by those people who are not allocated places will be returned immediately on the presentation of their receipts.

  The voyage will be directed in conformity with the following itinerary:

  On the tenth, at 9 a.m. precisely, embarkation. Circumnavigation above Paris and the surrounding area, and then departure for Strasbourg, in order to disembark there at about 6 p.m.

  On the eleventh, at 9 a.m., embarkation in Strasbourg, circumnavigation above the city and departure for Lille, where disembarkation with be at 6 p.m. The voyage will continue thus via Lille, Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyon and Paris, to which the ship will return on Tuesday 19 September at 6 p.m.

  This announcement initially caused a general outcry. Such overwhelming arrogance, it was said on all sides, was unimaginable. Those preferences superbly awarded to ministers, Maréchals de France and admirals, as if the greatest individuals were going to compete for the privilege of surrendering themselves blindly to an adventurer whose anonymity did not portend anything good! That price of 1,200 francs per place, yielding, by reason of the thi
rty-four paid places, a total of 40,800 francs for a ten-day voyage, in which one would not even be compensated for food and overnight accommodation! That ensemble, demanded in order to award oneself a triumph accompanied by noisy fanfare! All of that was criticized as so much pride and greed.

  X. Nagrien thought he ought to respond to these reproaches in the Universel. It was not out of pride, he said, but rather out of deference that, even before divulging his discovery, he was offering preference to the government, the army, the navy, science, industry, letters and arts the opportunity to study the effects acquired and the probable consequences. As for the price of places, he would not descend to justifying himself against an accusation of avarice by citing the hundreds of thousands of francs that the experiments carried out in the practical application of his discovery had cost, or the millions that he could make from it whenever he wished. Those who did not think the price appropriate for such a voyage, the first one accomplished by air, had only to abstain, along with those who did not feel completely confident.

  The announcement was, on this occasion, separated by a fortnight from the first experiment advertised, and three weeks from the commencement of the second. That interval permitted travel to Paris, and the various places where the ship was to display itself, not only from other parts of France but also from several foreign countries. People in many places had promised themselves, long in advance, to set off at the first announcement of a further exhibition.

  Everyone was ready by the end of August. Many, especially in distant countries, particularly the United States, had thought it safer to set out without waiting for the signal. As soon as it was given, there was a kind of frenzy. Special trains were organized everywhere. The railway rolling stock was insufficient. The companies did not lower their prices, and were able to realize, perhaps on the eve of their ruin, considerable profits. All means of locomotion were exhausted. The influx of Englishmen was also particularly remarkable.

  On September the third, public curiosity did not assume the same character as on the first of June. It was no longer mingled with doubt, uncertainty and the indefinable anxiety that the expectation of something unknown always creates. It was calmer, but no less ardent. People knew what they would see, but were no less curious actually to see it.

  The crowd, augmented by an enormous supplement of foreigners, was more numerous, but did not converge upon a determined center. It was disseminated everywhere, many people preferring to go to locations where they assumed that it would be less dense. The government had taken precautionary measures, but, as it no longer feared a political plot, had not armed for war, with rifles loaded and fuses lit.

  At eight o’clock, the aerial ship was seen advancing majestically along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, at a height that permitted it to be minutely observed. It presented the general appearance of an oblong tent, the canvas of which was raised up by two thirds and the ropes rigid. The floor had an ellipsoid form, tapering toward the front and swollen at the rear. It was surrounded by a balustrade inside which fifty empty seats could be seen, separated by intervals of more than a meter and seemingly comfortably established. In front of each one a table was fixed, above it, shelves, cupboards and lamps with frosted glass.

  The summit of the apparatus reproduced its general form on a smaller scale, terminating in a polished ball of metal, similar to copper. Below that ball, on a little shelf also surrounded by a balustrade, from which ropes and metal bars extended, seemingly holding the lower part of the vessel in suspension, there was a kind of armchair of the form known as a Bonaparte, turning on a pivot like a piano-stool, in which the aerial navigator was sitting, dressed as on the day of his first appearance.

  Two curved levers, emerging from the base of his seat, terminated in handles within reach of his hands. Another lever descending from the upper ball terminated in a similar fashion. His little platform bore two large telescopes at the front and the rear, maneuverable in all directions on their fixed supports. He also had a set of portable binoculars. A kind of iron worktable, seemingly equipped with drawers curved in front of him, open at the rear. Fixed to the anterior section of that table, four objects could be seen, in which spectators equipped with telescopes or binoculars were able to discern a chronometer, a barometer, a thermometer and a compass.

  Three men were posted on the inferior platform, two of them at the front on a kind of stage and one at the rear on a higher stage. Each of them had within reach a large telescope on its pivot and portable binoculars, a seat behind him and a taut rope ladder close at hand extending to the edge of the upper platform. The man at the rear had, in addition, a table similar to the one up above, equipped with similar objects. Acoustic tubes terminating in loud-hailer funnels communicated between the upper and lower sections, and the two stations of the latter.

  At the front of the inferior platform two cannons were discernible, their muzzles pointing up into the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. When it arrived above the obelisk, the men at the front went to the guns, and two detonations rang out. They were repeated at half-hour intervals during the subsequent circumnavigations. The aerial ship was not only a vehicle; it could become the most terrible engine of war.

  The circumnavigations were closely analogous to those the aerial navigator had carried out on his own on the first of June. The most notable detail they presented was that he left his post several times, always after having imparted a slow and regular progress to his ship, in order to accomplish a thousand aerial maneuvers around it, overtaking it, lagging behind it, rejoining it, passing above and beneath it. It was observed that the ship, while attaining a considerable rapidity at times, never matched the great velocity at which the aerial navigator had been seen to move in isolation. It was noticed that the various movements of the ship appeared to be dependent on the manipulation of the levers fitted with handles.

  The apparatus was exhibited the following day in an unoccupied stables next door to the building in which the Universel’s offices were located. The location received daylight from above through a vast opening in the roof that had been contrived in order to introduce the ship. It was much too small for the crowd that was besieging its doors, It was necessary to organize a regular flow inside, by virtue of which ten or twelve thousand people could pass through per day and who were given sufficient time to see the ship. The receipts approached 140,000 francs during the six days that the exhibition lasted.

  The curiosity of the visitors was only partly satisfied, although they could not say that they had been deceived by what had been advertised. The upper part of the ship was reduced to a balustrade forming a crown. It was explained to the public that the remainder, containing the organs of locomotion, the upper platform, the captain’s seat, his table, etc., could be fitted to it at will by means of a very simple mechanism. It was ordinarily maneuvered by the conductor and the two servicemen, but the captain could also, if he wished, carry out the operation alone and unaided. He could, if he wished, detach everything and remain alone in the air, without anyone being able to discover in the debris of the ship that had fallen to the ground any indication of the method of locomotion. Such a formidable power, in the hands of an unknown individual, caused many of the people disposed to request places for the advertised voyage to hesitate.

  As for the details of accommodation, they were generally approved as comfortable and well organized. The floor, covered with a thick carpet, was made of a metal resembling iron, which gave the apparatus a considerable weight and ought to maintain it in perfect equilibrium. The suspension bars, twelve in number, were also made of metal. They terminated at either extremity in rings engaged in other rings fixed to the edges of the two platforms. Vast and solid sheets of canvas, pierced by a number of glazed bull’s-eyes, could envelop the entire apparatus and make it into an impermeable tent, independent of the elegantly painted blinds at the disposal of each passenger to provide shelter from the sun. The armchairs reserved for the latter, turning on pivots, could be converted int
o veritable beds.

  The cannons had been removed from their carriages, which were similar to those of naval guns. It was noticeable that there were not only two gun carriages but six in all, four at the front and two at the rear.

  IX. The Decisive Test

  The first person to lay out twelve hundred francs and request a place was a woman. That circumstance had not been anticipated. She belonged to high society, in which she had become celebrated for her eccentricity, her garish costumes, her risqué manners and her language, peppered with all the argot terms that reached her as echoes from the demi-monde—all without consequence. A good sort, regardless, and not lacking in intelligence, she was accepted for what she was, and had a school—whose members imitated her. The next morning, the administrator was to receive requests and money from sixty elegant women, more or less authorized by their husbands. He told them that he had referred the matter to the aerial navigator, for whose response he was waiting.

  At the same time, demands arrived from all the “sportsmen” who were members of clubs and circles, young men leading, or affecting to lead, the “high life.” The feminine example had determined a vogue. People would have thought themselves dishonored, or feared being assumed not to be able to afford twelve hundred francs, or thought to be afraid, if they did not do as everyone else was doing. Many foreigners put their names down. Since they had already come so far, why not attempt to extend the voyage as far as possible?

  Soon, there was no one able to dispose of twelve hundred francs who did not want to attempt the adventure. In the Latin Quarter and the studios, schemes were formed in which groups of fifty, a hundred or a hundred and fifty were formed, each contributing a small sum to inscribe the name of the group. If it obtained a ticket, lots would be drawn to determine who received it.