Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/26

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HE gigantic spring of the air gun that hurled the passenger and mail projectiles from the Pacific to the Atlantic had not been compressed so tight since its construction seven years before. A combination of the highest tide of the year, and a big westerly gale had raised the mile long pontoon many feet above high water spring tide mark. The fifty-six great, steel lever arms that resembled bridge spans ground and murmured as the unaccustomed bearing surfaces came into play; and no wonder, for this tide was higher than anything the engineers of two hundred years ago had figured upon, when they constructed the piers and wharves where in days gone by the ocean liners of a slow and tedious age had tied up after their ten day journey from the Orient. To-day the water was lapping over these piers long since deserted in favor of Lake Washington, where the huge helicopters came and went in a never ending procession.

A light, two seater machine that looked as simply constructed as a birch bark canoe buzzed slowly from over the city, and hovered above the pontoon.

"How about looking over the bearings first?" suggested Max Norman, the more youthful of the two men who rejoiced in the title of District Assistant Superintendent of the Tide Transportation Projectile Co.

"Perhaps we'd better," replied Fowler, the senior man on the Pacific Coast, "then I want to take a look 'round to see how much rubbish and stuff have gone afloat. If it isn't cleared up, it may be fouling some of the small tide motors up and down the harbor."

The little machine, lifted by two propellers, and navigated by two more, buzzed along from girder to girder like a humming bird, while the engineers leaned out, and examined the twenty-four inch diameter pins on which the great levers pivoted. The propellers made no more noise than an electric fan, so that conversation in ordinary tones could be carried on in the open, boat-shaped hull.

"I hope the pilot of Number Two takes more than a casual glance at the tension gauge this morning," remarked the chief turning to his assistant.

"If he doesn't, he'll find himself dropping half way across the Atlantic. Then there'll be trouble."

"I should think one air blast from the rear end would almost take him all the way this morning. If he lets off the second, goodness knows where it'll take him."

"Personally, I think those projectiles are so protected that the pilots are inclined to become criminally negligent. Surely the barometrically operated, automatic air blast from the nose for land descents along with the shallow diving vanes, ought to be sufficient. With these new radio earth reflection and vibration releases, you might as well dispense with the pilot entirely."

"I think we shall be able to do so in a year or two," said Fowler thoughtfully. "The new springs that they are trying out at Schenectady are almost unaffected by heat or cold; that leaves only wind and atmospheric pressure to be conquered after making allowances for the tides." He paused to think, and then continued:

"The human element is holding us up more every day; the people of the last couple of centuries applied their science to everything but themselves. Every thing was thought except There's the whistle Settle down on the pontoon; I don't like to be buffeted about in the air pockets when Number Two leaves."

The little, varnished, boat-shaped affair with the two light masts surmounted by humming, lifting wheels, settled as gracefully as a piece of thistle-down on the flat surface of the pontoon. The two men stepped out, and strolled along eastward. The sky was full of machines, big and little, clumsy freighters, and swift official machines. Two minutes after the whistle, a rocket shot into the clear sky, and broke into a large puff of bright smoke. This was the final warning to all, that the Atlantic projectile was about to be launched. It was noticeable now, that the incoming and outgoing machines steered to right and left of the enormous steel cylinder whose piston was dragged down against that mighty spring by those fifty-six lattice-girder levers. The cylinder was at the base of the great air gun which gave the projectile an initial velocity of sixteen thousand five hundred feet per second.

VEN in this age of wonders, people still turned aside, or came out of their houses to witness the start of Number Two, just as two hundred years had before, people had looked up whenever an airplane buzzed over head, and before that again, the daily train was the occasion for everyone in the small town to congregate at the depot.

"Five seconds more," murmured Max Norman, and both came to a standstill.

With a tremendous jar and shriek of parted air, the huge projectile was hurled nearly on the vertical into the blue sky, where it disappeared almost at once. The pontoon on which the two men were standing slowly rose two feet, with the relaxing of the enormous spring when the air had left the cylinder.

"She went quite fast," remarked the chief, watching the air ships being buffeted about in the disturbed atmosphere.