"Kipling, Rudyard - With the Night Mail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kipling Rudyard)

On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of 20 indicators
register, degree by geographical degree, the progress of homeward-bound packets.
The word "Cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the South
African midweekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving Towers. It reminds me
comically of the little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the return
of a homer.
Remember!

It is now nearly a generation since the Plane was
to supersede the Dirigible for all purposes.
Today none of the Planet's freight is
carried en plane.
Less than 2% of the Planet's passengers are
carried en plane.
We design, equip and
guarantee Dirigibles for
all purposes. Standard Dirigible
Construction Company
MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES

"Time to go," says Captain Purnall. We shoot up via passenger-lift to the top of
the dispatch-towers. "Our coach will lock on when it's filled and the clerks are
aboard."
"No. 162" awaits in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her back
shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes her
rock a little in her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest,
level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond
with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of
her three built-out propeller-shafts is 240 feet. Her extreme diameter, carried
well forward, is 37. Contrast this with the 900 by 95 of any crack liner, and
you will realize the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at more
than the emergency speed of the Cyclonic!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair-crack of the
bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable air
and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's
"gull-wing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate half an inch
and she yaws five miles to port or starboard ere regaining control. Give her
full helm and she returns on her track like a whiplash. Cant the whole
forward--a touch on the wheel suffices--and she sweeps up or down. Open the
complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her
up all standing within half a mile.


"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought he'd
discovered the secret of controlling airplanes, not dirigibles. Magniac invented
his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; but war went out of fashion and
Magniac went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his country
anymore. Do any of us ever know what we're really doing?"
"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better board now," says Mr. Geary. I