Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Their ability to stay aloft for long periods is their main attribute. Non-stop flights across the Atlantic Ocean are now easily within our grasp. One of my airships loaded with passengers or even with a hundred-and-twenty-ton bombload could take off from Germany and be over New York City in less than three days. It could return without having to refuel. The possibilities are staggering. Observers could hover over the English Channel for weeks on end, keeping watch over the enemy fleet and radioing its position to Berlin.’ He was too shrewd a salesman to bore his audience, half of whom were women, with too many technical details. He kept his canvas broad, his brushstrokes heavy and vividly colourful. Eva knew that his speech would last seven minutes, which he had calculated long ago was the maximum attention span of the average listener. Surreptitiously she timed him with her gold and diamond wristwatch. She was out by only forty seconds.

‘My friends and distinguished guests.’ He turned to the shed’s gigantic doors and spread his arms like a conductor calling his orchestra to attention. ‘I give you the Assegai !’ Ponderously the doors trundled open and a magnificent sight was revealed. His guests rose to their feet and burst into spontaneous applause, heads thrown back to gaze up at the 110-foot-high monster that filled the shed from wall to wall, and from the floor to within two feet of the high ceiling. Painted across the nose in ten-foot-high scarlet letters was her name, Assegai . Graf Otto had chosen it to commemorate his African lion hunt. The airship had been carefully ‘weighed off’ so the lift of her hydrogen-filled gas chambers exactly balanced the 150,000 pounds dead weight of the hull. The watchers gasped with surprise as ten men lifted her off the landing bumper set along her keel, on which she rested when she was on earth. They were dwarfed by her size, as tiny as ants bearing the carcass of a huge jellyfish.

Slowly they carried her through the tall doors into the sunlight, which reflected off her outer skin in a dazzling blaze. Gradually her entire hull was revealed. Her handlers manoeuvred her to the sturdy mooring tower in the centre of the field and secured her to it by the nose. She lay there, her true size now apparent. She was more than twice the length of a football field, 795 linear feet from stem to stern. Her four massive Meerbach rotary engines were housed in boat-shaped gondolas that hung on steel arms beneath her keel. They could be reached from the main cabin along the central companionway, which ran along the length of the airship. Two were positioned under the bows and the other two at the stern, where they could assist in steering the ship in flight. There was a ladder down each suspension arm, by means of which the mechanic on duty could descend from the companionway to take his post beside the engine, either to carry out maintenance or to respond to telegraph signals from the bridge for changes in the power settings. The propellers were made of laminated wood and the leading edges of the six heavy blades were sheathed with copper.

The keel acted as a conduit along the hull for the passage of crew members or for fuel, lubrication oil, hydrogen and water to be piped to where it was needed. In flight the trim of the airship could be adjusted by pumping the liquid cargo forward or aft.

The control car was well forward under the nose. From here, the airship was flown by the captain and navigator. The long passenger coach and cargo holds hung beneath the centre where their weight was evenly distributed.

After he had given them time to admire his creation, Graf Otto invited them to board her, and they assembled in the luxurious lounge. Glass observation windows ran the length of the outer walls of the long room. The guests were seated in leather-covered easy chairs, and the stewards served more champagne while they were divided into three separate groups. Then Graf Otto, Lutz and Ritter led them on a guided tour, pointing out the main features and answering questions. They returned to the main lounge for a lunch of oysters, caviar and smoked salmon, washed down with more champagne.

When they had finished eating, Graf Otto asked jovially, ‘Which of you has flown before?’

Eva was the only one who held up her hand.

‘Ah, so!’ He laughed. ‘Today we will change that.’ He looked across at Lutz. ‘Captain, please take our honoured guests on a little flight over the Bodensee.’ They crowded to the observation windows, chattering and laughing like children, as Lutz started the engines. The Assegai seemed to come to life and quivered eagerly on her moorings. Then she rose gently aloft and her link to the mooring tower dropped away.

Lutz flew them as far as Friedrichshafen, then back down the centre of the lake. The water was a magical shade of azure, and the snows and glaciers of the Swiss Alps glowed in the sunlight. Then the airship returned to the Wieskirche factory and hovered three thousand feet above the field. Quite unexpectedly, Graf Otto returned from the control car to the lounge, and his guests stared at him, perplexed: he had a large rucksack on his back held in place by an elaborate arrangement of harness straps.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you must have realized by now that the Assegai is an airship of surprises and wonders. I have one more to show you. The contraption on my back was dreamed up by Leonardo da Vinci more than four hundred years ago. I have taken his idea and made it reality, by fitting it into a canvas pack.’

‘What is it?’ a woman asked. ‘It looks very heavy and uncomfortable.’

‘We call it a Fallschirm , but the French and the British know it as a parachute.’

‘What does it do?’

‘Exactly as the name implies. It breaks your fall.’ He turned to two crew members and nodded. They slid aside the boarding doors. The guests standing nearest to them backed nervously away from the opening.

‘Goodbye, dear friends! Think of me when I am gone.’ Otto ran across the cabin and launched himself head first through the open door. The women shrieked and covered their mouths. Then there was a rush for the observation windows and they stared down in horror at Graf Otto’s body, dwindling rapidly in size as it fell towards the earth. Then, abruptly, a long white pennant streamed from the bulky rucksack strapped to his back, snapped open and assumed the shape of a monstrous mushroom. Graf Otto’s death plunge came to an abrupt halt and, miraculously, he was suspended in mid-air, in defiance of the laws of nature. The horror of the watchers was transformed to wonder, their chorus of despair to cheers and clapping. They watched as the gently sinking figure reached the ground and tumbled in an untidy heap, shrouded in the white sheet. Quickly Graf Otto struggled back to his feet and waved to them.

Lutz vented the valves on the airship’s main hydrogen tanks and it sank down as softly as a feather from the breast of a high-flying goose. It settled on its bumpers along the keel and the ground crew rushed forward to secure the mooring line to the anchor mast.

When the main doors of the cabin were opened Graf Otto was standing at the threshold to welcome his guests back to earth. They crowded around him to shake his hand and heap their praises on him. Then once more they mounted the convoy of vehicles and drove back to the Schloss , their excited laughter and cries of congratulation on Graf Otto’s extraordinary achievement echoing through the forest.

Dinner that evening was a formal occasion in the main dining-room at a long walnut table, which could be extended to seat two hundred and fifty, as an orchestra played light airs in the high gallery. The walls were panelled with oak that had taken on the patina of age, and were hung with portraits of the von Meerbach ancestors, scenes of the hunt, and trophies, including racks of stag antlers and arrangements of wild boar tusks.