01 The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock

Author:Michael Moorcock
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 2010-04-10T21:18:30+00:00

I picked up my bag and looked expectantly at Dempsey. The young man glanced at the captain, grinned at me and patted me on the arm. "Get yourself settled in here. I'll join you later. One or two things to discuss with the captain."

Still in something of a daze I said goodbye to my new skipper and left the room. As I closed the door I heard Dempsey say, "Now, about the passengers, sir..."

Next morning I took an omnibus to the airpark. There were dozens of airships moored there, coming and going like monstrous bees around a monstrous hive. In the autumn sunshine the hulls of the vessels shone like silver or gold or alabaster. Before he had left the previous night Dempsey had given me the name of the ship I was to join. She was called The Rover (a rather romantic name, I thought) and the airpark authorities had told me she was moored to Number 14 mast. I was, in the cold light of day as it were, beginning to wonder if I had not acted rather hastily in accepting the position, but it was too late for second thoughts. I could always leave the ship later if I found that I wasn't up to what was expected of me.

When I got to Number 14 mast I found that she had been shifted to make room for a big Russian freighter with a combustible cargo which had to be taken off in a hurry. Nobody seemed to know where The Rover was now moored.

Eventually, after half-an-hour of fruitless wandering about, I was told to go to Number 38 mast, right on the other side of the park. I trudged beneath the huge hulls of liners and cargo ships, dodging between the shivering mooring cables, circumnavigating the steel girders of the masts, until at last I saw Number 38 and my new craft

She was battered and she needed painting, but she was as brightly clean as the finest liner. She had a hard hull, obviously converted from a soft, fabric cover of the old type. She was swaying a little at her mast and seemed, by the way she moved in her cables, very heavily loaded. Her four big, old-fashioned engines were housed in outside nacelles which had to be reached by means of partly-covered catwalks, and her inspection walks were completely open to the elements. I felt like someone who had been transferred from the Oceanic to take up a position on a tramp steamer. For all that I came from a period of time before any airship had seemed a practical means of travel, my interest in The Rover was almost one of historical curiosity as I looked her over. She was certainly weather-beaten. The silvering on her hull was beginning to flake and the lettering of her number (806), name and registration (London) had peeled off in places. Since it was illegal to have even a partially obliterated registration, there were a couple of airshipmen

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