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They don't take off under their own power!" The six men on the ornithopter put their shoulders to their machine and trundled it out of the way. Tommy blinked at the sight. "No field attendants!" He gazed out across the open portion of the land area and saw an elevated thoroughfare below. Some sort of vehicle, gleaming like gold, moved swiftly on two wheels.
His explanation was dismissed brusquely. A man advanced and held out his hands for Tommy's weapons. "I don't like it," growled Tommy, "but we've got to think of Earth. If you get a chance hide your gun, Evelyn." He pushed on the safety catches and passed over his guns. The pilot he had shot down led them onto the fenced-in deck of the monstrous ornithopter. Machinery roared.
The thing that struck Tommy first of all was the scarcity of men in the city, compared to its size. The next thing was the entire absence of women. The roar of machines smote upon his consciousness as a bad third, though they made din enough. Perhaps he ignored the machine noises because the ornithopter on which they had arrived made such a racket itself.
The ornithopter, or mechanical bird, offers certain advantages, no doubt. That the work and experiments of M. Renard in 1884 have sufficiently proved. But, as has been said, it is not necessary to copy Nature servilely. Locomotives are not copied from the hare, nor are ships copied from the fish.
The two planes swept apart. The ornithopter descended toward the landing stage of Rahn. The freight plane swept toward the ship that carried Tommy. Again the snaky rope coiled down. And Tommy swung up the fifteen feet that alone separated the two soaring planes, and looked into the hard, amused eyes of Jacaro where he sat between two other emissaries of Rahn.
"I am glad to see so many moving-picture men," said Mona thoughtfully. "If it were not for photographs, I doubt if coming generations would believe this." And she turned her glasses again upon the scene. From the cockpit of Fort's newest ornithopter, about three hundred yards from the ground and less than that distance from the spot, she could watch operations with exceptional ease.
He watched with his heart in his mouth as the ornithopter alighted near the assembled women of Yugna. As the three ambassadors climbed out, he could hear the faint murmur of voices. The men of Yugna, under truce, called across the landing stage to the women of their own city, and the women replied to them.
The first of these was that which sought to imitate nature by means of the ornithopter or flapping-wing machines directly imitative of bird flight; the second school was that which believed in the helicopter or lifting screw; the third and eventually successful school is that which followed up the principle enunciated by Cayley, that of opposing a plane surface to the resistance of the air by supplying suitable motive power to drive it at the requisite angle for support.
One series could hold it suspended in the air, the other could drive it along under conditions that were marvelously adapted for speed and safety. If the ornithopter striking like the wings of a bird raised itself by beating the air, the helicopter raised itself by striking the air obliquely, with the fins of the screw as it mounted on an inclined plane.
This experiment remains as the greatest success yet achieved by any machine constructed on the ornithopter principle. It may be that, as forecasted by the prophet Wells, the flapping-wing machine will yet come to its own and compete with the aeroplane in efficiency.
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