Assegai

Eva knew that sounding the alarm was not a decision that could be taken lightly. She hesitated a few minutes longer, but in the short time that the eastern horizon had been blotted out by the approaching yellow wall, the speed of its advance was startling. She could see that it was no longer solid but swirled and rolled upon itself, like a dense cloud of yellow smoke. Suddenly she knew what it was. She had read about it in books written by desert travellers. It was one of the most dangerous natural phenomena. She breathed the single word, ‘Khamsin!’ and darted across the bridge to the ship’s main telegraph. She yanked down the handle and the jangling of the emergency bells drowned every other sound.

From the main cabin, crew members stumbled from their mattresses, still more than half asleep, and stared out at the approaching sandstorm. Some were stunned into silence by its size and ferocity, while others jabbered at each other in panic and confusion.

Graf Otto came racing up the companion ladder from the gondola of the damaged engine. He stared at the storm for only a second before he took control. Within minutes two of the three serviceable engines were running, and he signalled the docking team to release the mooring cable from the bows.

The third engine in the forward port gondola was silent. The engineer there was still having difficulty starting her. ‘Take command, Lutz!’ he shouted. ‘I have to go down and get that engine running.’ He ran out on to the open catwalk and disappeared down the ladder to the engine nacelle.

Lutz ran to his control panel and opened all eight gas valves. Hydrogen rushed into the Assegai’s gas chambers and she flung up her nose so violently that Eva and those men who had no handholds were thrown to the deck as she went into a nose-high climb with half a million cubic feet of buoyant gas hurtling her aloft.

The atmospheric pressure dropped so rapidly that the needle of the barometer spun giddily around the dial. Lutz, the ship’s commander, who was suffering from an infected sinus, squealed with pain and clutched at his ears. A thin trickle of blood ran down his cheek as an eardrum ruptured. He doubled over and fell to his knees. There was no other officer on the bridge who could take over from him, so Eva dragged herself to her feet and, pulling herself along the handrail, she reached Lutz before he lost consciousness with the pain. ‘What must I do?’ she screamed.

‘Vent!’ he moaned. ‘Blow the gas from all the chambers. Red handles!’ She reached up, took hold of them and forced them down with all her strength. She heard the escaping gas howling from the main vents above. The airship shuddered and bucked, but her uncontrolled climb steadied, and the needle on the barometer slowed its wild gyration.

Graf Otto had come up the giraffe neck of the companion ladder from the forward engine gondola, where he had gone to start the engine. Now he was pinned on the open catwalk, clinging to the side-rail while the Assegai’s violent manoeuvres threatened to hurl him into space like a pebble from a slingshot. He was fifty feet from Eva and yelled at her urgently, ‘Both starboard throttles, full ahead.’

She obeyed him instinctively and the engines thundered, driving the airship’s nose around in a counter-turn. For a few moments she steadied sufficiently for Graf Otto to release his death grip on the rail and run lightly along the catwalk. He burst in through the main doors as the Assegai started to spin in a clockwise direction. He reached Eva’s side and grabbed the controls. His movements were quick and co-ordinated to those of the Assegai. He gentled the great airship like a runaway horse, but before he had her steady she had climbed to fourteen thousand feet and was taking a terrible buffeting from the khamsin winds. However, the full force of the storm passed under the hull and left her at nine thousand feet, running southwards on an even keel. But she had been battered by the winds: the forward port engine was damaged beyond hope of repair, and a number of struts in the framework of the gas chambers had been broken. The shell bulged over these weak spots, but she was still making eighty knots and her cargo had been secured and lashed down.

Ahead they could just make out the shape of the Nile winding through the desert. Suddenly the radio squawked and Graf Otto started with surprise. This was the first contact they had heard since they had crossed the Mediterranean coastline.

‘It’s the naval radio at Walvis Bay on the south-west coast.’ The operator looked up from his set. ‘They’re asking for a secure contact with Graf von Meerbach. They have an urgent top-secret message for you.’