The Last Airship Read Online Free PDF Page A

the other
passengers.
    “If
he gets to keep his stuff, why can’t we?” The trunk owner asked, looking at his
wife for reassurance.
    “Because,
he has the gun,” The engineer said, smiling impatiently. “Now let me throw this
thing overboard.”
    He
tried to lift it by himself, but couldn’t.
    Frustrated,
he removed a small knife from his belt that he normally used to cut tangled
mooring lines, and stuck it into the locking mechanism.
    The
trunk sprang open, revealing more than a hundred gold bars, each bearing the
emblem of its wealthy owners: a G and O joined by an infinity symbol.
    “No,
you can’t throw this away! It’s everything we have – our entire life savings.
How else will we start anew?” The woman, he noted, had broken her sensibilities
at the possibility of seeing her fortune nearly lost to the ground below.
    Her
husband then placed his foot on the base of the trunk and said, “I’m afraid
this isn’t going to be thrown out.”
    “Oh
yeah?” The engineer asked. He now had the look of a crazy man, staring blankly,
like someone who’d been pushed past breaking point and snapped. He reached down
and picked up one of the gold ingots. “Watch this!” he said, tossing the brick bar
out the window.
    For
a couple of seconds, it seemed as though all activity inside the gondola
ceased.
    Fritz
watched, his pistol still pointed at the others, the rich passengers, he
decided, had finally lost their aristocratic cool composure, and the only man
who was working to keep the ship airborne looked as though he’d finally given
up caring about the fate of any one of them.
    It
was going to become violent in here.
    At
that moment, Peter’s voice could be heard over the intercom pipe, “Franck, get
back up here, we’re going down and I need your help.”
    *
    Peter
looked at Franck as he came through the door. His face was flushed and his
nostrils flared dangerously. He must have had trouble removing the passenger’s
luggage, he guessed.
    He
then took another look at his altimeter, which indicated that their rate of
descent had decreased to 100 feet per minute.
    “It’s
no use. We’re going down. Can you see anything below?”
    The
landscape looked harsh and lethal to the airship. The rocky outcrops on the
mountain would slice her wide open at the speed at which they were descending
and they needed to maintain that speed to retain some lift. With the exception
of the rocks, this entire side of the mountain was covered in densely packed
pine forest.
    “Over
there, how about that open place?” Franck was the first to spot it.
    “Where?”
    Franck
pointed to a spot. It was a large field or clearing, covered in white snow.
    “I
see it. That’ll do nicely.”
    Three
minutes later, the Magdalena hit the snow-covered ground hard. Bouncing and
shuddering, she slid for a long while along the icy ground, finally coming to
rest. The altimeter indicated that they were at an altitude of 7000 feet. They
were incredibly high up the mountain to have been lucky enough to find such a
clearing.
    “Christ
almighty!” Peter panted, excited and out of breath. “That was close, but we made
it!”
    He
then looked over at his co-pilot. A loud sound – a crack like that of distant
thunder – could be heard… and felt. The airship lurched.
    “What
in the hell was that?”
    Franck
opened his mouth to respond, but Peter never heard his reply. They were both dead
before they even knew what happened.
    *
    In
the once luxurious passenger lounge, Professor Fritz Ribbentrop calmly looked
out the window.
    He,
of all the passengers on board, realized exactly where they were.
    It was
a reasonable mistake for the pilot to land here. If he hadn’t grown up climbing
these mountains as a boy, Fritz might have made the same mistake, in their
shoes. He didn’t blame them for it.
    With
the composure of a man who had accepted his fate, Fritz then made sure that his
single suitcase was still securely locked and carefully handcuffed to