If one is in a small chaser-plane it is quite immaterial whether one flies on one's back, whether one flies up or down, stands on one's head, etc. One can play any tricks one likes, for in such a machine one can fly like a bird. The only difference is that one does not fly with wings, as does the bird albatros. The thing is, after all, merely a flying engine. I think things will come to this, that we shall be able to buy a flying suit for half-a-crown. One gets into it. On the one end there is a little engine, and a little propeller. You stick your arms into planes and your legs into the tail. Then you will do a few leaps in order to start and away you will go up into the air like a bird.
My dear reader, I hear you laughing at my story. But we do not know yet whether our children will laugh at it. Everyone would have laughed fifty years ago if somebody had spoken about flying above Berlin. I remember the sensation which was caused, when, in 1910, Zeppelin came for the first time to Berlin. Now no Berlin street man looks up into the air when an airship is coming along.
Besides giant planes and little chaser-planes, there are innumerable other types of flying machines and they are of all sizes. Inventiveness has not yet come to an end. Who can tell what machine we shall employ a year hence in order to perforate the atmosphere?
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Russian priest.
[2] This seems to be a translator's mistake for kilometres, which would mean a little over 40 miles—in itself a sufficiently fine performance.
[3] The Grossflugzeug, or "G" class of German aeroplane, later given up as a flying machine owing to its slow speed and clumsiness in manoeuvre and used in its later developments for night-bombing only.
[4] This apparently refers to an auto-lock arrangement on the rudder-bar to save the pilot from having the rudder against the engine all the time.