“Anything up to eight hundred miles an hour. Possibly one thousand.”
Even Major Honeywell started with astonishment. The newspaper man shook his head.
“Beyond sixty miles an hour,” he replied in a puzzled tone, “speed doesn’t mean much to me. I can’t realize what it means to travel one thousand miles an hour.”
“Here’s an illustration,” volunteered Alan. “At one thousand miles an hour, an aeroplane could circumnavigate the globe, in the latitude of Paris, in seventeen hours.”
“And beat the sun?” exclaimed the newspaper man.
“Mathematically,” repeated Ned, his smile broadening.
“I don’t believe you could travel at the rate of two hundred miles an hour and live,” argued the editor.
“Oh yes you can,” retorted Alan. “How do you suppose birds cross the ocean without food or water? Don’t you know that there are birds that migrate the length of the Pacific ocean? There are Arctic birds that winter in the tropics and fly to the polar regions in the summer—birds that are never seen on land between those zones.” The newspaper manager and the major were listening intently. “German scholars have discovered that many migrating birds fly at such a high altitude that they can be seen only by means of a powerful telescope. The flight of some of these birds has been measured. Four miles a minute or two hundred and forty miles an hour is not uncommon.”
The surprised manager made no comment.
“The mathematical possibilities of airship speed,” resumed Ned, “are based on height or altitude. The maximum of speed at or near sea level is no indication of what may be accomplished miles in the air. Let me explain. Say we have an airship such as the Ocean Flyer that can fly two hundred miles an hour near sea level where the air pressure is greatest.”