With A Bang!

Madame vonHedwig, for it was her turn at the helm, steered the Schöneluft south and west, to the Great Himalayas, for she had long desired to explore that mysterious region.  She had been corresponding with Julius von Sachs, the eminent Prussian botanist, and Roberto Mantovani, although their correspondence had grown acrimonious of late.  (Madame was a great follower of Hutton, and could not reconcile the observations of the gentle Scot with the violent volcanically-driven continental movement proposed by the Italian gentleman.)  Madame’s interest was in palaeopalynology (the study of seeds). She longed to discover the ancient history of angiosperms, and become convinced that evidence of early seeds might be found in deep in the ice of these majestic mountains.

“What if,” Madame proposed, “what if the tropical land masses of Gondwana and Angara came together much faster than we thought?  The fruited plains thrust up into the heavens to form the lofty peaks of the Himalayas.  The animals would be slain in such an upheaval, but plant material might have been preserved in the sudden cold.  What if there are seeds there, hidden deep in the ancient ice and snow?  Think, my darling, what discoveries await the botanist bold enough to seek them!”

Herr vonHedwig was working on a new invention, a ball lightening generator.  Since ball lightening is unpredictable, and can pass through or randomly bounce off of solid objects, his previous experiments had shown rather dramatic results.  Once, he and Ulrik had generated a spectacular ball of lightening in the Lab.  Its creation caused their hair to stand entirely on end, and had turned poor Ulrik’s hair a rather lovely shade of green.

As they were cheering their success, the ball, which they had thought contained, charged through the wall and into the boiler room, where it bounced around causing great havok while the poor workers tried desperately to fend it off with spanners and hammers.  When a singed and angry boiler chief came to the Lab, chattering in his foreign tongue and gesticulating wildly, Herr vonHedwig decided that this work was best done away from populated areas.  As the Great Himalyas are sparsely populated, he readily agreed to his wife’s scheme.

The children had never seen the Himalayas, and found that they compared most favorably to their beloved Alps.  They gathered in what was called the garden, but was really a flat, railed area on the top of the ship outside the Greenhouse, where they shivered happily.

“They’re enormous!” Adolphus yelped.

“The average peak here is over 5,000 feet taller than Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps,” said Claire.

“Let’s toboggan!” shouted the twins.

Just then, a quarter of a mile or so off starboard, one of their father’s floating ball lightening generators exploded.  Bettina laughed and clapped her little gloved hands.

“The ball blew up its own generator,” Gerhardt said.  “I suppose it was the closest object, and the lightening was drawn to it.”

“Was it drawn to the mass or to the electricity?” pondered Adolphus, and the children were engaged in a lively discussion when they heard a faint and far-off rumbling.  They each looked in a different direction trying to discern the source of the sound, except for Bettina, who still laughed and clapped, and sang out “Boom!”

“Do you hear something?” Claire began, but before anyone could answer, the mountain before them began to crumple.  High above them, for they were hovering at 5,000 feet, the white face of the mountain fell, and rolled down upon itself, and the rumbling became a crashing, and a roaring, and the edifice of the great mountain collapsed, sliding inexorably into the valley below.  Claire threw herself on the twins, knocking them to the deck.  Adolphus, loathe to look away, pulled at Bettina, who kicked him and clung tightly to the rail.  As the avalanche reached the altitude of the ship, a vicious spray of ice crystals gusted over the deck, forcing Gerhardt and Adolphus down for cover at last.  As the disaster echoed from the neighboring peaks, Bettina jumped up and down in delight, shrieking “Again!  Again!”

She was rewarded, as the rumbling of tons of fallen snow dislodged portions of other peaks, setting off chains of avalanches through the high valley.  The children gaped, ineffectually brushing ice from their hair, and marveling at the violent glory of Nature.  The Greenhouse door flew open.

“Are you all right?” Mother asked, swiftly counting heads.  “Come inside, hot chocolate and a warm fire for everyone!”

“Does this mean we can’t toboggan?” asked Mirabelle.  Annabelle had pulled a small spanner from her pinafore, and was using it to chip Bettina’s frozen mittens from the rail.

“We’ll see.  Perhaps when Father has a break in his experimentation schedule… And you most certainly may not start at the top!”

At this the children let out a chorus of protests, which subsided only when the dumbwaiter delivered the chocolate from the Galley.

This story began with On Grandmothers, and continues In Search of Ancient Angiosperms.