13% After a long break, they kept at it. Just.. .roll… down.. .the hill gently with me on this, people, said Bernie, eyes closed, twirling his fingers like wheels. So, where was I? Ah! Back in the Magellan. Some of the plasma may have been injected into that top tube for some sort of antigravity reason, I surmise. Anyway, I wasnt really listening at the dinner table to all the scientific garble, my eyes were on my twenty-year-old gals heaving breasts while she and I talked steam trains and hothouse flower species in old Hispaniola. Dad was piss drunk because he remembered he hated heights but forgot all about it at first in the excitement. But it did catch my attention when Tillman said we were going 221 mph. Man oh man, I remember that. Nothing on Earth had gone that fast back then. Imagine the sheer optimism of a looming electrified 20th centuryTesla Towers, free- energy, safe airships, near utopia, free beer, etcetera. Steam trains were barely touching one hundred in the 1890s, said McMaster. Gwafa asked: High-speed flight in 1897? But that was well before the Brothers Wright in America took to the air. I do not understand… Thats the point, said Bea. Youre not supposed to. Academia sneaks, said Alice. Everyones in on the con game. Bernie soldiered on. Powered maneuverable flight is as old as the hills, Gwafa, and it wasnt really kept secret. In 1897, newspaper reports of multiple airship sightings filled the minds of America with wild stories of high-speed long-distance adventures by mysterious inventors and nameless monied eastern industrialists. Thousands of reports and articles; the papers called it: The Great Airship Mystery,and you can find them all over in American archives. The Navy sent some in my file here. He passed out three old, faded clippings inside folders. I think even the London Times reported on it. By 1894 or so, we Americans finally caught on to the airship technology after forty years of secret development. McMaster examined one. Have to say, I barely remember anything about it. By 1900 all the press dried up. Well, dont look at us, that was well before our time, said Alice.