"Tom Reamy - San Diego Lightfoot Sue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reamy Tom)

"A hydrogen-supported zeppelin!тАФridiculous! Such an airship would be a floating bomb, ready to be
touched off by the slightest spark," I protested.

"Not ridiculous, Father," my son calmly contradicted me, shaking his head. "Pardon me for trespassing in
your field, but there is an inescapable imperative about certain industrial developments. If there is not a
safe road of advance, then a dangerous one will invariably be taken. You must admit, Father, that the
development of commercial airships was in its early stages a most perilous venture. During the 1920s
there were the dreadful wrecks of the American dirigibles Roma, and Shenandoah, which broke in two,
Akron, and Macon, the British R-38, which also broke apart in the air, and R-101, the French
Dix-mude, which disappeared in the Mediterranean, Mussolini's Italia, which crashed trying to reach the
North Pole, and the Russian Maxim Gorky, struck down by a plane, with a total loss of no fewer than
340 crew members for the nine accidents. If that had been followed by the explosions of two or three
hydrogen zeppelins, world industry might well have abandoned forever the attempt to create passenger
airships and turned instead to the development of large propeller-driven, heavier-than-air craft."

Monster airplanes, in danger every moment of crashing from engine failure, competing with good old
unsinkable zeppelinsP^-impossible, at least at first thought. I shook my head, but not with as much
conviction as I might have wished. My son's suggestion was really a valid one.
CATCH THAT

ZEPPEUN!
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Besides, he had all his facts at his fingertips and was complete master of his subject, as I also had to
allow. Those nine fearful airship disasters he mentioned had indeed occurred, as I knew well, and might
have tipped the scale in favor of long-distance passenger and troop-carrying airplanes, had it not been for
helium, the T. S. Edison battery, and German genius.

Fortunately I was able to dump from my mind these uncomfortable speculations and immerse myself in
admiration of my son's multisided scholarship. That boy was a wonder!тАФa real chip off the old block,
and, yes, a bit more.

"And now, DoKy," he went on, using my nickname (I did not mind), *Way I turn to an entirely different
topic? Or rather to a very different example of my hypothesis of historical cusps?"

I nodded mutely. My mouth was busily full with fine Sauerbraten and those lovely, tiny German
dumplings, while my nostrils enjoyed the unique aroma of sweet-sour red cabbage. I had been so
engrossed in my son's revelations that I had not consciously noted our luncheon being served. I
swallowed, took a slug of the good, red Zinfandel, and said, "Please go on."

"It's about the consequences of the American Civil War, Father," he said surprisingly. "Did you know that
in the decade after that bloody conflict, there was a very real danger that the whole cause of Negro
freedom and rightsтАФfor which the war was fought, whatever they say-тАФmight well have been
completely smashed? The fine work of Abraham Lincoln, Thad-deus Stevens, Charles Sumner, the
Freedmen's Bureau, and the Union League Clubs put to naught? And even the Ku Khix Klan
underground allowed free reign rather than being sternly repressed? Yes, Father, my thoroughgoing
researchings have convinced me such things might easily have happened, resulting in some sort of
re-enslavement of the blacks, with the whole war to be refought at an indefinite future date, or at any rate
Reconstruction brought
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