The engines powered up with a tusk-rattling THRUM, and Erskine grinned, despite himself. The sound was music to his big ears. He heard no whine of whistling air, no rising pitch as massive fans got up to speed. Instead, Erskine’s antigrav thrusters gave off a solid, sci-fi hum that vibrated the whole craft and sounded like power.
Cycling through his takeoff protocol, Erskine felt a deep satisfaction. He wondered if Howard Hughes had felt this way, powering up that enormous Spruce Goose to shatter expectations. Heavens knew Erskine had his share of doubters.
“Elephants never jet!” they had scoffed, back when Erskine first proposed the Queen Bess. “Yeah, what are you, Dumbo?” Laughter all around, as if a pachyderm in flight was somehow more absurd than the idea of a multi-ton steel duck rocketing skyward.
Did they really think he meant to flap his ears? Sure, there existed that too-prominent saying about elephants and jets. Some pachyderm with an oversized fear of heights probably first declaimed that gem to avoid an elevator. Erskine’s species commonly suffered from that phobia of high places. You’d be phobic, too, if hunters used to chase your woolly ancestors off cliffs. But hell, at least Erskine wasn’t a pig! There was no hundred-year history of refusals to be reversed (“I’ll sleep with you when pigs fly!”) if Erskine made liftoff.
Erskine patted the cockpit ceiling with his trunk. They could call him Dumbo all they wanted. But the Queen Bess had enough power and control to make its list of destinations Florida, Tokyo, the ISS, or the frigging moon. It would be like that other saying: Give an elephant a jet engine and he might reach Mach 2. Teach him to build a jet engine and he’ll break gravity, dragging the whole world into the future with him.