Windfall

There was a sort of footstep in the wickerwork so Stafford put his foot in it and swung his other leg inboard. Hunt caught his arm and helped him regain balance. Judy climbed in from the other side. She immediately began to turn a valve on one of the cylinders of which there were four, one in each corner of the basket. Hunt was giving short blasts of flame, a few seconds at a time. It seemed to Stafford as though he was doing some kind of fine tuning. Once he said, 'Hands off,' and then, almost immediately, 'Hands on.'

Lucas was rolling a cylinder along the ground towards the basket. Judy unstrapped the cylinder she had been working on and exchanged it for the one brought by Lucas. Then she tapped her brother on the shoulder. 'Okay to go.'

He released a sustained flame, then said 'Hands off.' For a moment nothing apparently happened and then Stafford became aware that they were airborne. The ground was dropping away as they rose in complete silence, and the slight breeze he had felt on the ground had disappeared.

Hunt said, 'The wind is just right. We'll pass over Jim's vegetable patch, take our pictures, and we're set for Hell's Gate. But we'll get some height for the photographs.' The burner roared and Stafford felt heat on his face as he looked up into the vast, empty interior of the envelope into which the flame was disappearing. When he looked down again the ground was receding even faster and the landscape was opening out.

Hunt pointed. 'The College. We'll pass over it. You ready, Judy?'

She bent down to look through a viewfinder. 'Everything okay.'

Stafford produced his own camera. It was a Pentax 110; not a 'spy' camera like the Minox, but still small enough to be carried unobtrusively in a pocket. It also came with a selection of good lenses.

The noise of the burner stopped. 'We'll still rise a bit,' said Hunt conversationally. 'What do you think of it?'

To Stafford's surprise all his qualms had gone. 'I think it's bloody marvellous,' he said. 'So peaceful. Except for the noise of the burner, but that isn't on all the time.'

'There's Dirk Hendriks down there,' said Hunt. 'Talking to Brice outside the Admin Block.' He waved. 'If we were lower we could have a chat.'

'How high are we?'

'Getting on for 2,000 feet from point of departure. That's about 8,000 feet above sea level. The experimental plots are coming up, Judy.'

'I see them.' She took about ten photographs while Stafford took some of his own and then straightened. 'That's it,' she said. 'The work's done. Now for the pleasurable bit.'

'About the noise of the burner,' said Hunt. 'It's difficult to make a quiet burner; I'd say impossible. This one up here is rated at ten million Btu – that's about 4,000 horsepower. You can't keep that lot quiet when it's ripping loose.'

'You're kidding,' Stafford said unbelievingly.

'No, it's quite true. One of the gas cylinders will provide the average household with two months' cooking – we use it up in less than half an hour. But we're not operating at maximum efficiency, so I reckon we're getting about 3,000 horsepower. In England and America they use propane but that's a bit tricky in the African heat so we use butane which has a lesser calorific value. And we have to add pressure with nitrogen; that's what that little cylinder there is for.'

Stafford found the power of the burner hard to believe. Hunt said, 'This dial tells the temperature – not here, but at the crown of the balloon up there.' He jerked his thumb upwards. 'Optimum temperature is 100 degrees Celsius.'

'But that's the boiling point of water.'

'Quite so,' Hunt said equably. 'If it gets above 110 degrees I'm in trouble – the nylon doesn't like it – so I keep a careful eye on the bloody gauge.'

'We're coming up to the entrance of Hell's Gate,' said Judy. 'Alan, come low over Fischer's Column.'

'Okay, but I'll have to go up after that.' He produced a packet of cigarettes and offered one. As Stafford looked doubtfully at the cylinders of butane surrounding them Hunt smiled, and said, 'Quite safe; it'll just add a bit more hot air."

They drifted into the gorge of Hell's Gate through a gap in sheer cliffs. Hunt occasionally reached up to the burner controls and gave a short blast. Apart from that it was quiet and Stafford could hear cicadas chirping and the twittering of birds. The smoke from his cigarette ascended lazily in a spiral and he realized that was because they were moving at; the same speed as the wind. It was weird.

'There's Lucas in the chase car,' said Judy. He looked down and saw the Land-Rover bucketing along a track on the floor of the gorge and towing a trailer. 'That's one of the problems of ballooning; you have to have a way of getting back to where you started.'