Chapter 4 The Flying Republic of Outlaws

This is the fourth chapter of the novel Jove’s Chariot: A Tale of Adventure from the Near Future Age of Giant Airships, which is a kind of advertisement for giant airship technology in the form of a novel. You can read my nonfiction advocacy of giant airship technology at the ISO Polar All About Airships blog, and companies like LTA Research are building airships a little like Jove’s Chariot today, so the world the novel describes could be realized in our lifetimes. Here’s Chapter 3 for context, or start at the beginning. If you get hooked, follow the link above and read the whole thing at the Amazon link above!

On the morning of the next day, one of the most important of my life, I was pulled by the music of a piano out of dreams so vivid that they seemed like waking into a waking reality so strange it seemed like a dream. I was groggy from the painkiller that Dr. Bell had given me, and the pain in my leg made it hard to collect my thoughts. More than that, the music kept sweeping my thoughts off track. Who was the pianist? Archie Jones, I thought at first, but no, it wasn't. It was another pianist playing another piano, but trying to imitate Archie Jones' improvisational style, with some, they're not complete, success. Meanwhile, where was I? Overseas. Through clouds, across oceans, over jungles. Behind a waterfall that gleamed in gentle sunlight. In the sky. In exile. And the music went on, sometimes dramatic, usually ethereal and romantic, with melodies forming and then melting away into arpeggios.

"Willy Blayne, we need you to do some work!" Jake's voice woke me fully awake at once, and also revealed the identity of the mysterious pianist. "Can you go find Joel Marcos in the hull? He's leading the inspection effort. Also we need to redistribute the hydrogen sensors that are left for better coverage."

"Inspection?" asked the man who would soon be called Face. "I wouldn't know what I was looking at. Remember, I'm no airshipman. I came on this voyage just to talk. I'm the linguist. By the way, thank you for your leadership during the storm. Bravely done! We wouldn't have made it without you. I'm sure that your skills, unlike mine, are much needed just now, and you have better things to do than talking to me."

"Go find Joel Marcos," said Jake again, mildly contemptuous.

"Absolutely, anything to set your mind at rest, and help you concentrate," said Face. "I'll try not to mess anything up."

"It's a good opportunity for cross-training," said Jake.

"Not really," said Face. "Training new recruits is generally a time sink for experienced staff. In a crisis, most work is best done by those who already have skills. Cross-training is best reserved for less critical times. But I'm going. I'm happy to take orders from you as if you were the captain, rather than waste your time arguing."

"I'm afraid your piano playing will distract the other crew members," said Jake, whom Face kept goading into trying to justify himself, against his better judgment.

"You show too little confidence in your fellow crewmen," said Face. "Those whose skills are matched to the needs of the moment will, I'm sure, rise to the challenge. I intended to inspire, not distract, thinking it was the best contribution I could make to morale... But I'm going, I'm going." I heard him stand, and Jake's steps approach my room, and then one more insolent glissando from the piano.

Those two just never clicked.

Now I had pieced most of it together: where I was, the airship, the storm, the mission to Zambia, the outlawry, Africa. And the problem of Captain Scott. Somehow I felt sure that Captain Scott was giving no orders, and that if he did, no matter how innocuous they might be, the crew would ignore them on principle. A silent vote of no confidence had taken place. So Jake, though officially discharged, was giving orders, probably in coordination with Archie Jones and Andreas Fulk. That was a relief.

Comms were undamaged, so I went online and checked email and Facebook and news just like normal. Six weeks had passed since I flew out of Boston. Back at Harvard, final exams had just finished, and my friends were headed home for the holidays. "How's your African adventure?" they wrote me. "Will you be back next semester?" "Come home soon!" Or from those who had read more of the news: “Are you worried about the sanctions order?” “So now you can’t come back to the US until they give you an amnesty? Wild.” Some told me who was dating whom, who had chosen which major, and which internships they were pursuing. One girl continued, for ten eloquent paragraphs, a conversation we had had three months before about Renaissance Italy, because she’d read something that changed her mind. How nice it felt to decompress with this trivial normalcy after the terrors of the storm! How good it was to be alive!

I heard Jake coming along the rooms to rouse the slackers.

“Riley! UP!” he shouted into the next room over from mine. Riley groaned. “There’s work to be done. Find Joel Marcos in the hull. He’s leading the inspection and repair effort. Keep an eye out for damage while you’re looking for him.”

Then his head poked in my door. “Tommy! What are you doing? Get up and go talk to Joel Marcos. He’s got the list of what needs done.”

I hauled myself onto my feet, winced as a jab of pain shot through me from my leg, and collapsed on the floor. Guilt splashed across Jake’s face. “Sorry, I forgot that piano broke your leg.” He stooped to help but I motioned him off.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. 

“How did you get to bed last night?”

“I leaned on Scout,” I said, using Jake’s nickname for Sid Shepard for the first time. “He walked me back. And Dr. Bell gave me some painkiller. He said he'd let things stabilize around here before he put on a cast.”

"Do you want us to wheel you to the cockpit so I can keep an eye on you?" 

"I'd love to hear the inside information."

"Willy," said Jake to Face, who was slowly collecting the electric piano he had brought with him, "take Tommy to the cockpit."

"Yes, sir," said Face, somehow managing to make his eagerness to obey the new order as way of expressing his contempt for the old one.

In the cockpit, Archie Jones and Andreas Fulk kept watching the instruments and screens and chatting at a high level. I didn't get half of it, but I understood that we were still in danger. We had only an eight of a tank of hydrogen fuel. We were high up, with a little too much buoyancy, having given up all the water ballast. I found out that the air BCS was broken. The readings from the strain gauges were off, not in a way that was extreme or obviously dangerous, but enough to create uncertainty about how the airship would fare in the face of high winds or impacts. The loss of a thruster complicated the navigation. It might mean the effective loss of another thruster, the one opposite the lost one, which would have to be turned off for the sake of balance. We had thrown most of our food overboard. For the moment, the weather was perfect. A gentle wind was taking us in the direction of Zambia. But we couldn't rely on the wind to bring us safe to the goal. We needed to refuel, as soon as possible. But that would have been easier at sea. Hydrogen pumps were scarce in the DRC, but they existed. But would they do business with us, sell us hydrogen and maybe food… or would police board us and arrest us as dangerous international outlaws?

"Thankfully," said Andreas Fulk sarcastically, "Pavel Shchersky has provided us with a solar hydrogen generator. If we just get three weeks of calm weather, we should have a full tank again."

"We'll starve," said Archie Jones 

"There is that," said Andreas.

"You can't starve in three weeks," said Jake, just coming back from one of his rounds. "We might die of thirst."

"Sorry, you're right," said Andreas. "Starvation indeed!"

It sounds like a grim conversation, but the mood was not grim at all. There was a buzz of excitement in the air. We were alive with the spirit of adventure. We were still exhilarated from watching the airship rise triumphant from the storm. We wanted it. That was the thought in everyone's mind, which no one dared, yet, to speak. Yet somehow we felt it coming. 

Here's a question I've often thought about. If Elton Davies hadn't plausibly forfeited his claims to the airship by ordering us to fly into a storm against Aeronautical Forum rules… if we hadn't had the pretext of self-defense… would we still have taken it? Would the mere lust to own that majestic machine have made us mutiny and take control? I think it's a distinct possibility. Lucky for us that Elton Davies' negligence gave us just cause.

The comings and goings in the cockpit that morning, other than me, were limited to Leonard Lord, the engineers Paul Jordan and Randy Wellstone, and the men Captain Scott had fired: Archie and Jake, Andreas Fulk, Muscle, and Sid "Scout" Shepard. There was no sign of Captain Scott, and clearly he wasn't missed. Jake was in and out, going out to mingle and mobilize people, and reporting back. Scout and Muscle stopped by now and then, as if they weren't stationed there, but just visiting. Archie and Andreas stayed put, the masters of the airship, with the engineers on hand to consult during the crisis. I was happy to be ignored by the busy experts, and learn by eavesdropping, but Jake kept checking on me when he came back to the room.

A new order of command seemed to have spontaneously emerged.

I'd been there for an hour when the cockpit phone rang. "It's Pavel Shchersky," Archie Jones read the caller ID delightedly, and picked up. "Pavel, hello!"

"Hello, gentlemen!" said Pavel's heavily accented voice over the speaker. "How are you liking my crazy machine?!"

"Wonderful!" said Archie Jones. "It's a beauty. But it needs a little professional help right now."

"It's still flying," said Jake. "That's an achievement after what it's been through."

A technical conversation started, with Pavel listening carefully and asking penetrating questions. They seemed to be making progress, when Scout walked into the room, with an air of being the bearer of awkward news. 

"The crew seems to have gotten together for an all staff meeting on the dining deck," said Scout. "I think you guys are needed."

"A meeting? Who called it? What's the agenda?" asked Archie.

"I don't know exactly," said Scout, and then, correcting himself, "No one called it. It's spontaneous. But I think they all feel the need to figure out who's in charge."

Andreas, Archie and the engineers exchanged skeptical glances. They didn't seem to think it was important.

"We're busy," said Archie. "We've got Pavel Shchersky on the line, helping us to assess the damage."

"I'll wait," said Pavel over the phone speaker. "Or call back. I'm quite at your disposal."

Reluctantly, Archie said, "Well, boys, it looks like we've got to talk about governance. I'll take the controls, you guys can go to the meeting. It's tricky to fly a damaged airship, but I'll have no trouble in this weather."

"No," Jake told Archie sharply, taken aback by the remark. "You can't skip it. You're the big shot. You're the one they look to. The meeting loses half its value if you're not there."

After a long pause under the pressure of Jake's eyes, Archie agreed to go. "Way to step up," said Jake approvingly, "Leadership and governance are important."

The arrival of the cockpit crowd was the signal to the meeting to get to business. Everyone was there, except Andreas Fulk and Dr. George Bell. 

Far below us, below the transparent floor on which the All Crew Meeting had assembled, was the African rainforest, where trees that overtopped the canopy cast short shadows in the late morning sun. It has nothing to do with story, yet I can't help talking about the weather that day. There was wind, fresh and caressing, darting and swirling through the windows. Far below, wind was threshing the rainforest canopy, and gusts made waves of leaves that rippled across the rolling landscape of leaves. After four weeks mostly cruising over the open sea, it was wonderful to see trees again at all, let alone to see them ripple and dance like that. Just the fact that they had leaves, and an ocean of them, on the 1st of December, and the air was as warm and pleasant as it could possibly be, seemed magical and wonderful that day. We had escaped winter and come to a place where eternal summer reigned. Best of all, the same wind which made the forest below ripple and dance was pushing the airship in the direction of Zambia at a generous 20 mph. All nature seemed to be blessing us and encouraging our adventure. Sometimes we saw flocks of colorful birds or swarms of swift bats. Sometimes we saw splashes of colorful fruit or flowers. Sometimes we saw rivers or even roaring waterfalls. The scene was always changing as the wind sped us along. And the transparent floors gave us an absolutely matchless view of the whole list tropical panorama. But the rainforest was ominous too, pathless and full of poisonous snakes and other terrors, too alive to be safe, with an unconquerable wildness that had kept civilization at bay. And it was very far down, so that one had to keep fighting the fear of heights. That was fun, too, but it kept us focused on the question of survival.

Above us loomed the Inner Torus, huge and rounded and smooth and full of latent, life-saving power, still the quest at hand for which all the sacrifices were made, close now to its goal, yet imperiled, along with us, as never before. Jake spoke up, made a few announcements about the mechanical condition of the airship, and thanked the crew for their efforts in saving the airship during the storm. Then he threw out a vague question to the whole crew. "Who's in charge now? How are we going to run things?"

We skipped that at first and talked for a while about practical matters. Food. Fuel. Repairs. Money. Where to go. What to do. But at every step, that unanswered question kept jerking us back. Who was in charge? We needed actionable decisions. We needed plans and policies. We had great team spirit, enthusiastic solidarity, mutual respect and liking, but that wasn’t enough. On one topic after another, there was discussion, ideas were floated, approved, critiqued, and withdrawn, sometimes consensus was established on some points, but there was no clear takeaway without a leader.

A few of us had pulled out computers and started taking notes. I was jotting down the remarkably sophisticated thoughts being voiced, in order to review them later and understand them better. I also had the idea that it might be helpful to write up meeting minutes for circulation afterwards. Of those who typed while others talked, most probably had the same idea, but Pierre Lafitte, Jove’s Chariot’s legal officer, whom we later dubbed “the father of the constitution,” was doing something different. He had conceived the project of solving the authority problem. So an hour into the meeting, he stood up and revealed what he’d been working on.

Now, I've gone back and forth in my mind about how to narrate what happened next. I can't remember every word Pierre said, naturally, not only because it was a long time ago but because we were so excited. Also, there's a bit of context that's hard to explain. By the time Pierre spoke to us, we had decided that Jove's Chariot was ours. It's hard to say why. Pierre gave us good reasons for a decision we had already made, and we welcomed that. Yet we were biased too, because we wanted the airship, fascinated as we were by its success in weathering the storm. We were exiles, we needed community and had each other, we needed a place and had the airship, and we would keep it. But I might as well put it in Pierre's mouth, though he articulated better than I can.

So picture us there, standing on the transparent floors of Jove's Chariot above the rainforests of Africa on a sunny morning, united by our noble quest and our peril and the mutual admiration which these evoked, having narrowly escaped death, and still at risk of it, having no leaders we could trust, as Pierre Lafitte stood in our midst and, in strange high-flown English flavored with a French accent, gave this speech:

"Gentlemen, we have come a long way together! We were prepared to brave any danger and to sacrifice anything, even life itself. Our purpose was to rescue the innocent people of Zambia from hunger, sickness, darkness and death, inflicted on them by the princes of avarice. It is an honor to be in your company!

"But now we have been misused and betrayed by our leaders. They senselessly and needlessly endangered not only our own lives, but also the success of our mission, and thereby forfeited the right to command us. Captain Scott, probably in obedience to his uncle, defied the good advice of his experienced crewmen, and the customs of airshipmen, when he drove us into a dangerous storm. Then in the moment of supreme peril he faltered, and Archie and Jake took command in order to save our lives. Captain Scott thereby lost his authority as our captain." At this there were some cheers.

"Now we have none to give commands, no leadership, no captain. But we need commands. We need to work together if we are to survive and to save our quest. And our work together needs to be coordinated and directed to be effective. That, I would suggest to you, is why we have all come together this morning, although no one summoned us. We felt this need to answer, together, this question of how we will be governed. We meant to get leadership.

"Unfortunately, we must again defy the law of nations to get it. We are already outlaws, men deprived of our native countries by the cunning machinations of the same princes of avarice who are tormenting Zambia. They have whispered lies, poisoning the counsels of the rulers of men, filling them with false fears, until they commanded us to abort our noble mission. It was a command we couldn't in conscience obey, for love of the people of Zambia, whom we alone can help in their desperate need. But we were also, at that time, bound by our duties to our employer. Yet if we had obeyed their command, what would our obedience have consisted in but the very mutiny to which we are now driven? They ordered us to abort the mission. By what right could we have done so? By what means could we have done so? Only by taking control of the airship by force. At that time, we would have been mere thieves and plunderers to act so, for Elton and Scott Davies had done us no wrong. Now that we have a right to mutiny, we are doing so, even as the community of nations wished, though in a better cause.

"But we have learned the hard way that the community of nations cannot be trusted as an arbiter of justice. What, then, does justice have to say on this matter? Can we justly claim this airship as our own? I think we can. Hear my arguments, listen to me carefully, and give me your advice. Are there flaws in my reasoning? Do I make any mistakes? There is no better service that one friend can do for another than to dissuade him from a course of action that is imprudent or unjust. So do this for me if it is needed. Don't let me do wrong through your silence! But if I am right, then let us work together to claim what we must and act as we must to save our lives and fulfill our quest.

"Consider, then, that a man has, first and foremost, a right to his own life, and to the means of preserving it. The claims of property must give way before the right to life. A starving man who steals a loaf of bread to survive does no wrong. This airship is to us as the starving man's loaf of bread. It is our means of life. At this moment, we stand thousands of feet above a jungle. If we parachuted down, we would get snagged in the canopy, and should be very lucky to reach the ground alive. If we reached the ground, we would be in a trackless jungle, far from civilization and not knowing the way. If we reached civilization, we would be in a foreign country that speaks a foreign language, where we lack citizenship or property or friends, and know not the customs, and moreover a country desperately poor and ravaged by war. The airship alone keeps us safe. Here we have friends and community. Here we have food. In the airship we have an asset by means of which we can earn our living. So we must seize control of the airship, and choose competent leaders to command it, for the immediate saving of our lives, and also to have a way to earn our livings as exiled men, unjustly outlawed, and unable to return home. Do I speak the truth? Contradict me if I err!

"Some might blame us for seizing this airship as our permanent possession, rather than simply keeping it long enough to fly it to a safe port and then surrendering it back to its lawful owners. But how can we be sure that the lawful owner would accept our just claim to have done this? And what courts could we trust to uphold our right to do what we needed to do to survive, when the rulers of mankind have already proven themselves so unjust in our case? While we possess this airship, we are not so easily captured. We have the whole earth to roam and hide. But if we stop on the ground, we can be arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced by judges who refuse to recognize the just claims arising from the desperate need that drove us to act. Any captain that we elect, in particular, will face a heightened danger of retaliatory action. They may let the rest go free and punish the captain. But how can we ask a man to serve as our captain and then, when we are indebted to him for saving our lives, let him be unjustly arrested? On the ground, there is little or nothing we could do to help him. But while we are on this airship, we can face all hazards together.

"I think that even before the storm, we would have had a claim to seize the airship, both as extraordinary compensation for the outlawry into which we were plunged by the mission that Elton Davies hired us to do, and as a necessary means of livelihood for exiled men. But I am not certain of that and would be unwilling to risk injustice. Now, however, he has forfeited all claims by recklessly endangering our lives, contrary to the customs of the industry which comprise the tacit bond between airship owners and airship crewmen all over the world. Moreover, Elton Davies would have no airship by now if Archie and Jake hadn't saved it. And we, as exiled men and outlaws, having no countries or homes to return to, need not only food and shelter but also a polity, a community in which civility and justice and friendship and mutual aid may be practiced, for man does not live by bread alone. We need a republic, and for that republic, we need a territory on which our civic life may be enacted, and this airship is the only territory at hand for us to claim. 

"We have become, through no wrongdoing of our own, exiles, outlaws, men without a country, without any political community to command our loyalty and protect us and make us feel at home. We must meet that need in another way than what was given us by our circumstances of birth. The time has come for us to decide how Jove’s Chariot should be governed. We need a rule, or set of rules, for our collaboration and fellowship. Let us govern the  airship ourselves, together, by general counsel and consent, with promises of mutual aid to bind us together in the noble enterprise that we have undertaken! Please, ladies and gentleman, correct me, contradict me, argue with me if I have erred in any point! We must not make a mistake about this!"

Such was Pierre's style, slow and ponderous, scholastic and rhetorical, solemn and overwhelming. He was, in his way, the second most well-spoken man on Jove's Chariot, after Face. But by this time, you must be wondering who Pierre Lafitte was. So were most of us, for we had not gotten to know him well. 

A Frenchman by birth, Pierre had once planned to be a professor of medieval history and philosophy. His doctoral research on natural law took him to Egypt, to visit Damietta and other sites associated with the Seventh Crusade, in which one of Pierre's ancestors had fought, alongside the French king and saint Louis VII, whom Pierre, a devout Catholic, regarded as history's chief exemplar of just government. He had a particular fancy to set foot on the place where the Grand Master of the Templars had once refused to lend the king the money he needed to ransom himself from the Muslims, because the loan would violate the commitments the Templars had made to investors. The Grand Master had instead hinted that the king should take the money by force and would meet no resistance, which the king duly did. In this charade, Pierre for some reason discerned a sort of historical pinnacle of chivalry and honor. There in Egypt, walking in the footsteps of the crusaders, Pierre's romantic imagination was tuned to such a pitch of ecstasy that he fell in love, with a beautiful Coptic Christian girl who dwelt near Damietta. He married her and took her back to France, but her homesickness soon made him realize that the minimal pay of a French medieval history professor would never afford her the frequency of visits to Egypt which her happiness required. He therefore resolved to go to law school, but no law school in France was suited to his rather medieval philosophical outlook, so he enrolled in the University of Notre Dame in the United States. When he finished, he found work as a corporate lawyer in Chicago, drafting elaborate financial contracts, a task so prosaic and narrow that it nearly killed him, even as his wife got more and more homesick. An opportunity to move came along when an American donor hired Pierre to provide legal defense for a political dissident in Egypt. It took a year, then failed, and the income vanished, and the Lafittes were desperate. So he had applied for any job he could, even for legal counsel on Jove's Chariot, and there he found his moment of greatness when his mingled romantic eccentricity and natural law idealism became for a moment the voice of everyman, and inspired the birth of the Flying Republic of Outlaws.

I raised the question earlier of whether we would have mutinied and appropriated Jove's Chariot if there had been no malpractice by its owners to justify it. I'm not sure, but as I think about it, I can't doubt that simple greed biased us in being persuaded by Pierre's arguments. In the storm, we had seen what that machine could do, its incredible strength and power. We loved it. We wanted it. We had to have it. And I suppose you’ll think that’s not an adequate claim, and it would be to our discredit, at least if that were our only justification. And yet I’m not quite sure. Wouldn’t it be a better world if each and every thing belonged to the person who loved it most? We were sure that we could appreciate and use Jove’s Chariot as no one else on earth could do. And that seemed like a reason why it should be ours. But consider this also: that it's difficult to found a republic, there are all sorts of conflicts between people's preferences and ambitions and so forth that must be brought into harmony, and justice alone is probably not enough to overcome those conflicts. We needed another incentive, and owning the airship we all loved met that need, and enabled us to cooperate and form our republic, which, as exiles, we needed in order to live. Can greed be justified if it is the means to cooperation which is necessary for survival?

After Father Clancy came among us, I had much opportunity, while listening to him preach about the rich fool, or the rich man and Lazarus, or the camel and the eye of the needle and the young men who went away sorrowing because he had many possessions, about the madness of man’s presumption to own God’s earth. Nothing was made by us, and though God suffers us to manage it for a time, we are only stewards. We ought to use what we possess for His ends of love and service to our fellow men and women and to all His creatures. And I think that’s the right measure. Whatever the odd accidents by which Jove’s Chariot came into our power, the question is, were we good stewards? Did we use it in love and service for the human race, casting our bread upon the waters? I think, under the guidance of Captain Jake and Father Clancy, that we did, or at least we tried. 

Well, I’ve gotten carried away. We didn’t think through all this at the time, of course. And who knows whether I’m right? Men have asserted and argued and fought and complained and theorized about these issues for ten thousand years, and I’m not likely to settle all the outstanding questions here. But when Pierre said we needed “a rule, or set of rules, for our collaboration,” that is how we understood it. We were undertaking to govern ourselves and our newly acquired airship, for the Zambia mission and beyond, through rules mutually agreed upon, and affirmed through solemn promises.

“Ideally,” Pierre continued, “at least in my opinion, decisions would be made through discussions leading to consensus. But that’s not always achievable, even if the discussion is long continued. The most obvious alternative to consensus is majority vote. Of course, that’s quite problematic as well. Also, often decisions need to be made too quickly to permit talk and deliberation. That’s why an executive power is needed. Am I right? Contradict me if I have made a mistake.”

He had paused then to let his words sink in, and to let his unanswered challenge to contradict him feel like a kind of consent. He had gotten a little carried away. Now he needed buy-in. There was a long silence as people thought hard about his words. 

"Jove's Chariot against the world," said someone, I think Ro Jarvis, rather softly amidst the silence, as a comment, not a cheer. 

Finally someone answered Pierre's long manifesto.

“So you’re saying we should elect a captain?” said Roy Dodge. 

“Exactly!” exclaimed Pierre, taking Roy Dodge, as representative of the crew at large. “I think we should get that in writing.” He grabbed a pen and paper and spoke as he wrote. “We, the members of the crew of Jove’s Chariot, lacking acceptable leadership, hereby agree to initiate a process of selecting a captain who, in regular consultation with the crew, can provide coordination and make urgent operational decisions. How’s that?” 

Instead of awaiting verbal answers, he signed his own name below the statement, and then passed it to the man standing nearest, which was Joel Marcos. It took a long time for the sheet to move from hand to hand. Some sought to be next to sign, while others, including me, patiently waited their turn. It came back with twenty signatures, missing only those of Andrea Jastrow and Archie Jones. “Andrea?” called Pierre. She came and signed. “Archie, what about you?” Archie seemed to pause, but then he came and signed as well. It was unanimous.

“Good,” said Pierre, “that’s the first step. Next, we need candidates. I don’t think we should ask for volunteers. Let me explain why. We are pursuing a mission which is highly altruistic and noble, but which has been misconstrued by corrupt deceivers and, as a result, wrongly condemned by most of the world. Moreover, Elton Davies may resent our acting without his leave in selecting a new leadership to replace Scott. Whoever is elected captain must expect to receive a double portion, so to speak, of the unpleasantness that is in store for us all because of what conscience and circumstances have compelled us to do. With this in mind, I want everyone to set aside the usual feelings of personal ambition that frequently motivate people to seek elected leadership roles. In this emergency, duty must trump personal preference. I think the whole crew must beseech its most experienced members to be willing, if elected, to serve as captain. I therefore solemnly solicit, for the post of captain, the candidacies of Archie Jones, Andreas Fulk, Jake Munro, Leonard Lord, Sid Shepard, Thor Halvarsson, and Frank Logan. What do you say?”

“I’m just a weatherman,” objected Leonard Lord.

“Weather is an important factor in airship navigation,” said Pierre. “Do you want to let the crew decide?”

“No, I can’t be captain,” said Leonard, in a tone of dismissing an absurdity.

“Very well then. The others…” Pierre made eye contact with his other picked candidates, and there seemed to be some reluctant, hardly perceptible nods, but we weren’t sure. It seemed clear that no one wanted the job, but maybe they were willing. “Let’s get this in writing too,” said Pierre. “I hereby declare that I am willing to serve as captain of Jove’s Chariot, if chosen for that office by the crew. Archie?” 

The paper was passed to Archie, Jake, Scout, Muscle, and Frank Logan, and they all signed. 

“Andreas isn’t here,” said Jake. “He's in the cockpit. Should we ask him?”

“Yes. By rank of experience, he should be a candidate.” He pulled out his phone, putting it on speaker, and called the cockpit.

Andreas picked up. "Hey, what is it? I've got Pavel Shchersky on hold."

"We wanted to invite you to run for captain," explained Pierre.

Andreas burst out laughing. "So you want a fall guy when the ship crashes? No thanks. You guys can run for captain, I'll fly the ship. But I'd like to get Archie Jones back here. I'm doing a damage audit with Pavel, and what a mess we're in! Strain gauge readings are out of whack all over the place. This ship is not sound. Could I get Paul and Randy too, and Vinod for some calculations?" A ripple of unease rolled through the crew at Andreas's words.

"Archie is a candidate for captain," objected Pierre.

Andreas laughed even more. "What are you guys up to?"

"Andreas, you worry too much," said Archie. "The ship is robust enough to handle a little strain. We'll be all right." We felt reassured until he added, "As long as the weather holds."

"But what about hydrogen? It was nearly all spent during the storm. We can't get to Zambia on what we have left. And how can we even get down? We're too light."

“I’m not sure it’s safe to stop for fuel,” said Ro Jarvis. “Elton Davies might have us arrested as mutineers.” Some laughed at that for a moment, then stopped short when they realized the remark was perfectly serious. 

“And he’ll probably cut off the fuel cards before long,” added Frank, meaning the payment cards we used, which charged fuel costs to Heavenborne Logistics.

“We don’t absolutely need fuel anytime soon,” said Archie. “We have extra lift right now. We can run a tube from a lifting gas bag to the fuel tank. Replenish fuel hydrogen with lift hydrogen. That also solves the problem of being too light.”

Everyone looked at Archie like he was crazy. 

“It can be done,” he insisted. “We did that on the Blue Eagle”-- a well known airship of which Archie had been captain-- “after we burned all the fuel fighting our way through a storm off Kamchatka. It’s one of the reasons I like a hydrogen airship.” 

There was a long, amazed silence in the room.

“I never heard that,” said Jake finally.

“No, we kept it pretty dark,” said Archie. “We didn’t want to spook investors. Or regulators. But it works. We can do it again. I'll do it myself.”

"It sounds dangerous," said Ro Jarvis, who at that time was even less of an airshipman than I was.

"No more so than siphoning gasoline between two tanks," said Archie. "Less so if anything. Gasoline puddles. Hydrogen dissipates."

That moment came to symbolize the death of secrets among the crewmen of Jove’s Chariot. 

"Well," said Andreas, "that does ease my mind a bit."

"Join our meeting, at least," said Pierre. "Cast your vote for captain."

"No, I'd better drop off and get back to Pavel. Good luck, and don't take too long!"

"One more thing," said Archie. "Try not to tell Pavel that I've got that up my sleeve just yet. Let's make them sweat some."

"Will do," said Andreas. And as an afterthought, "And I vote for Archie for captain."

After Andreas dropped off, all discipline briefly broke down, and the room was full of excited chatter. Pierre waited for us to get back to business.

“So,” resumed Pierre when the digression petered out, “no Andreas Fulk in the candidate list. I think we should decide among the five other candidates by secret ballot, by majority vote. But first, I think we should try to achieve unanimity about the process, so that those who vote for a losing candidate will still have promised to obey the captain. Something like this…” And again he took a sheet of paper and spoke as he wrote. “I hereby agree to vote by secret ballot for a captain of Jove’s Chariot, but then to accept the leadership of whoever is chosen by a majority of the crew, obeying orders promptly and with a good will, inasmuch as the captain engages in due consultation with the crew and retains the crew’s confidence.” Then he signed it himself, and passed the sheet around. The mood was becoming very serious, and it wasn’t clear if the crew felt happy about the developments, yet the paper circulated quickly, and came back with every signature on it.

“Good,” said Pierre. “Now for the last vote today, I think. We’ll need a lot of paper and pens for this one.” He started tearing a sheet of paper in small pieces and passing the sheets around. And he told Danny to get a pot from the kitchen. Soon everyone had a sheet a paper in their hand. 

“Now,” said Pierre, “let everyone write down, on the sheet of paper, which of the five candidates you consider best suited to serve as captain of Jove’s Chariot. The candidates are…” and he repeated the names.

Archie Jones was the most qualified. He was, by any standard, one of the best airshipmen in the world. Of the five, he had alone had been an airship captain before, and three times. He had been friends with great industry founders like Alan Weston, Barry Prentice, Tom Grundy, Sebastian Bougon, Milt Whickutt, and Gennady Verba, and flown on the Airlander-60 and the Pathfinder-3. At 46, he was a mature, well-respected figure. But he was a bit aloof. And he was close to Elton Davies, which now made him suspect. On the other hand, he had been the first to stand up to Captain Scott and oppose the reckless flight through the storm. And it was he who had stabilized the airship during its descent, and flown us out of the storm to safety. Jake was only 32, but he was well connected and charismatic. He was also a kind of everyman figure. He fit in everywhere. 

Pierre counted the votes. “Twelve for Jake, seven for Archie, and one for Frank Logan,” he concluded. “Has everyone voted?” Apparently they hadn’t, because there were twenty-two crew members present. It wasn’t clear whether Marta and Luz, present but not exactly crew members, or Dr. Bell, not present, were meant to have votes, or whether the candidates were supposed to vote. Yet the outcome was not in doubt, so after a moment, Pierre moved on.

“Let’s have a round of applause for our new captain, Jake Munro!” shouted Pierre. And we all cheered, and some waved victorious fists in the air or even jumped. Someone produced a bottle of champagne, which was passed from mouth to mouth and poured, since no cups were present. The celebration was enthusiastic and boisterous, and it lasted for about three full minutes. We all loved the idea of having Jake for captain, even those who had voted for Archie. 

Jake was taken aback, and he didn't rise to the occasion with the inspiring speech that would have been fitting. The celebration gave way to a long silence, as we waited for one, and then he just said, "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, guys… um… I'll do my best…" We got a little uneasy.

But then Jake reassured us by spearheading a few smart, consensual decisions.

"I know Pierre told you it would be the last time of the day, but I think we need a couple more," said Jake. "First, concerning food and water. We don't have much because we threw it overboard trying not to fall into the jungle. We don't know how long we'll be stranded here in the sky. Now, it would be too cumbersome to make up a whole system of rationing. But it's too vague to ask everyone to just practice a little restraint. So what I propose is a strict rule against eating alone. Eat and drink when you really need to, but have a crewmate with you for the sake of accountability. Then we can all sort of talk about it. And if we see anyone eating alone… well, I don't know, maybe start with a reminder, but… well, let's hope that doesn't happen. What do you think?"

There were murmurs of mingled dismay had approval, which Jake took to mean dismay at the food shortage, but approval of the remedy. "Pierre," send Jake, "can you… do that thing…"

"Draft a resolution?" asked Pierre.

"Yeah," said Jake. "Organize a vote."

"At your service, captain," said Pierre, for the first of a thousand times, starting a fashion that many of us would adopt. He took a paper, and, speaking slowly as he wrote, pronounced, "I hereby support the resolution that, in view of the situation in which Jove's Chariot finds itself, no crewman shall eat secretly or by himself or herself, but only openly and in the company of others. And I promise to obey this resolution." Then he made two columns, one for yes, and one for no. "Just put a check," he added.

He passed the sheet around. It came back with twenty checks under "Yes," and one under "No."

"Well, good, thanks, guys!" said Jake, ignoring the one "no" vote. "That's very useful. We'll keep an eye on each other, and hopefully we don't need rules any more stringent than that. Next, it seems to me, unfortunately, that my first duty as captain is to negotiate with Elton Davis to buy this airship. Unless… maybe… someone…" He looked around for volunteers, but there were none.

"Pierre, can you set up that vote?"

"Hey, wait," said Ro Jarvis, "do we really need to do that?" Pierre's speech had seemed to suggest something different, and Ro voiced a disappointment that we all felt.

"If we don't," said Jake, "then I think that as soon as we get to Lusaka, we'll all be seized and taken off the airship by force, and we'll never see the inside of it again, and I'll be thrown in jail. Didn't you guys just promise to support me with mutual aid or something?"

There were murmurs that might have been approval, but it wasn't clear, so Jake added:

"I'll make sure that I don't offer to pay more than what we can easily earn. And honestly, guys, it's only fair. We're not starving peasants who need to steal a loaf of bread. I think we have the best airship crew in the world right here, and one of the best airships, and we can make a whole lot of money if we want to. It's only fair that we pay for that privilege. Let's stay honest now." The silence seemed like satisfaction, so Jake continued, "Pierre, set up the vote!"

The resolution that Pierre drafted was: "I hereby authorize Captain Jake Munro to negotiate on my behalf for the purchase of the airship Jove's Chariot from Elton Davies, for a price that he deems the crew will be able to pay by the airship's earnings." It came back with unanimous approval, albeit with only fifteen votes.

"Okay, thanks, though that won't be much fun," said Jake. "And you, Pierre, since you got me into this, are hereby ordered to assist me in the negotiations."

"At your service, captain," said Pierre.

"Maybe that's all we really need," said Jake, "and I hate to take up more of everybody's time when there's so much to do. But there are a few other things I'd like the crew's support on. What do you think, Pierre? Would it be any good taking more votes if I let a few guys go?"

"You could do voice votes," said Pierre. "You know, 'all in favor say aye.'"

"Great," said Jake, "good plan. So, first of all, I like that stuff Pierre said about all of us giving mutual aid. Can we all promise to help each other out if we're in trouble?" After a pause, he added, "Um… all in favor say aye."

A chorus of "aye" was shouted from the whole room.

"Any nays?" asked Pierre, for the sake of procedure. Silence.

This later came to be called the Mutual Aid Pact, and we made every new guy sign it. We took it seriously, and talked a lot about it, refining the interpretation of all sorts of edge cases to figure out exactly what the obligation was. It was a great comfort in our exile to know that our Jove's Chariot brothers would help us out, if they could.

"Second, this is kind of obvious, but… we're still set on going to Zambia, right? I mean, after I buy the ship? There's some risk, so I wanted to make sure. All in favor say aye."

"Aye!" shouted everyone. 

"Any nays?" Silence.

"And for now, everyone has the same jobs they had before, other than me and Captain Scott? All in favor say aye." Again, unanimous consent.

"That's all I've got. No, wait, one more thing."

Jake grew solemn, and suddenly looked the part of captain for the first time. "We didn't come out here to make money or have flings with girls or anything, or just for the fun of it either. We came to help people, and we didn't want to hurt anybody, even if we have made some people mad. Well, I think that's worth more than all the money in the world, and I don't want to lose it. I've seen guys have good intentions and then go wrong. None more so than myself. So let's make a promise right now that that won't happen to us, okay? No voice vote on this one, Pierre, put it in writing!"

Pierre looks so glad that we figured he would die from smiling too much. Eagerly, he wrote, "I hereby accept the charge never to commit outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of… hmmm…" He thought for a moment, then continued, "... my seat at the table of Jove's Chariot, forevermore; and always to do honor to ladies, damsels, and gentlewomen upon pain of death. Also, never to serve or do battle in a wrongful quarrel, regardless of… hmmm… all laws of men or prospects of worldly gain." He was living the dream.

"What's that?" asked Jake.

"It's the oath taken by the knights of the Round Table, from Mallory," said Pierre. "I mean, adapted to present circumstances, of course."

"What's a damsel?" asked Pete Gunther.

"A girl," said Pierre. "I mean, a virgin."

"You had that memorized?" asked Face, with a trace of mockery.

"I'm a fanboy," apologized Pierre.

There was about a full minute of confused silence.

"Well," said Jake, "I guess that's… kind of what I was getting at. It's hard to put these things into words. But I guess if it was good enough for King Arthur, it's good enough for me. Actually, add something to it. It’s something my mother said. 'Live for others.' Pierre, can you work that in?” 

Writing more words at the end, Pierre intoned, “And I promise to dedicate my life to the service of others, and to take no action that proceeds from self-interest.”

“OK, I like it,” said Jake. “I wanted to get that in there, it probably means the same thing, but I think it's easier to understand. Pass it around, and not just check marks this time! Sign your names, like they did on the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence or something."

The paper circulated, and came back with every one of the names that had been singled out for outlawry by the community of nations, except of course Scott Davies and Andreas Fulk, who were not present. There was less hesitation and deliberation you might expect, but the mood in the room turned not only solemn, but even a little dark. The feelings of unity and camaraderie that we had felt after making the Mutual Aid Pact were gone. We no longer felt reassured, but some of us at least felt amazed and elevated, like trumpets sounding in the soul. Now we were eager for the meeting to end. Jake had gone too far. He was unpredictable and perilous. And yet, in the end, we all signed. Even Face signed, and I think he was haunted later by his broken promise. 

"Okay, good. Remember that, guys. I sure will, and I'll hold you to it. Anyone else have words for the group before we break?"

After a pause, Face, or rather Willy Blayne as he still was to most of us at that time, stepped impressively into the center of the loose semicircle of the crew. And we no longer wanted the meeting to end.

"Now that we've settled all that," said Face, and you could have cut the contempt in his voice with a knife, "I think I had better tell you everything that I know. Just don't tell anyone that you heard it from me. But it will be a long story, and I think Andreas needs some help. I can get other people up to speed later. Who can stick around?"

Instead of deciding for ourselves, we looked at Jake. We felt something important was about to be said. Indeed, with his few words or perhaps merely by his manner, Face already had all of us spellbound. 

"Archie, Paul, Randy, you guys go to the cockpit and help Andreas with the damage assessment," said Jake. Archie, Paul and Randy left. "Willy, go on," said Jake.

The story that followed astounded us, and largely set our agenda for the next two years. Face knew most of what there was to know about Elton Davies' plans for Jove's Chariot, and by revealing it all to us, surely against Davies' wishes, he seemed to be casting his lot with us completely, and perhaps putting himself in considerable danger. And yet he may have been doing no more than living up to the promise that we had all made to help each other out when we're in trouble. We were certainly in trouble, and Face's information was certainly helpful. But it was the beginning of a new story which will be told in its own place. For now, suffice it to say that we walked out of that room different men than we entered it, as much because of Face's story as because we had founded the Flying Republic of Outlaws.

There are a lot of loose ends to tie up before I go on to our triumphant entry into Zambia.

First, Andreas Fulk heard about it all, and the King Arthur Oath, and he signed it, and he kept the promise as well as any of us, being a good man, but he thought, all those years, that it was all an elaborate prank. Andreas, if you’re reading this, I hear you, man. I think we all half-believed that half the other guys were just signing for a joke, or just to go with the flow, and that we were suckers for taking it seriously. But as I got to know the guys better over the years, I realized that in all of their life stories there was a kind of a hole that making that promise helped to fill. We all needed a little bit more meaning and purpose than life had given us. The King Arthur Oath met a need. Even for Face, I think it could have met a need, if he had let it. But I can understand why you would have thought we were joking. I guess you had to be there.

People ask me now whether the King Arthur Oath really mattered. It's hard to say. The Oath takers themselves hardly ever talked about it, as far as I know, in complete contrast with the Mutual Aid Pact. We treated the public promise as a kind of secret between ourselves and our consciences. And yet the paper that we had all signed was posted in the corridor to the cockpit, so we knew who had taken the Oath and who hadn't. Some of the names on the paper came to seem a little ghostly as the years passed, and as we knew that some of those men hadn't kept the promise. Frank Logan hadn't. Riley Mulligan hadn't. Face was a borderline case. I think Jake would have said that he hadn't lived up to the old Arthurian vow, and Face himself probably would have laughed uncomfortably at the question, thinking inwardly that of course no one could keep a promise like that, it was against all laws of human nature. But some guys still saw him as an exemplar, and they had a case. They thought Jake had treated Face unjustly, for which Face magnanimously refused to resent him. And then he did his great deeds in exile, and returned, turning his back on a fortune as in so doing, to shimmer in the court during our last journeys. Much depends on whether you think his gallant habits, giving girls a good time and then breaking their hearts, betrayed the Oath or not. Something depends on whether presumed good intentions can justify his successful pursuit of treasure. 

Jake never let new guys take the Oath. I think he felt guilty for asking too much of the guys, and didn't want to repeat the mistake, and yet the reason he gave tended to reinforce its mystique. He said that the Oath mustn't be reduced to cheap talk, and that the original Outlaws had proved their worthiness by accepting exile for the cause. A new cause might come along that would make men worthy to take the Oath again, but he could make no promises, for all depended on circumstance and adventure. Mickey Tritt defied Jake, taking the Oath secretly in the dead of night, in a ceremony organized by Father Clancy, with a chapel and swords and Latin and all, the full medieval reenactment. Arguably, he lived up to it better than any of us, being the only one of the Oath takers to be with Jake at the very end, although that was against orders too. Jake said it was illegitimate because unapproved, not that he wanted to exclude Mickey per se, but he considered it an unlucky precedent that needed to be nipped in the bud. But Mickey's name name kept getting stealthily added to the bottom of the list, and removed by Jake, until Jake gave up. Mickey Tritt said right after he took the Oath that he was proud to have become one of the "knights of Jove's Chariot," originating an expression that seemed to signify having taken the Oath. But it soon came to be used for all the crewmen of Jove's Chariot, whether they had or not. 

The only guys who Jake did allow to take the King Arthur Oath were the eight rookie crewmen who risked their lives rescuing Father Clancy from the brothel ship in Antarctica in 2054, and freed all the whores, too, from that den of sin. But that’s a story for later.

Each of us thought a lot more about whether he had kept the oath (or she, Andrea had signed too) then about whether the other guys did. We were never sure. Jake had said he would hold us to it, and we were always afraid he would, and at the same time, we were a little disappointed that he never did. Except once, at the end. When he was seeking a favorable vote to launch the Ethiopia mission in 2059, where it seemed likelier than not that we'd all end up dead, I think there's a clear reference to the King Arthur Oath, though not by name. We were hesitant, and I think that reminder made up our minds. With that possible exception, he never, as far as I know, held any man to account saying that he wasn't living up to the Oath, or told a man he was bound by the Oath to do something in particular. But we were afraid he would, and I'm sure that fear improved our behavior. I'm sure the King Arthur Oath made us better men, and a better airship crew, and maybe it was the reason why we were cut above other airship crews, and kept dazzling the world with our exploits, if you'll forgive a bit of colorful hyperbole. It still haunts me today, when Jove's Chariot is no more. It might have been bad for some of the guys to be held to a standard they couldn't live up to, but in general, I think there ought to be more of that in the world, more high expectations, more brave, high-minded promises.

Second, Jake bought the airship from Elton Davis for $40 million. The negotiations took four days, and were as miserable as Jake had anticipated. Over a video comms link, Jake and Pierre negotiated with Davies himself and a shifting staff of lawyers, financiers, engineers, and even a psychologist, who was supposed to determine if Jake was crazy, I guess. They found Jake a stubborn and obtuse negotiator, stating his demands at the beginning and not budging, and hardly trying to justify himself either. Yet I think the few things he did say were worth more than all the sophistical blather that Elton and his hired guns spouted at us. Like, "We won't give back the airship because Elton Davies should not be an airship owner. We want to protect the next crew from him." And "No, we won't fly into Zambia until we know that you won't try to get us arrested." And "No, we're not holding Scott hostage. He's welcome to take a parachute and try his luck in the jungle. But if you want us to get him back safeb for you, we need to clear up these legal issues so that we feel safe flying into Zambia." And "The price is the price. No petty negotiations about money while Zambians are dying, waiting for us to come." Pierre at least made sure that our side was never at a loss for words. 

And I loyally stuck to Jake's side through it all, though I felt very out of my depth and superfluous. Yet Jake said I was helpful, in two ways. First, in my wheelchair, awaiting proper treatment from my broken leg in a Zambian hospital, I served as physical proof of the human cost of Davies' negligence, and as Jake's cousin, my injury helped justify his obduracy. Second, I sometimes got impatient and had sophomoric outbursts about how horrible all this delay was when people were dying, and could we please stop arguing. To which Jake would add coolly that bad weather might wreck the ship in its current state, and we didn't have enough hydrogen to outrun it. 

A lawyer for Elton Davies pressed the question of who would be responsible for the $40 million debt, since of course we couldn't pay cash but only promise to owe it. He asked incredulously if the only security Jake offered was "his honor as captain," and Jake said yes. The lawyer then pointed out, a little tactlessly I thought, that Jake might be deposed as captain. "Yes, and I certainly will be if I offer you more than $40 million, and you'll have to deal with the next captain." 

Finally, Elton Davies intervened and took the deal. He had fallen a little bit in love with Jake, not romantically of course, but in a businessman way, becoming infatuated with his imperturbability and decisiveness and vision and what he deemed him capable of, and wanting to invest. It was shallow, impulsive, like the way businessmen are always falling in love with the latest silly management fad, which only has to pass the low bar of being wiser than they are. He wanted to do business with him, and he realized that we might be even more in his power as a band of outlaws dependent on him for work and logistical support than we were when he owned the airship. Also, he didn't fancy getting back into the business of recruiting an airship crew. Better to outsource, even if it meant writing down a $100 million capital loss. Jake and I then had to sell the deal to the crew, and there was much grumbling. My share of the debt, so to speak, would be almost $2 million, which boggled my mind. But I loyally told everyone that my cousin was a genius investor from Hong Kong, which I naively believed at the time. As a result, Ro Jarvis ended up mistrusting me, when he later found out that Jake had been ruined in the 2045 crash, though the rest of the crew always thought me unimpeachably honest. But we closed the deal in the end. Jake could always say that if we thought we could do better, we should have done the negotiations ourselves.

Third, although Pierre had made the captaincy completely revocable by the crew at any moment, Jake held it for thirteen years without ever being challenged. I think that was in part the result of the King Arthur Oath. We had promised to shun "treason," and that held us back from mere plotting and intrigue. But we didn't think it would have been treasonable to challenge Jake if there was someone more competent or worthy. There wasn't. There was some dissatisfaction with Jake's captaincy because he tended to put so little value on profit. Not that we ever lacked money, exactly, but we could have made a lot more than we did, and more importantly, stuffed it into shadowy private foreign bank accounts, so that we could retire into a comfortable exile somewhere, instead of holding all that money in common for use in the gallant airships' incessant quests. Face, as captain, would have secured our private interests much better. Jake made us live for others instead, and some didn't like that. But we had taken the King Arthur Oath, and we knew we would be breaking our promise if we deposed Captain Jake in order to live for others less. 

Fourth, the Flying Republic of Outlaws went on to an illustrious career, becoming wealthy and famous and beloved and fascinating, and our dealings stirred talk and fear and hope in the halls of the great, and we even acquired a sort of colonial empire of secret refueling stations and supply depots, populated mostly by runaways and refugees. We also shaped the cutting edge of airship technology and helped set patterns for the emerging industry. All in all, our Flying Republic was an important actor on the stage of history. We inadvertently founded the city of Jovetown on South Georgia Island, now one of the most thriving trade hubs in the South Atlantic. We founded three companies in our corporate capacity, not including the companies that individual crewmen founded after our adventure ended. They are still thriving today: the Jove's Chariot Company of Argentina, the largest logistical firm in a country of 50 million people; the Jove's Chariot Company of Comoros, which became the effective government of that country for a decade after it restored order during the anarchy of 2051; and the Jove's Chariot Company of South Georgia Island, which governed Jovetown. A colonial empire isn't the sort of accomplishment I would have aspired to, but we felt like we had no choice, first because we needed refueling stations and we feared that the community of nations would cut us off from normal sea purchases of hydrogen from ships, and later because we needed places to put people who asked us to keep them safe. 

Self-government can be a tedious business. We spent a lot of time in meetings, which is ironic since a lot of the guys were running away from office careers where they'd have had to sit in meetings. Meetings needed procedures, and to be documented, and the rules we passed accumulated in a Google Drive file eventually reached thousands of pages long. Pierre was our resident expert and the only one who more or less remembered them all. But even he became overwhelmed in the end. The integrity of a republic depends on the logical consistency of its rules, and we were not equal to the maintenance of that in the long run. We became a little enslaved to custom in some ways, and new crewmen often mechanically imitated the veterans to avoid breaking some rule they didn't know about. Custom and documented rules gradually encroached more and more on spontaneity. But they held us together, and gave us community, and helped us cooperate and achieve great things, and in due course, we took pleasure in the more familiarity and antiquity of it all. 

Still, in later years, there was growing deference to Jake's authority as an alternative to excessive deliberation and customary rule. Jake recognized this, and started to tell outsiders and the media, explaining rather than boasting, that "Jove's Chariot is a democracy, but I'm in charge of it." One time, he varied the formula, and said, "Jove's Chariot is a democracy, but I'm the king of it." Immediately the crew burst into raucous cheers of "King! King! King!" and "Long live King Jake!" But he was abashed, silenced us with his hands, and reproached us, saying, "You guys won't let me joke!" Well, so be it. We were Americans mostly, so we couldn't have a king. That was settled in 1776.

Fifth, while Jake and I were busy in negotiations, Face took the lead, earning his nickname once and for all, though there are still conflicting stories about how it happened. 

It's a funny thing, how Face liked to argue with orders, and could be lazy, but when he could take the initiative, he was absolutely brilliant. He proved his worth now. 

Here's the first story of how Face got his nickname. When big crowds gathered below the airship, looking up at us with curiosity, Face suggested buying food from them somehow, and offered to go down in a hanging basket and talk to them. But Archie Jones, who still held the title of deputy captain, felt like it was his job to do it, and wasn't sure that he had the authority to delegate that. His resistance didn't make much sense, because we were in a Francophone country, and Archie spoke no French, while Face spoke it fluently. Maybe he had a slight chip on his shoulder because of the captain election, and wasn't thinking straight, though if so, the lapse was only momentary. He wasn't actually eager to try to persuade a huge crowd of possibly hostile Africans who might have guns, but his chivalry made him think he must, and he needed some persuasion. So the story goes that while Face was explaining to Archie that we would need our best pilot to hold the ship's position while he spoke to the crowd, he summed it up with these words: "you be the hands of Jove's Chariot, I'll be the face." And that became his name from then on.

Archie doesn't remember the remark.

What we do know is that Face convinced Archie to let him be the spokesman, and Face then managed the crowd brilliantly, telling them it was the first of many missions that would bring prosperity to their country, and asking them to bring us food, for which we would pay well. Soon, there were goats and cows being slaughtered and butchered on the ground below, and the wire ropes were busy hauling meat up, and potatoes, and maize, and eggs. He had been the "face" of Jove's Chariot, as he would be again and again in the years to come. So his name fit him.

But the other story that is told is convincing too. There's an old TV show from the 1970s called "The A-Team," about a team of outlaw heroes who perform brilliant feats of cunning and daring thwarting bad guys even as they run from the law. We discovered it about this time, and as you might imagine, we loved it, and started seeing ourselves as the new A-Team, bravely taking on all the bad guys in the world with courage and genius. But none of us were really peers of the heroes on that show except Willy Blayne, who was strikingly reminiscent of the character in the show who is always called Face, though how real name is Templeton Peck. Partly, he just looked like him, but it went further than that. He operated the same way. They were both actors, con artists, and the crew saw him at work then for the first time. He didn't just change sides and work for us instead of Davies. He impersonated people that he knew in Davies' organization, mimicking their voices and using information about their schedules and their personal lives, to extract information. He could change rules as easily as a man changes his shirt. 

The pretext for all this ingenious intrigue was to help Jake with his negotiations, and if Jake had made use of all the intel, the allurements and the secrets and even the options for blackmail, he could probably have bought the airship for a much better price or even for nothing. But Jake lived by principles– Face said it was his way of hiding his stupidity– and the principle he had picked here was "the price is the price." Face didn't seem to mind that his intel went somewhat to waste as the time, though we made good use of it later. Life was a game to him, and he was always sportsmanlike about it. And I don't know if he cared how much we paid anyway. He was a complicated man, whose motives were a mystery even to himself, and who had a compulsion to turn every situation into a game of three-dimensional chess. 

By the time we emerged from the purchase negotiations, the crew was thoroughly under Face's spell, and I had a weird feeling that he was the real captain now, and Jake was destined only to be a figurehead until Face made the takeover official. They all looked to him and took their cues from him. But that only lasted a couple of days. The guys were mostly loyal to Jake, they had just responded instinctively to Face's confidence and charisma. The legitimate order quickly recovered, but this other regime, the influence of Face, smoldered quietly underground.

Sixth, Scott Davies redeemed himself a little, and I wish I could close out his story right here, for unfortunately he played a small part later on, and a slightly discreditable one, although it wasn't his fault. Captain Scott hid in his cabin for three days after the storm. I was the only one who went to see him at all, bringing meals in my wheelchair, and talking to him through the door. At first, he was too ashamed even to answer. When he heard the news that Jake had been elected captain, he said, "Good, that's as it should be." He was not brought into the negotiations with Elton Davies at all, though it would have seemed to natural to loop him in. I got the sense that he was very much alienated from his uncle, who had really injured him more than any of us, for Scott, too, had been nearly killed by the storm, but unlike us, he had also been disgraced, and cut off irrevocably, as it seemed to him, from men whom he had begun to hope were his friends. He would not, now, take his uncle's side, so he was left out of account altogether, except in the shameful role of an alleged hostage. He couldn't really build bridges with us, yet he did us one very good turn. 

You might have wondered where we got the money to pay top dollar for all that fresh African meat and vegetables. It was from Scott. There was a secret cash hoard of $100,000 aboard the airship, which only Scott knew about. One day when I brought him his lunch, I was telling him the news about Face trying to buy meat from the African spectators, and how we were all scrounging the little bits of cash we had to pay for it. "Maybe I can chip in," he said modestly, cracked the door, and slid out a suitcase. "Share it with the guys," he said, "for food and whatever else you need." When we opened it, and counted the money, I think we all forgave Scott. 

In Lusaka, he stayed in his room for a couple more days, and then emerged, and said he'd better go. His face was so sad and frightened that it would make your heart break. He didn't want to meet his uncle again. But it's hard to break free of a rich relative. Then Jake said something unexpected. "Don't go back, Scott. Join us. Join the crew." He was stunned, shaken to the core, and a strange expression came over his face, which had in it, for a moment, a kind of wild hope. But fear overtook him. "Thanks, Jake, I appreciate it. But I can't." He stepped down the ladder, and we never saw him again.

Lastly, that rule Jake made against eating alone– well, oddly enough, it stuck. It was almost immediately rendered needless as a means of managing the food supply, and after that first mission, we never feared going hungry again. But we'd quickly gotten in the habit of always finding a crewmate to break bread with, and we sort of liked it. We called it the Common Meal Rule, and it became the great symbol of the patriotic solidarity of the Flying Republic of Outlaws. Of course, it could be inconvenient, if you happen to be peckish what everyone else was asleep or busy. It meant sometimes going to bed hungry. But all in all, it seemed worth it, and anyway, it would sound unfriendly to propose a change. To new crewmates, of whom we soon had several, we gave a new justification, saying that the rule was to enforce sociability and help us cohere as a team, and make sure nobody was lonely. I even heard the rule justified from the King Arthur Oath: we had promised to take no action from self-interest, and there's too much danger that a guy eating alone would be acting from self-interest. 

The rule against eating alone became one of the memes to spill over from the life of Jove's Chariot into the broader culture of the world. I still see the bumper stickers today: "NEVER EAT ALONE. - CAPTAIN JAKE."