Behind, is its own pressure held in leash of
spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the vacuum where
Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled turbillons
of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are
pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for
an instant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches
the Ray intently. It is the very heart of the machine--a mystery
to this day. Even Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a
multi-millionaire, could not explain how the restless little imp
shuddering in the U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a
second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill
greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from
the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the
mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had
almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh.
Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum,
main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the
ordained cycle.
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