"They had never fought," he said. "They were just like our
ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No one knew what
they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to
speculate. They were great driving things shaped like spear-heads
without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft."

"Steel?"

"Not steel."

"Aluminum?"

"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very
common--as common as brass, for example. It was called--let me
see--" He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "I
am forgetting everything," he said.

"And they carried guns?"

"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the
guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and
rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had
never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to
happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling
through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy.
I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real
thing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, were
only one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been
invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. There
were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and