About this story
Your brother Tom minds his battered garden and distrusts every balloon drifting overhead; your partner Grubb paints an aeroplane-repair sign before either of you has built or seen one. A soldier questioning the shop describes airships tested in secret abroad. Then an engine no one can place crosses the sky on rigid wings, Alfred Butteridge, meaning to land again by sunset, with a second, unmarked shape already turning to follow him.
How it opens
Three gas balloons swelled above Bun Hill while Saturday traffic shook the high street.
Tom Smallways watched them from the fence at the end of his rented garden.
Mr StringerLondon once stopped for one balloon; now clubs send them up weekly.
They can make a habit of flying after they stop dropping ballast here.
Three rows are broken by gravel they discarded from up there.
Choose
The sky cannot remain private property for cabbages.
Balloonists ought to pay for what they flatten.