AIR SHIP MISSING.
Reading edition
The Pontiac Ten Days Overdue at Vera Cruz.
Washington, Mexico, Jan. 14. 1999.—The Transoceanic air-freighter Pontiac has been overdue at Vera Cruz for ten days. It is feared the ship has got snarled in the upper ether currents. As she has not been spoken by other air-ships it is probable she has drifted away from the influence of the earth’s gravitation, and drawn into the orbit of some neighboring planet. It may land in Mars.
Ærial navigation in 1999 was not merely confined to large express, passenger and Everybody in the Air. freight ships, but also came into general use by the public. The Ærocycle of the twentieth century was an ærial bicycle that skimmed through the air with admirable ease, being operated like the old-fashioned bicycles suffering mortals in 1899 used to jump over hills and rough roads, straining muscle and nerve to the utmost tension, and frightening horses with their “bicycle face.” Two or three of the bicycles of 1899 were kept as curiosities in a glass case in 1999 in the war department at Washington, Mexico. They were regarded as instruments of voluntary torture, relics of a species of refined barbarism. The invention of the Ærocycle sealed the doom of bicycles.