The Time Travelers' Handbook (16 page)

The sound of roaring hot air burners fills your ears and you find yourself in the basket of a hot-air balloon soaring a thousand yards above the ground. You are not in just any balloon, you are taking part in the first-ever manned balloon flight.

There are two other people on board, a science teacher and an adventurer. After their initial shock on seeing you appear beside them, they tell you how the balloon was launched from the yard of a huge house just outside Paris. It is now soaring over the city, and has traveled about six miles, which is impressive when you consider no one has traveled through the air like this before. Below, people look like ants, cheering and waving. You wave back, enjoying your celebrity moment.

The huge balloon measures 25 yards tall and 15 yards across, with a fancy sky-blue and gold design all over it. It is made of a material called taffeta that has been covered with a fireproofing varnish. Unfortunately, the fireproofing isn't really working. You can smell burning. The balloon is starting to look a bit scorched. One of the men whips off his coat and beats the flame licking up at the taffeta balloon. It is time to land.

Ballooning Brothers

You touch down between two windmills—and just in time—your TT handset is beginning to melt around the edges. Two brothers, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, are introduced to you. They are the brains behind this flight. Etienne has the business brain and Joseph is the mad inventor. Joseph tells you the idea for building the balloon you have just been traveling in came to him when he noticed how clothes drying over a fire billowed upward. After five years of experimenting,
voilà
, he built this big balloon.

Joseph admits that you and your two companions aren't the first living creatures to make a balloon flight. That honor went to a sheep, a duck, and a rooster who were sent on an earlier flight, but no one really knows what they thought of the experience.

Time to go. You sneak off behind a tree to activate the EJECT button on your singed TT handset—just imagine how much Joseph Montgolfier would like to get his hands on a machine that flies you through time as well as space….

The LEAP button on your TT handset carries you back in time at random. However, if you wanted to travel back following the historical order in which the events in this book happened, this timeline shows you the route you would travel. It starts from the present day and ends up back in the time of the dinosaurs.