Personal Turnsheet 1876

Henri Giffard (Earth) - Liam Mills
Stats: P: 5, D: 7, F: 6, U: 9, S: 4, C: 8, B: 5, R: 1, T: 2

The voting on the Council goes as follows:

Changing House Libra's role from proactive to reactive - Yes: La Donna,
Miss Valiente, Mr Giffard, Mr Petrovich. No: Count von Essen. Abstentions:
Dame Elizabeth, Mr Derothshire. Passed.

Amending the Charter as Mr Laing suggests - Yes: La Donna, Miss Valiente,
Mr Giffard, Mr Petrovich. No: Count von Essen. Abstentions: Dame Elizabeth,
Mr Derothshire. Passed.

Miss Valiente's proposal of restricting war - Yes: La Donna, Miss Valiente.
No: Count von Essen, Mr Giffard, Mr Petrovich. Abstentions: Dame Elizabeth,
Mr Derothshire. Defeated.

Censuring House Scorpio, as proposed by Mr Fielding - Yes: Miss Valiente.
No: Mr Giffard, Mr Petrovich. Abstentions: La Donna, Count von Essen, Dame
Elizabeth, Mr Derothshire. Defeated.

Moving the location of the meeting - Yes: La Donna. No: no-one.
Abstentions: Miss Valiente, Count von Essen, Mr Giffard, Mr Petrovich, Dame
Elizabeth, Mr Derothshire. Not a motion that was tabled by the Vizier last
year, so it may not be correct to consider it passed.

The Acting Vizier's casting vote was not required for any of the motions.

Notes:

Spaceship - the research team gather at Comte Bertrand's facility in April.
The ship has been constructed to Mr Dawson's blueprints, and Mr Giffard
supervises the attachment of life support systems and suits, handrails and
a comms network as provided by Mr Stone, thruster rockets as supplied by Dr
Bang (with the assistance of American rocketeer Mr Robert Goddard), and
nebulous advice of a helpful nature as provided by Baron von Poelzig. Comte
Bertrand himself remains aloof from the proceedings, as previously,
although it is noted that he has increased security at the site still
further. The Pioneer, as Mr Dawson has christened it, is large enough to
hold a crew of twelve, but for its initial flight (once the on-the-ground
testing is completed under Mr Giffard's careful supervision) the crew are
Messrs Dawson, Giffard and Goddard, plus the American pilot Mr Tom Swift
(an enthusiastic youth whom Mr Giffard has recruited: Mr Dawson judges him
a suitable co-pilot, as he is a member of House Aries), Dr Bang and Baron
von Poelzig. Captain Blakely, who was expected, did not appear. Mr Giffard
makes a brief statement to representatives of the press, and the Pioneer
blasts into the sky, the mighty thrusters lifting it on twin pillars of
fire. Inside the craft all is briefly extremely uncomfortable, despite
Baron von Poelzig's provision of comfortable reclining couches to absorb
the acceleration, but in what seems like no time at all the engines quiet
as the craft enters orbit, and the queasy sensation of zero gravity
overwhelms the crew, who have difficulty retaining their lunch. At the
apogee of the orbit Mr Dawson moves the lever to deploy his deep-space
probe, and then the Pioneer plummets its way back to Earth, Mr Giffard, who
has been carrying out a series of tweaks to the system while in flight,
triggering the parachutes to ensure a safe landing in the Adriatic. Comte
Betrrand's staff are on hand to retrieve the ecstatic crew, who have just
undertaken the first manned spaceflight, for a duration of eighteen hours.
Somewhat later, the probe splashes down in the Atlantic, and Mr Dawson
retrieves it for analysis. He reports to everyone that it seems that the
Earth's atmosphere is shared by the Moon and the space inbetween, and he
can see no reason why humans might not breathe on the Moon. Between the
Earth and Mars, though, is mere vacuum, and as suspected any mission there
will have to be a fully pressurized one: but the Pioneer should be fully up
to that.

Exciting though this trip is, it is slightly upstaged by Colonel Maguire's
photographs of the dark side of the Moon, study of which shows signs that
might be taken for life.

Portable machine gun - you design and launch it, see News. It is rather
heavy, even using Metard, but the stopping power it represents will you are
sure make troops become very attached to it. You deposit patents in the
Taurus library, and give the plans to de Bonvoisin.

Anti-demon metal - it is an alloy of three elements which do not as far as
you are aware exist in the Periodic Table. Not only are the alloy and the
pieces (they look like machined parts of a large mechanism) manufactured,
the component elements quite possibly are too, although to admit this to
yourself would be to give credence to the ravings of alchemists. If you
melt it down it loses its harmful properties, although to do so causes a
massive release of a withering energy which you are very glad you carried
out under safe conditions. However this also makes it ineffective against
demons, of course: the damaging effect it has on demons is exactly the same
as the harmful effect it has on humans, so there is no way of lessening the
one without the other. Also, there is no way of encasing or packaging it so
that it is less harmful, the effect seems to work transparently through all
materials. The only exception to this is living material - if you encase a
sample in a living being, such as a plant or animal, the effect seems to be
used up in gradually killing that, although once it is dead the effect
comes through transparently once again. You have no way of producing the
metal, and at the moment cannot even conceive of how this might be
possible: you are restricted to machining items out of the samples that you
have, although it is quite easy to machine so could easily be formed into
bullets, but not very many of them given the small sample that you have.

Meeting - you, Dawson and von Poelzig plot-dump each other [you'll have to
tell them in person what it is you want to share with them - Mo]