The Leader is suffering from a fatal illness of pituitary gland. Technology is available for transplant of the gland from a human donor. But there is a glitch. Dr Lans, the only surgeon capable of performing the surgery, is in concentration camp...
By 2000 A.D, airships have replaced aircraft for freight and human travel. Kipling's novella follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling foul weather, while detailing a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control (A.B.C.), which enforces a rigid system of command and control not only in the skies but in world affairs too; they outlaw war in 1967.
Mr. Coombes was sick of life. He walked away from his unhappy home, and, sick not only of his own existence but of everybody else's, turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the wooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, was presently alone in the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound of human habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud with blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand it no longer...