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Seven Crystal Balls: The Pachacamac's unseen passage

yamilah
Member
#1 · Posted: 7 Jun 2005 18:04
How long does the 'Pachacamac' sail to take Calculus from La Rochelle (France) to Callao (Peru), according to the data available in both Seven Crystal Balls & Prisoners of the Sun?
snafu
Member
#2 · Posted: 8 Jun 2005 03:51
Probably a few days. It took Tintin and Captain Haddock a handful of days to arrange for international flights and to notify the Peruvian police. In the meantime, it probably took the "Pachacamac" at most a week to get to the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal and then at most three days to get to Callao. This is all speculation, though...
yamilah
Member
#3 · Posted: 9 Jun 2005 15:23
snafu
it probably took (...) at most a week (+) three days

Thank you for your answer, snafu.
It seems your 'speculation' was rather good:

Calculus' kidnapping takes place on the 13th (Seven Crystal Balls, p.57, frame 11) and allows one to establish the book's chronology:
- Tintin's arrives in Marlinspike & attends the Music Hall show on the 9th...
- the attacks with the 2nd to the 6th crystal balls take place two days later (p.17, frame 4), i.e. on the 11th...
- scenes at Tarragon's house happen on the 12th...
- Calculus is kidnapped on the 13th (p.57, frame 11)...
- the agitated seven scientists' scene at the medical clinic takes place on the 14th...
- Haddock's depression at Marlinspike + the rainy road scenes happen on the 15th...
- The St-Nazaire scenes -including Tintin's encounter with Alcazar- occur on the 16th...


The Pachacamac leaves La Rochelle on the 14th (Crystal p.62, frame 1), and her date of arrival is tightly related to Tintin's date of departure and duration of crossing, as this cargo arrives in Callao one day after Tintin (Prisoners p.3, frame 5); there are two ways to discover our hero's day of arrival:

- Tintin's flying-boat, a passenger-converted Short Sunderland WWII military plane, leaves two days (Crystal p.62, frame 5) after Tintin has met with Alcazar on the 16th, i.e. on the 18th.
Considering its 3000 miles range, this plane will require two filling stops (Africa & Brazil) to fly the 8200 miles' Rochelle to Callao route.
At cruise speed (150 mph), it will reach Callao after 55 hours, namely after about three days including the stops, i.e. on the 21st...

- in the full original version, though the dates are nine days earlier, a three days' flight is asserted in the Journal 'Tintin' prepublication (re-issued in an 'Italian size' -horizontal- Tintin album a few years ago, its contains about 16 extra pages!).

In both versions, the Pachacamac arrives in Callao on the following day, i.e. on the 22nd, after an only eight days' sea crossing (via Panama) to cover the same 8200 miles' distance that Tintin's plane covers in a three days' flight...

8200 miles covered in 192 hours mean a 43 mph speed (38 knots), i.e. more than twice the announced 15 knots speed of her sistership, the Panama-based Ramona (see 'Tintin at Sea'), which would have needed at least 20 days for that trip...


Strange too is the disappearance of Alcazar's Indian partner 'ten days before' the 16th (Crystal p.57, frame 4), i.e. on the 6th, in other words 3 days before (!) the knife-throwing performance at the Music-Hall show, as if Chiquito had been unseen by Alcazar during his last working days as his assistant...
(please see also 'America', 'Carreidas 160 hijacking' and 'India' related threads, as well as 'Tintinverse's spatio-temporal faults: so what?')

Thus once again in the Tintinverse, Indians are associated with a 'space-time flaw' + strange communication systems, in the present case the 'thought transmission' displayed by Ragdalam's Indian clairvoyante partner (Crystal p.8-9), or the charming black magic used by the Inca Indians against the seven scientists (Prisoners p.60) ...

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