As their orders had directed them to proceed to Chicago without delay, Randolph, after studying an aeronautical chart of the country below them, called out, "Now, Suckling—aloft with the anemometer—Blundell and Counterfly, stand by the Screw," referring to an aerial-propulsion device, which the more scientific among my young readers may recall from the boys' earlier adventures (The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa, The Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis), for augmenting the cruising speed of the Inconvenience—invented by their longtime friend Professor Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven, and powered by an ingenious turbine engine whose boiler was heated by burning surplus hydrogen gas taken from the envelope through special valve arrangements—though the invention had been predictably disparaged by Dr. Vanderjuice's many rivals as no better than a perpetual-motion machine, in clear violation of thermodynamical law.
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Why have the Chums of Chance been tasked with heading to the Chicago World's Fair? I don't know! Why did I suddenly turn into my Aunt Mel asking questions of the other first-time viewers of a movie that hasn't gotten to the answers yet?!
This sentence gives us a bit of a look at the Inconvenience. I don't know what the balloon looks like exactly but there's some space up there where the anemometer hangs and probably a small rope ladder hanging down, which I suspect only the diminutive Darby Suckling can climb to read the meter. Then it's got a screw-like propulsion system to help move the balloon in the direction it needs to go when the wind has turned against them. The huge Screw works like a jet engine if a jet engine were a huge screw instead of a huge fan which, I mean, it is since a fan is just a screw as drawn by M.C. Escher. But I don't want to get bogged down by the hard science of it all especially since the really hard science has been provided by Professor Heino Vanderjuice.
The hard science comes from the turbine engine which powers the Screw. Or maybe it's flaccid science because it apparently is just a figment of Dr. Heino Vanderjuice's imagination! Except that it's right there on the ship doing the impossible thing it's supposed to do! The machine is fueled by the same hydrogen that gives the ship lift so the Chums don't need to carry excess hydrogen. But if the machine is consuming the hydrogen in the balloon's envelope, won't it eventually begin to deflate and descend?! I guess that's why it only consumes the "excess" hydrogen. But then where does that come from? That just sounds like the Chums have, actually, brought more hydrogen than they need to fuel the turbine! I guess that's where the whole perpetual-motion machine comes into play; we just have to accept that there's always enough hydrogen to both lift the ship and power the turbine and never too much hydrogen that needs to be stored, adding excess weight to the ship.
I know what you're thinking! "How does hydrogen add weight to an airship?! It makes it float, stupid-head!" Pshaw! Perhaps in your stupid-headedness you forgot about a little something called "helium tanks"? Duh! Those are heavy!
Is Pynchon taking a dig at scientists here? That they can't believe in something that actually exists if their mathematical equations and tested theories tell them it can't exist? That they're too wrapped up in their heads to congratulate Dr. Vanderjuice for creating something impossible? What a bunch of jerks! Man, scientists are whack is something kids said in the 80s.
What's that? His name? What's odd about the name Heino Vanderjuice? You must not have suspended your belief enough to deal with a Pynchon world where characters have the dumbest names possible! That's a compliment! I love his names!
Could "Vanderjuice" be read as "Wander Jews" which I probably don't need to explain to my super smart readers. They know the history of the Jewish peoples and what pogroms are and also who Moses was and basically the entire description of the Jewish life until May 14, 1948! Unless my readers aren't super smart and they're more like me, a guy who just watched Fiddler on the Roof every single time he stumbled upon it on local television programming as a young child. One time we watched it in elementary school but it's so long that the teacher split it up over two days. I decided to stay home one day, forgetting we were watching Fiddler on the Roof, and missed half of it. That'll probably be the biggest regret rolling around in my head on the day I die, how I wasted a stay at home day on a day we watched Fiddler on the Roof!
Maybe Vanderjuice can be read as "Wonder Juice." So it's like a Philosopher's Stone sort of thing, a magical elixir. Vanderjuice can create impossible things through the magic of science and/or alchemy (choose the conjunction that most describes your feelings on the relationship between science and alchemy).
And what about Heino?! I don't even know how to pronounce it. Like "High? No!" or "Hey! NO!" or "He Eno"? Maybe it's just supposed to make you think about ketchup for the sake of thinking about ketchup. That seems like a solid artistic statement.
We also learn from this narrator (who is this narrator?!) about two more Chums of Chance books. In these two adventures, we get another example of how the surface of the Earth is the mid-point of the Chums' world. Atlantis is deep beneath the ocean; Krakatoa, being a huge volcano, is high above the Earth. Being "down to Earth" takes on a new meaning with these kids. Or the same meaning, really! Just more literal. When they're on Earth, they're more in reality. When they're above or below it, they're in a kind of fantasy realm where possibly anything goes.
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Postscript: Heino is a shortened version of the name Heinrich which means "Ruler of the household." This is a fitting name for the leader of the Chums of Chance. But it is also coupled with the name "Vanderjuice" which could possibly be read as "Wander Jew" or "The Wandering Jew." Which means the name is contradictory. A man with no home who is also the ruler of the house.
