The Nardak was coining into her hangar—not drifting through the air, but rolling in on wheels. From far down the track line that entered the covered dock came a heavy rumbling. Then a long line of trucks appeared, running smoothly over the docking rails. Anchored to these was the vast, silvery shape of the Nardak, an aeronautical leviathan nearly eight hundred feet long by a hundred and forty feet high.
“The Nardak on wheels! I thought it was a ship of the air!” gasped Renaud.
“So it is,” laughed Captain Bartlot, “but this is the simplest way of getting her into her hangar. Even with these rolling doors opened to make an enormous entrance, there is always the danger that the cross winds and gusts that sweep into the hangar will batter this lighter-than-air craft against the walls or roof. She’s been on a test flight. Her crew landed her out on the unobstructed field, then anchored her on wheels for the trip indoors.”
After the Nardak was in the hangar, the ground crew stepped forward and fastened her ropes through the iron rings in concrete pillars that studded the floor here and there on either side of the docking rails.
“We won’t have all this assistance and landing paraphernalia to help us when we get up into the ice country,” said Bartlot. “But we are counting on another landing method that we are going to try out when the need comes. All right, young man,” motioning Lee to follow, “want to see this 'cigar’ of mine at close quarters?”
The huge dirigible in its sheen of silvery paint did look like a mammoth, tinfoil wrapped cigar—a cigar eight hundred feet long!
As Lee Renaud went up the little set of drop-steps and entered the hull, he was overwhelmed at the amazing intricacy of the interior. Seen from without, the simple lines of the dirigible would seem to indicate that it was nothing more than a great gas bag. But within that silvery casing was a structure as complicated as that of a steel skyscraper. Three thousand metal struts criss-crossed in a maze of latticed girders.
“Tons, and thousands of tons of weight!” thought Lee. “How can this load even lift, much less fly!”
As if in answer to the thought, Bartlot spoke. “These struts—duralumin, an alloy metal, that’s what they are made of. There, laid on the floor of the runway, is a discarded girder that’s just been taken out. Lift it.”
Lee took a long breath, got a grip on the thing, gave a great tug—and almost fell backwards. Sixteen feet of girder, and it weighed next to nothing! He could almost lift it with a finger!
“And yet the weight of six men couldn’t bend it!” Bartlot remarked in answer to Lee’s questioning look.
They passed on down the catwalk, or metal promenade plank that ran the whole length of the hull. On either side were arranged the great tanks of gasoline that furnished the motive power for the dirigible, and the twenty separate balloonets or gas bags that contained helium, which was the lifting power of the ship.
“Here’s a case where a la the old rhyme, the cow will jump over the moon.” Captain Jan pointed to the gas bags. “These remarkable gas-tight containers are made of thousands upon thousands of portions of gold-beater’s skin, which is the small tough section of the intestine of a steer. More than 1,500,000 cattle from the various stockyards contributed to the making of these helium bags—so in the name of science, the cow is going to soar pretty high.”
One marvel after another aroused Lee Renaud’s admiration as his capable guide took him from end to end of the ship, and down through the ladderways that connected with the outside gondolas that housed the engines, the navigating room, the quarters for the crew. There was the great rudder to guide her through the ocean of air, the flippers for elevation, the keel corridor for storage, the laboratory, the photographic room, the instruments for recording speed, height, weather.
Wonderful equipment, on a wonderful craft. Yet Lee Renaud found his eyes straying here and there, searching for something more.
“The radio-room, eh? I’ll bet a ton of duralumin, you’re on pins to set your eyes on it. Well, I’ve saved radio for the climax—saved the best for the last, and I know that’s a truth, so far as Lee Renaud’s concerned.” Captain Jan exploded into his big laugh as he led the way forward toward a compartment in the navigating section of the ship which was built at the bow, just under the nose. This navigating section was arranged with the control-room set first, the chart-house immediately behind, and behind this again the radio-room with its complete broadcasting and receiving equipment.
As Lee Renaud got his first eyeful of the Nardak’s radio equipment, his breath seemed to cut off and his hair fairly stand on end for excitement. Here was radio—real radio!
Into wall panels, from floor to ceiling, were set elaborate mechanisms of grills and tubes and coils. In the center of the compartment was a desk and chair, as though this were some secretarial room in a skyscraper office building. But instead of housing pen and ink and paper, this desk housed the marvelous apparatus that could send word by air, instead of by ink.
A man in shirt sleeves, and with head phones adjusted, sat humped over the radio desk, working at a dial. This was Jack Simms, radio chief of the Nardak. As Captain Bartlot made the introductions, a ferocious scowl, emphasized by a great scar across the left cheek, seem to draw up Simms’ face, and he spoke shortly, “Howdy, youngster!” with what appeared to Lee unnecessary emphasis on the “youngster.” All these veterans seemed to have it in for the youngest member of the crew, and to resent his being thrust in among them.
While Simms rather perfunctorily explained to his newly arrived assistant the various parts of this very modern and powerful radio unit, Lee couldn’t keep his eyes off the scar across the man’s cheek. What Lee did not know, at that time, was that Simms had gained that perpetual decoration by sticking to his radio post aboard a rammed and sinking ocean liner—a post that he held till he had put wireless through to other ships that answered the call and rescued every man jack aboard the wreck.
“Now here are our ten-meter transmitters for exploring ultra-short waves,” Simms’ cool voice went on. “With condensers adjusted for maximum plate current, sounds from quite a respectable distance can be brought into the clear. I’ll demonstrate.” He turned the tiny marking light on the dial. “That ought to get us Station ZEAF at Brinton, two hundred miles away.”
As the dial light came to rest, a clear burst of beautiful music rolled through the little room.
“That’s hitting it up pretty fine.” Lee’s face glowed. “I reached out to two hundred once with an old battery, some barbed wire and the like. Got the sound, but it was distorted, like the singer was yelling out of the side of his mouth—”
“You’ve made radio, huh? Receiver, or transmitter?”
“Both.”
As Lee, at Simms’ prompting, told something of the various experiments he had tried, Bartlot quietly left the room, to return later bearing the leather case containing the boy’s portable model.
Without a word, the Captain opened back the leather and shoved the contents up under Jack Simms’ nose. The latter half arose, then settled back, and went over the little mechanism carefully. He gave a long whistle. “Some points to that, kid!”
After that, there wasn’t much in the way of radio that Jack Simms didn’t go into minutely for Lee Renaud’s benefit. Old Simms had found that he and Lee talked the same language—audio frequency, voltage, detector grid input, C3, filter, and the rest of the jargon.
For a fortnight longer, the preparation aboard the Nardak went forward. On former trips the Nardak had been a floating pleasure palace circling the globe with a crew of forty and with twenty passengers in luxurious staterooms. In view of her impending arduous flight into the barren polar wastes, all of this was being changed. Such luxurious features of the ship as the cabin de luxe and the magnificent passenger saloon were being discarded, and small plain cabins installed. This was done to lighten the load on the ship and increase the capacity for the useful load of food and fuel necessities.
During this interim, on a special rush order, an Adron factory pushed forward the work of making six portables after Lee’s little radio model. These were for field work on the Arctic barrens.
In the airship itself, several structural changes were made. There was the protecting of vital parts against the effects of low temperatures and the preparation of certain special equipment for landing without any help from the ground.
Then the great day came. The day for all aboard, and then off, adventure bound!
For the last time the huge ship came out of her hangar on wheels. She was ready now to be loosed, ready to take the air. To the high daring of her mission the city of Adron did homage. Horns blared, great factory sirens roared their calls, bands played. Now a wedge of airplanes zoomed across the sky, come to bid the expedition farewell in their own particular aerial style. For this departing mammoth of the air was answering the greatest challenge of them all—a prolonged exploration flight over the vast frozen Arctic.
On this exploration were going a wonderful picked crew of scientists, geologists, meteorologists—learned men of many professions had striven for a chance to face any hardship, if only they might go on this expedition to the “geologist’s paradise,” the fearful, mysterious frozen Polar Region with its lure of unrevealed secrets.
Out of the hundreds of applicants, only so few could go—some sixty men. Because this dangerous expedition could be no stronger than its weakest member, its personnel had to be selected with an eye to strength, health and disposition as well as scientific ability.
A large order in the way of exploration personnel! Yet Jan Bartlot’s genius for leadership led him to pick an astonishingly capable, loyal, brave body of men to companion him into the wilds of the Arctic.
There was stocky, blond Norwegian Olaf Valchen who came from Spitzbergen, that far northern settlement. He had long been a lone flyer of the icy wastes, a carrier of dynamite and other mining supplies across the Hudson Bay territory.
“Tornado” Harrison of the United States Weather Bureau was going along to “get the weather” for the various undertakings.
A most important member of the crew was Sandy Sanderson, the cook. Sanderson was already well up on frigid zone cooking, having dished up seal steak patties and walrus goulash to whaling ships over half the oceans of the world.
On this flight, there were explorers who had already battled ice fields with various forms of polar locomotion, some with shaggy Siberian ponies, some with sledge huskies, some with ships of the sea. But now, by ship of the air, by radio, by electricity, Commander Bartlot hoped not only to penetrate the Arctic, but also to explore it.
He would have need of all the aids of modern science, for the Arctic world breeds the most fearful of storms, spews forth the most monstrous of grinding, treacherous icebergs, forever shifts its sky lights in a strange visibility that deceives and magnifies and lures with mirages.
As the great ship of adventure began to rise, the bands burst into martial tunes. Shouts roared from the throngs below. Handkerchiefs fluttered. A little girl in a red dress held her doll aloft for her father on board to see. Wives, mothers, sweethearts waved farewell.
Lee Renaud, looking over the side, felt suddenly engulfed in loneliness. In all that crowd there was not one to personally wish him God speed.
The last ropes were being cast off. The vessel rose higher.
There came a shout from below. A boy on a motorcycle was threading the crowd. “Telegram! Drop a hook!” was bawled up through a megaphone amplifier.
Then the little yellow envelope went fluttering up on the end of a line.
“Renaud,—Lee Renaud, it’s for you!” Lee’s hands trembled as he tore it open. What did it mean? What had happened?
From Great-uncle Gem! Lee’s eyes devoured the line of words on the yellow sheet. “God bless you, and keep you, and help you to show to the world the stuff you’re made out of, Lee Renaud. (Signed) G. Renaud.”
Lee gulped. “G-gosh, I bet he sold a silver candlestick to get cash to send this!” The boy was humble and exultant at the same time. Somebody believed in him.
The ship was riding the air now. It rose majestically, like a gigantic silvery bird, turned its prow into the north and was off.
Before the Nardak stretched uncharted wastes—the ocean of air.