If the report was true, the object or meteorite, perhaps a fragment of the larger Tunguska object, would have fallen very near the place where the Airship Abakan was now tethered to the tall mooring tower at Kansk, perhaps 25 kilometers from the small hamlet and rail station called Ilanskiy.
What was out there, thought Orlov as he gazed out the main gondola windows. What was causing the strange anomaly in the compass room? The Airship Narva had left Port Dikson, heading south to follow the broad gleaming course of the Yenisei River south. Many other rivers would feed the mighty Yenisei as it wandered north to the cold Kara Sea. They had passed these tributaries as they cruised south, using dead reckoning and compass navigation, and the visible track of the river itself to guide them. On the fifth tributary, the Angara River, they would branch away to follow that east briefly, and then look for the twin tributaries of the Burisa and Cuna rivers that would lead them southwest to a point just above Ilanskiy.
But something had gone wrong.
A day out of Port Dixon they had covered some 1600 kilometers when the skies began to thicken with rafts of dark, threatening clouds. Orlov saw streaks of white lightning rippling on the flanks of the storm, and the ship’s Air Master, Captain Selikov, seemed worried.
“That’s the problem out here,” he said to Orlov. “No good weather maps, so we have to take things as they come. Now we shall have to climb,” he said to his Elevatorman where he stood at the broad metal wheel. “Ten degree up bubble. I want to get above that storm front.”
Narva had become much lighter by burning fuel over the last 1600 kilometers, and there was a fuel weight panel that calculated this, and allowed a man to select just the exact amount of water ballast to be dropped, lightning her further. The airship slowly nosed up into the grey sky, but the storm clouds towered up and up, rising in huge angry anvils hammered by some unseen god that sent thunder and lightning crackling through the sky. For a time they seemed to be navigating a great canyon of angry clouds. They had to get higher, and Selikov nervously watched the altitude increase.
Theoretically, an airship could climb to any height as long at the pressure between its helium gas and the reserve air sacks could be carefully balanced. Helium expanded as the atmospheric pressure weakened with altitude, which is why the helium gas sat inside a larger air filled bag where the air could be pumped out to a reserve air sack at the tail to allow the helium sack to expand. When the ship descended the process was reversed.
Even though it was late July, it was very cold as they gained elevation. The crew of the airship tramped about in their heavy woolen coats, hands tucked into mittens and thick gloves, heads lost in dark fleece hats. Orlov was no stranger to these conditions, having stood many a watch on the cold Arctic Seas, and he was wearing his thick leather service jacket and Naval Ushanka. As they climbed, he watched the ribbon of the river below them grow smaller, then cloud over, until they were lost in the thickening sky.
The Rudderman was standing with a firm grip on the wheel, feeling the winds beginning to buffet the airship’s tail. The wheel itself vibrated in his grip from the pressure exerted on the rudder, over 600 feet behind them. The Elevatorman, a mishman named Yeseni, was exerting himself, spinning the wheel to maintain the inclination and trim of the ship.
The winds became more intense, and Orlov could feel the Duralumin frame of the airship shuddering and creaking as its great mass was moved by the storm. The Captain’s eye strayed to the gas board, where the pressure in each of the big gas bags could be constantly monitored and vented if necessary, though with the rarity of helium that was seldom done, except in emergencies.
They were skirting the north edge of the storm, an old trick the airship captains had used known as ‘pressure pattern navigation.’ Winds in the northern hemisphere circulated around a low pressure center in a counter-clockwise rotation, so by skirting north they would move in the same direction of the winds around the storm.
“Rudderman, ten points to port,” said Selikov. “We’re drifting.” The Carl Zeiss Drift indicator would normally scan the movement of terrain beneath the ship through a downward facing telescope, and the blur of the passing terrain would appear as a streak between two lines on the readout, which were rotated to match the desired course. As long as the streaks were within those lines, the course was true, and a nearby compass allowed the Captain to adjust his course magnetically as well.
With thick clouds and altitude there was little or no terrain to be seen, so the drift indicator became less useful. Selikov kept his eyes fixed on the compass instead, until it began to shudder and quiver oddly within its casing. He looked up, thinking it was only a temporary vibration caused by the buffeting winds, and when he looked at the compass again the needle was spinning wildly.
“What’s this?” He tapped the compass, thinking to stabilize the vibration, but to no avail. Then he walked to the voice pipe and shouted down to the navigation room.
“Navigator, what is your main compass reading?”
There was a long pause before he got the answer he feared. “Captain… I can’t read anything. The compass needle is all over the dial!”
Selikov frowned.
“What is wrong?” Orlov asked.
“This storm has the ship’s compass all fouled up. We can’t read our heading accurately. I will have to attempt radio direction finding if this keeps up. That might help, assuming we can pick up any stations in this region.”
This was tried, but the same odd magnetic interference that had the compasses in a dizzy spin was also clouding over all the radio equipment. Then Troyak came up from the auxiliary crews cabin where his Marines were quartered, and huddled with Orlov over the situation.
“We cannot navigate,” Orlov explained what had been happening. “What about your equipment, Troyak? Our transmitters are quite powerful.”
“All of my equipment is fouled up too. We lost contact with Kirov half an hour ago, and now I can’t raise them on any bandwidth.”
“We must get clear of this damn storm,” said Selikov. “Our only option now will be to descend to lower altitudes and see if we can spot the river again. Otherwise we are just flying blind here, and we could end up anywhere-miles from the river until we find another tributary to follow.”
Selikov was able to steer wide of the storm cells, but new formations seemed to loom up, forcing him to some very tense moments in the navigation of the ship. It took some physical exertion to turn the rudder or elevator wheels, and the men there were soon drenched with sweat, in spite of the cold. The storm was much bigger than they had first believed, and it was long hours of harrowing flight before they could break into clear air again.
Captain Selikov was frustrated and ill at ease. “Well,” he said finally. “We’ve got clear air for a descent. The only problem now is that I haven’t the slightest idea where we are. Our heading has been unreadable since the compass failed, and it is still spinning like a top! We could be anywhere inside that circle, by my calculations.” He pointed to a ‘farthest on’ circle he had drawn around their last known position on the chart, with a double line on one side indicating the probable direction.
“To make it simple, gentlemen,” until I get down and find a recognizable river, we’re lost. At the moment we can descend, but we’re losing light fast and the moon will also set with the sun, so it’s going to be a very dark night for the next six hours, and navigation will be almost impossible, even if we do find the river. Without that compass, we’ll simply have to hover until daylight.”