"If this keeps up we'll whirl around here forever," Frigate said gloomily. "I don't understand this."
Late that afternoon they were back on the proper course. Frigate said that they should descend to the surface winds and try their luck there. They were far enough north to be where the winds generally flowed toward the northeast.
By letting the burner stay off, the gas slowly cooled. The Jules Verne sank at a minuscule rate at first, then began dropping swiftly. Nur turned the burner on for a few minutes to check its descent. At 13 kilometers altitude, the wind lessened. It picked up again and in an opposite direction, the wrong one for them. It also gave the craft a counterspin. Nur allowed it to sink until it was about 2000 meters above the mountaintops. Now they moved at an angle across the valleys, which were running straight north and south in this area.
"We're going northeast again!" Frigate said happily.
At high noon of the third day they were sailing along at an estimated 25 kmph or more than 15 mph. Only the Jules Verne could have gotten this far. Any other type of balloon would not have been able to ascend to the stratosphere or descend to the surface winds without losing too much gas to go on.
They opened the ports to let the thin but fresh air in. The up- and downdrafts caused them some discomfort, chiefly from the change in air pressure. They had to keep swallowing and yawning to ease their eardrums. As dusk approached, the drafts became less violent.
The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, they were surprised by a thunderstorm. Farrington was pilot when the black clouds beneath suddenly welled upward. At one moment, the storm seemed to be safely below them. But tendrils reached upward like the tentacles of an octopus. The next moment, the body of the octopus seemed to shoot toward them, and they were enveloped in darkness laced with lightning. At the same time, they whirled like fleas on a spinning top.
"We're dropping like a brick," Frisco said calmly. He ordered that some ballast be dropped", but the craft kept on falling. Lightning cracking nearby flooded the car with a light in which their faces looked green. Thunder bellowed in the echo chamber of the hull, and their ears hurt. Rain shot into the open ports and covered the deck, adding to the weight.
"Close the ports! Tom and Nur, throw out a Number Three ballast bag!"
They leaped to obey him. Their bodies felt light, as if the car was dropping so quickly it would leave them floating.
Another nearby bolt cast light and fear. All saw a black rock below, the flat top of a mountain rushing at them.
"Two Number One bags!"
Nur, looking out a port, said loudly but calmly, "The bags're not falling much faster than we are."
"Two more Number Ones!"
Another fiery streak wrenched the air nearby.
"We ain't going to make it!" Frisco cried. "Two more Number Ones! Stand by to get rid of all ballast!"
The edge of the hull struck the edge of the mountaintop. The car bounced, throwing the entire crew to the deck. As the momentarily loosened net ropes tautened again, the crew, which had half-gotten to a standing position, were hurled down again. Fortunately, the savage strain had not snapped the ropes.
Ignoring their injuries, they got up and stared through the deck port. Darkness except for a small interior lights. Another bolt. They were too near the side of the mountain, and the downdraft was still gripping the balloon. The pointed tops of giant irontrees were coming at them like hurled javelins.
It was too late to turn the burner on. Its effect would be negligible in the little time left before impact. Besides, the collision with the mountain top might have loosened the junctions of the pipes. If that were so, one spark would turn the interior of the hull into a furnace.
"All the ballast!" Frisco shouted.
Suddenly they were out of the clouds, but the blackness was now a dark grey. They could see well enough to discern the treetops spinning just below them.
Frisco left his post to help the others throw the bags and the water containers out. Before anything could be cast overboard, before Nur could punch a button to release the ironshoi ballast, the car crashed into the upper branches of an irontree. Again, they were knocked down. Helpless, they heard crashing noises. But the branches bent, then straightened out, hurling the car upward and into the envelope.
The car fell back, was caught once more by the almost unbreakable branches. Its occupants were rattled around as if they were dice shaken in a cup.
Frigate was battered, bruised, and stunned. Even so, he had wits enough left to envision the punishment the plastic pipes were taking. They were being violently bent between car and bag.
If ... oh, God, make it not so! ... if the pipes were torn loose from the bag ... if the points of the branches gutted the bag ... the car would fall to the ground... unless it was held among the branches or the net was tangled among them.
No. Now the car was rising.
But would the balloon go straight up? Outward toward The River? Or would it be hurled against the side of the mountain and the envelope ruptured against outcroppings?
66
While the rainstorm was at its height, the airship came over the mountain from the north. Lightning, the only illumination, tore the skies. The radar swept over the Valley, over the treetops, across the spires of rock, across the River, and zeroed in on the great boat. The passive radar detector indicated that the boat's own radars were not operating. After all, the boat was at anchor, and why use the radar when no enemy was expected?
The huge hatches in the belly of the ship opened. The helicopter, sitting on a platform, began rotating its vanes. Inside were thirty-one men, Boynton at the controls, de Bergerac by his side. Arms and boxes of plastic explosive were stacked in the rear.
As soon as the motors were warmed up, Boynton gave the high sign. Szentes, the C.P.O. in charge, listened to the phone on the bulkhead, getting the last-minute report on the wind. Then he whipped a little flag up and down. Go!
The copter lifted within the huge bay, moved sidewise off the platform, hovered over the opening, the bay lights glancing off its windshield and the tips of the whirling vanes. Then it dropped as a stone, and de Bergerac, looking up through the windshield, saw the colossal ship merge into the black clouds and disappear.
Cyrano knew that the two-man glider would be launched from it within a minute. Bob Winkelmeyer would be piloting it; James McParlan would be his passenger. Winkelmeyer was a West Point graduate, a flier who had been shot down by a Zero during a scouting flight over an island north of Australia. McParlan had been rather famous in the 1870's. A Pinkerton detective, he had infiltrated into the Mollie Maguires, a secret terrorist organization of Irish coalminers in Pennsylvania. Under the name of James McKenna, he had penetrated deep into the gang, narrowly escaping detection and death a number of times. As a result, the Maguires were arrested, nineteen of them were hung, and the mine owners continued to exploit their employees.
Winkelmeyer and McParlan would land in The River and there sink their glider. Later, if they got a chance, they would enlist aboard the Rex. There would be vacancies, since it was doubtful that the raiding party could pull off a coup without killing some of the crew of the Rex.
As Sam Clemens had said to the two, "Rotten John doesn't have a monopoly on double agents. Suck up to him, boys, get him in your confidence. That is, if the raid fails, do it. Maybe you won't have to. But I know that slippery character. He's the greased pole the monkey couldn't climb.