The Air Monster
Before Andy High and the construction experts of the National Airways
had arrived to supervise the building of the Goliath, Uncle Sam’s newest
bid for supremacy in the skies, Bellevue had been a sleepy little
village in the heart of the bluegrass section of Kentucky. It had been
selected as the construction site for several reasons. One of the most
important was its location between two long rows of hills which insured
it of protection from high winds. Another was its comparative isolation.
There were no main highways leading into the bluegrass town and only
one branch line railroad, which, however, was sufficient to handle the
shipments of supplies.
The secrecy which shrouded the building of the Goliath was another
factor in the selection of Bellevue, for the isolated little village was
hard to get to without being seen and it was a comparatively easy thing
to guard all entrances to the valley.
Construction headquarters had been set up almost two years before the
spring in which the Goliath was scheduled for trial tests. First had
come freight trains heavily laden with building materials. A little
village of construction houses had gone up alongside the railroad to
shelter the workmen whose task it was to build the great hangar which
was to house the Goliath.
As mighty as the hangar of the Akron was, that of the Goliath was even
larger. It measured 1,400 feet from one of its “orange peel” doors to
the other and was broad enough for the Goliath, when completed, to nest
comfortably alongside the Los Angeles, when that dirigible hopped over
from Lakehurst for a friendly call.
Andy High, son of the vice president of operations of National Airways,
had arrived with the first of the construction crews and had hardly left
the village during the two intervening years. His father, Charles High,
and Capt. John Harkins, who was to be in command of the new sky king,
had shuttled back and forth between the assembly plant at Bellevue and
the various factories in other cities which were supplying materials
which went into the construction. It had been Andy’s duty to stay on the
job at Bellevue and see that every part of the carefully organized
construction machine kept to its schedule for every day represented
thousands of dollars to the National Airways and they made each working
minute count.
The hangar had been completed and parts of the dirigible, much of which
had been fabricated at the Zeppelin plant at Akron, arrived by the
train-load to be assembled in the big dome-shaped shed just outside
Bellevue.
On this particular spring morning, Andy was in his office just outside
the hangar, pouring over the set of blueprints for the big gondola which
was being assembled for the forward end of the dirigible. He was
engrossed in the blueprints and failed to hear Bert Benson, who was to
be chief radio operator on the Goliath, enter the room.
“Hello, Andy,” said Bert quietly.
The unexpected greeting startled the young aircraft engineer and he
jumped involuntarily. When he saw that his visitor was Bert he grinned
sheepishly.
“Sorry I jumped like that,” he said, “but we’ve been having so many
mishaps in the last two weeks my nerves are on edge.”
“I know it,” replied Bert gravely. “It’s been just one thing after
another. First something goes wrong here and then something turns up in
another part of the plant. Seems as though there was a hoodoo on this
valley.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a hoodoo,” said Andy, “but we’ve certainly
been having our share of tough breaks. I’ll be glad when Dad and Captain
Harkins get back from Akron. Then we’ll be able to give more of our time
to closer supervision of the plant and these accidents may be stopped.”
The words were barely out of Andy’s mouth when Bert, who had been
looking toward the far end of the hangar, gripped the young engineer
hard.
“Look, Andy,” he cried, “one of the doors at the other end of the hangar
is opening!”
Andy looked in the direction Bert pointed. There was no mistake. One of
the huge “orange peel” doors which sealed the ends of the hangar was
swinging back on the railroad track on which it was mounted.
“Something’s gone wrong down there,” said Andy sharply. “A crew is
working on top of that door this morning. They may be brushed off if
that door isn’t stopped at once.”
Bert realized the danger to men working on the top of the 225 foot, 600
ton door, and he nodded grimly. There was something decidedly wrong, for
specific orders had been issued that the doors were never to be opened
unless Andy or Capt. Harkins were at the controls of the motors which
moved the giant doors.
“Come on,” cried Andy. “We’ve got to stop that door.”
They left the office and jumped into Andy’s roadster which was parked
nearby. With a clashing of hastily shifted gears, they roared along the
outside of the hangar. While they dashed toward the end, the door
continued its slow, relentless movement. At the top they could see a
half dozen men clinging to the girders. The control room for the doors
was on the other side and Andy whipped his roadster around the end of
the hangar. He was out of the machine before it stopped and raced toward
the motor room with Bert at his heels.
There was no one at the control board and the powerful motors were
humming softly. With one swift movement Andy shut off the power and the
great door stopped.
“Run outside and tell that crew on top of the door to hang on for
another five minutes,” Andy told Bert. “Warn them to hold on tight when
I start rolling the door in.”
The radio operator departed on the run and Andy, looking through a
window, saw Bert megaphone with his hands and shout the warning to the
desperate crew clinging on top of the door.
Andy threw over the controls and turned on the motors. He let the clutch
which operated the door mechanism in easily and the great “orange peel”
moved slowly back into place.
While the motors sang at their task, Andy’s mind was busy over this near
tragedy. It could not have been an accident by the furthest stretch of
the imagination for motors do not start all by themselves and clutches
do not jump into place without a guiding hand. In the last two weeks
there had been one minor accident after another. It had been maddening.
The Goliath was scheduled to make its trial flights in two more months
and there wast much remaining to be done. Each little delay meant
valuable time lost and Andy had about come to the conclusion that a
deliberate attempt was being made to delay the construction of the great
ship. He promised himself that there would be a thorough investigation
of this latest incident.
The door finally rolled into place and the half dozen men who had been
in danger of their lives quickly climbed down to a place of safety.
Andy disengaged the clutch and shut off the motors. Bert returned and
they made a thorough inspection of the little room but found nothing
which would identify the man who had started the motors.
“Now I’ll tell you why I came into your office,” Bert told Andy after
they had securely locked the control room. “Last night someone tampered
with my radio equipment and broke up a lot of it.”
Andy’s lips snapped into a thin, straight line.
“How much damage was done?” he asked.
“Not as much as I first feared,” replied Bert. “As luck would have it
whoever used the hammer destroyed experimental equipment and the
installation for the Goliath is almost intact. He must have been an
amateur at the job or he would have singled out the set for the Goliath
and smashed it.”
“What you’ve told me and what’s just happened,” said Andy grimly, “makes
me positive that there is a well-defined plot under way to injure the
Goliath in every way possible. I thought we had a hand-picked crew that
couldn’t be bribed but it looks like I was wrong.”
From the timber-covered hills behind the hangar came the sharp crackle
of rifle fire, which was followed by a tense quiet as every man in the
great hangar stopped work. When the rifle fire was not repeated, the
crews slowly resumed their work and Andy and Bert headed for the hills
on the run.
Since the Goliath had been partially financed by a government
appropriation and its construction embodied secrets valuable to the war
department, a military guard had patrolled the construction site from
the day the hangar had been completed and the actual assembly of the
dirigible started. On a number of occasions they had apprehended men
trying to make their way into Bellevue and without exception the secret
service detail at the hangar had found them to be agents of foreign
governments. They had been quietly sent to military prisons but in the
last few weeks there had been no such arrests and the vigilance of the
guards had been relaxed somewhat.
Andy and Bert were half-way up the slope to the guard line when they met
Merritt Timms, chief of the secret service unit at Bellevue, coming down
the hill.
“Anybody hurt at the hangar?” asked Timms anxiously.
“No,” replied Andy. “We stopped the door in time. What happened on top
of the hill?”
“The guard had to stop a man who was trying to get away,” explained
Timms. “I’ve been suspecting one of the motor mechanics for some time of
sabotage and only ten minutes ago saw him sneak out of the control room
door. A second later one of the doors started to open and I knew what he
had been up to. I saw you coming to shut off the power and I took after
this fellow. He knew he’d have to make a quick get-away and he tried to
get past the guard line.”
“Did he refuse to stop?” asked Bert.
“Not only that,” replied the secret service chief, “but he attempted to
shoot and the guard fired, but he wasn’t seriously wounded.”
“I can’t feel very sorry for him,” said Andy, “when I think of the
half dozen men, on top of the door, he almost killed. If the door had
run to the end of its track with the power still on it would have ripped
away from its fastenings and perhaps have crushed an end of the hangar.”
“Which is exactly what this chap wanted,” added Timms. “I’ve got a
little leather packet here in which he carried some secret papers. We’ll
have a look at them.”
The name on the leather folder was that of Cliff Bolton, a common enough
American name, but the secret service man and Andy and Bert were in for
a surprise when they examined the contents. Documents there showed the
true name of the spy to have been Boris Dubra, an agent of the dreaded
Rubanian Gerka, whose reputation for unscrupulous methods was known even
in Bellevue.
“This puts a new angle on the whole case,” said Timms gravely. “Of
course you know that Alex Reikoff, dictator of Rubania, is determined
that his air force shall be the most powerful in the world. Until just
now we hadn’t discovered a single Rubanian agent trying to get through
the lines but it certainly looks as though Reikoff is definitely
interested in the Goliath, all of which means we will have to redouble
our vigilance.”
“But why should Reikoff have designs against the Goliath?” asked Bert.
“It’s a long story,” replied the secret service chief, “but to boil it
down it means that he plans to make Rubania a world power through the
development of a great air force. When his planes and dirigibles are the
peer of anything else in the world, he will strike out for world power.”
“Which would mean another war,” said Andy quietly.
“Just exactly,” replied Timms, “and when the Goliath is completed and in
the air it will dwarf even the great dirigibles Reikoff has turned out
at his Blenkko plant in Rubania. Now you understand why the Rubanian
secret police, or Gerka as it is better known, is interested in the
Goliath. So far we’ve been pretty successful in checking sabotage and
this mechanic was the only man they could get into the plant.”
“He was enough,” said Andy, “for had his plan succeeded and the door
have crushed an end of the hangar we might have been delayed for
months.”
They walked slowly back toward the hangar, discussing further the events
which had just taken place and planning for the tightening of the guard
lines around the plant.
“As soon as this agent of the Gerka is patched up in the hospital I’ll
go over and give him a thorough grilling,” said Timms as they reached
the hangar.
“Let me know when you go,” said Andy. “I’d like to see what he has to
say.”
“I’ll do that,” promised the secret service agent as Andy and Bert got
into the young engineer’s roadster.
When they reached the little building which served as Andy’s office,
they found a messenger boy with a telegram for Andy.
“Must be from Dad,” he said as he ripped open the envelope, “and believe
me I’ll be glad to have him back here in charge of things.”
Andy scanned the telegram; then he read it again hardly able to believe
the words which were typed on the yellow sheet.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bert anxiously.
“Nothing wrong,” grinned Andy, “but it’s news, big news!” With eyes
aglow and face reflecting his own enthusiasm he handed the telegram to
Bert.
“Rush work with all possible speed,” said the message. “Have just
completed plans for Goliath’s first official flight this summer which
will take us to North pole for an exchange of mail with the Submarine
Neptune, which will be commanded by Gilbert Mathews.”
“My gosh,” exclaimed Bert, “a trip to the North pole. Well, that is
news.”
“I’ll say,” replied Andy. “Watch us make time from now on for there
won’t be any more accidents with this Rubanian secret agent out of the
way.”