THE “SILVER CLOUD”
“WELL, Ned, there she is!” exclaimed Tom Swift, several weeks after the
disastrous explosion of fireworks and the following decision to
undertake the construction of the big dirigible. “What do you think of
her?”
“Who? What? Where?” asked the financial manager, who had come into Tom’s
private workshop to discuss some business matters.
“The _Silver Cloud_,” Tom replied, with a wave of his hand.
“_Silver Cloud?_”
“Yes. The new dirigible I’m building for the Jardine company.”
“Dirigible!” cried Ned. “I don’t see her,” and he looked around the
room.
“You poor fish!” chuckled the young inventor, “you don’t suppose I have
the giant dirigible in here, do you? I’m speaking of the model I just
completed.”
He pointed to a shelf where a good view could be had of a wonderfully
complete but small model of what would eventually be the big all-metal
dirigible.
“I’ve named her the _Silver Cloud_,” went on Tom, and the reason was
obvious, for while the model was constructed of fabric, it was painted
with an aluminum preparation which made it look like a silver mass of
vapor in a blue sky. A further semblance to a cloud was in several flat,
wave-shaped fins protruding from the sides of the long gas bag, at the
point of greatest diameter.
“What are those dinguses for?” asked Ned.
“To keep her on a steady keel when we’re speeding along about two
hundred miles an hour,” Tom answered.
“As fast as that?” exclaimed the manager.
“Faster, maybe,” was his chum’s answer.
“So that’s how she’s going to look, is it?” murmured Ned, putting his
hands, containing several papers for Tom’s attention, behind him and
standing in front of the model. “Nice lines to her!”
“It’s the most scientifically constructed dirigible I ever built.
Planned to build, I should say,” Tom said, “for we’ve barely begun work
on the frame. Things have got to rush to get her ready by fall.”
“Can you do it?”
“Got to! Luckily, I can buy ready-made many of the motor and other
parts. The Jardine company has on hand all the oralum plates I’ll need,
so the greatest problem is fitting the _Silver Cloud_ together.”
“It’s a good name,” decided Ned. “I only hope the company will turn out
to be as good as this model.”
“What company?” asked Tom quickly.
“The Jardine company,” was the reply.
“I thought you looked them up.”
“I did, and they are reported O. K. But every time I try to get a line
on this Martin Jardine personally, I’m met with evasive answers or else
silence. Tom, I’m afraid there’s something wrong about him.”
“But he has met his advance payments to the dot and he says if I need
more money to call on him.”
“It isn’t all a question of money, though that’s usually the most
important factor,” Ned stated, as he sat down in Tom’s private
experimental office. “The company is all right. But it’s this nervous,
fussy, eternal-cigar-smoking stout little man in the gray suit that I’m
uncertain about, Tom.”
“Oh, I think you’re too fussy yourself, Ned. He seems all right. A bit
dictatorial and impatient, but he and I have got along so far without
difficulty.”
“Well, I hope it keeps up. Now about these papers. Here are some for you
to sign.”
“All right. Let’s get through with them, and then I’ve got to go out in
the shop and see how they’re coming on with the frame of the _Silver
Cloud_. She’s going to be a great ship, Ned!” and Tom’s eyes sparkled
with enthusiasm.
“I believe you,” said the manager.
The _Silver Cloud_ was, indeed, the most ambitious piece of aircraft
work ever undertaken by Tom Swift and his associates. Not only the great
size, but the cruising radius and the accommodations for passengers
exceeded anything ever before attempted.
When the routine business was disposed of, Ned went out to the main shop
with Tom and watched the workmen getting ready for the first step in the
construction of the great airship.
Briefly, it may be said that while the generally familiar cigar-shaped
envelope to hold the lifting gas was the design followed, there were
some radical departures in construction. The stabilizing fins, for one
item, were a novelty.
Instead of having the powerful motors suspended in more or less unstable
gondolas protruding from and beneath the oralum frame and envelope, the
driving apparatus was within the outer skin. Only the powerful
propellers, six in all, were exposed. Each motor was accessible from the
interior of the oralum envelope.
Within the metal envelope were the quarters for the crew and
accommodations for passengers. The latter were forward, and were to be,
in miniature, as elaborate as the living quarters on a palatial ocean
liner.
The gasoline and oil for the motors, the stores of food and water that
would be needed on a ten-thousand-mile voyage, and tools and spare parts
for use in an emergency, were to be carried near the quarters for the
crew and officers.
The greater part of the oralum envelope, of course, was filled with a
new and powerful lifting gas, perfected by Tom Swift and his father. It
was not as explosive as nitrogen, but not quite as safe as helium.
However, it was easier and cheaper to make. One reason that Martin
Jardine had come to them to build his giant dirigible, was because the
Swifts held the secret of this gas. The craft was to be built on a
cost-plus basis and would be the property of the Jardine company when
finished, though of course much credit would accrue to Tom Swift for his
work on it.
“She’s going to be big!” gasped Ned as he took in the lines of the
skeleton, as yet only partly in place.
“She sure is!” admitted Tom. “Wait until we begin to fasten on the
outside oralum plates and she’ll dwarf the Graf.”
“That’s going some!” exclaimed Ned. “But will she be as comfortable to
ride in?”
“More so,” Tom promised. “Wait until you see the passengers’ staterooms,
the electrically equipped kitchen, the dining room, and the recreation
gymnasium. Why, this ship will be so big and steady you’ll never know
she’s moving.”
“Even in a storm?”
“It will take some storm to bother the _Silver Cloud_!” declared Tom.
“She’ll be as steady as a church!”
The days that followed were exceptionally busy ones for Tom Swift. Never
before had he agreed to construct a craft for such a fussy individual as
Martin Jardine. That representative of the company which furnished the
oralum plates seemed to live in Shopton, he was there so often. More
than once he got Tom out of bed by sunrise to ascertain how the work was
coming on, or to make some new suggestions about the craft.
But as Tom was working for him, and as all payments had, so far, been
promptly met, and as there was to be a good profit in the enterprise,
Tom found no great fault.
“We’re in business to do business,” he said to Ned, who criticized Mr.
Jardine. “I might as well have his money, as any of our competitors.”
“Well, he needn’t be so fidgety.”
“He is a bit fussy,” Tom admitted. “But then, this is a big
undertaking.”
Tom Swift found the work more and more exacting and vexatious as the
days went on, for many and troublesome matters cropped up in connection
with the construction of the big dirigible. At one time a shipment of
oralum plates would be held up. Another time the wrong kind would be
sent and delays ensued from that fact. Then, too, there were
disappointments in getting motor and other parts from outside sources.
But the Swift plant, big as it was, never could have undertaken to build
the ship by fall if all the work had been done in Shopton.
“Well, how’s the _Silver Cloud_ coming?” asked Ned one day, as he and
Tom sat in the private office, talking.
“Good,” Tom answered. “She’ll be ready by September. I hope, in a few
days, to leave with Mary and the others on that little vacation to Mt.
Camon.”
“Going in the House on Wheels?”
“Yes. Mary wants to travel that way because the House was so intimately
associated with our wedding trip.”
“How is Mary?” Ned asked.
“Just fine,” Tom answered. “She——”
The telephone interrupted him, and as he answered it he smiled and said:
“Ned’s here, Mary. He was just asking me how you are, so I’ll let you
tell him yourself. Yes, I’ll slip out while you’re doing that and see
when the House will be ready.”
Work at repairing the damage done by the fireworks explosion had been
proceeding on the House on Wheels while Tom was busy with the _Silver
Cloud_.
“Keep Mary there until I come back,” Tom said to his friend, as he
turned the telephone over to him and went out to the building where the
House was being renovated.
“Hear you’re going to Mt. Camon,” Ned said to Mary.
“Oh, yes. Don’t you wish you were coming?”
“Indeed, I do! But I’m too busy. What sort of place is it up there?”
“Oh, wild scenery, mountains, great stretches of uncleared woods—quite
isolated, in short.”
“Good place for a honeymoon then, or is yours over?”
“Indeed it isn’t!” laughed Mary. “Tom is wonderful!”
“Well, I’ll let you talk to the wonderful man,” chuckled Ned, as he gave
the phone to Tom who hurried in. There was a rather serious look on the
young inventor’s face as he spoke to his wife and said:
“I’m sorry, Mary; but it will have to be postponed.”
“What, Tom?”
“Our trip to Mt. Camon.”
“Oh! Why?”
“The House is worse damaged than I had any idea of and it will take at
least a month, maybe more, to get it in shape to use. I’m sorry!”
“Oh, well, let’s go by airship, Tom. In the new, big dirigible.”
“That will hardly be ready, either. We’ll have to make some other plans,
my dear. I’ll be home soon, and we’ll talk it over. Bring Ned to dinner?
Why, of course. How about it?” he looked away to ask his chum.
“I’m on,” Ned answered.
There was a little more talk between Tom and his wife and as he hung up
the receiver Eradicate, the aged colored man who now did nothing much
but look after Mr. Swift, shuffled into the office with a look of
concern on his face.
“What’s the matter, Rad?” asked Tom jokingly. “Have you and Koku been
having another run in?”
The giant and the Negro were always more or less at swords’ points
because of each one’s devotion to the Swifts.
“No, sah, Massa Tom, ’tain’t dat big, silly giant dis time!”
“What is it then? Are you mourning over your old mule Boomerang?”
“No, sah, ’tain’t dat, Massa Tom. It’s yo’ pa!”
“Dad! What’s the matter?” and Tom jumped to his feet.
“He’s tuck mighty bad, dat’s whut’s de mattah,” said Eradicate. “I
didn’t want him to come down heah to-day, but he did, an’ now he’s tuck
bad! Yo’ all better come an’ see to him.”
“Of course I’ll come at once.”
Tom hurried from his private office, followed by Ned, and hastened to
that part of the plant where Mr. Swift had his own rooms, though he
seldom came to them now.
“I hope nothing serious has happened!” mused Ned, as he followed his
chum and the shuffling Eradicate.