THE NARDAK
As Lee Renaud, burdened with two heavy leather cases, stepped off the
train in Adron, Ohio, and made his way toward the station exit, a big
bronzed man rushed forward to meet him.
"Good for you, Lee!" and Captain Bartlot reached a hand for one of the
cases. "You did what I was counting on--came in time to superintend the
copying of that portable of yours for the field radio use. Say, want to
go to the hotel first or straight out to the Nardak's hangar?"
"On to the Nardak!" said Lee. "I couldn't rest till I saw it, anyway."
Radio certainly was getting Renaud "somewhere." Like a magic jinnee of
old, it had picked him up by the scruff of the neck, swished him out of
a dreamy Gulf Coast village, and landed him in this hustling midwestern
city that was famed for its rubber factories and its airship hangar. If
radio, to be exact, hadn't bodily brought him here to Adron, at least it
had been the motive power that had gained for him this trip.
"Renaud of the Radio, do you want to go to the Arctic?"
That had been the beginning of it all. A puzzling communication, that,
to drop in on a fellow out of mid-air. Later had come another message in
explanation. Both were from his friend, Captain Jan Bartlot. He was
planning a "mush" into the Arctic by airship, to prospect for gold and
other valuables. He had sold his jewel collection for a vast sum, and
now the call of adventure was taking him back into a life of
exploration. Captain Jan was the type of man whom danger lures as a
honey-pot lures bees. A great new gold rush was stirring the Western
Hemisphere--a flying rush into Canada's frozen Arctic on the hunt for
that precious metal. A fur-clad adventurer's discovery of gold-bearing
rock in the northern wilds of the Mackenzie Delta had sent men trekking
into that frozen land by canoe, by foot, by dog-sled. On his other
explorations, Jan Bartlot had followed land trails and sea trails. But
now he proposed to follow the air trail up into the Arctic, to take a
huge dirigible into that land of storms and snows. It was an expedition
fraught with danger, yet one of marvellous practicability----if handled
right. Instead of pushing north for many months on a long trek by canoe
and sled, prospectors, geologists, mining engineers, mining-syndicate
scouts, all the personnel of a vast mining operation could be
transported into the north in record time.
For this mammoth gold hunt, the modern surveyor's implement was to be
the camera, and the connecting link between the various scout parties
was to be the "voice of radio."
On a dangerous journey like this, radio operators had to have something
besides a nimble brain and mechanical ability; they must needs possess
courage, stamina. It was remembrance of the way one Lee Renaud had stood
by an injured man aboard a sinking, derelict roof in the Sargon flood
that had caused Bartlot to offer the young fellow a chance to go on this
wild, wonderful expedition.
In his long explanatory message sent to Renaud at King's Cove, Bartlot
had stated that he wanted to try out the boy's portable radio model as a
connecting link between various mining explorations in the field of
operation--was offering five thousand dollars for the right to copy this
model and test it, provided Renaud went on the trip. A dangerous test he
was offering the young inventor, but if it succeeded--well, it meant
world advertising, and the Renaud Portable going over the top, big.
Would Renaud go?
The answer was Lee Renaud himself. After making the necessary
arrangements for the care of his Great-uncle Gem, Lee had caught the
first train north.
As they taxied across Adron, the busy rush of trucks and cars, the clang
and clatter of this factory metropolis, and the loom of skyscrapers
furnished a thrill for the visitor--but it was as nothing to the thrill
of his first sight of a dirigible.
Captain Bartlot had wirelessed Renaud that an airship, the dirigible
Nardak, was to be their mode of travel. But Renaud had not dreamed how
immense this ship would be. Even before he saw the monster of the air,
the unique building that housed it loomed before his eyes like some
magic growth.
There it stood--a master structure in dun-colored steel, semi-paraboloid
in shape, like a mastodonic egg cut in half lengthwise. A one-story
structure eleven hundred feet long, and tall enough to take a twenty-two
story skyscraper under its roof, with room to spare!
While their taxi was still some miles from the airport, its enormous
bulk dominated its surroundings.
Men in impressive uniforms patrolling outside the building seemed like
minute toys in comparison. Small wonder, when the doors behind them
weighed six hundred tons each and stood two hundred feet high.
As the two got out of the taxi and came up the paved way, Bartlot
motioned to a couple of officials. "Commander Millard, Chief Engineer
Goode," he called out, "here's another of our staff, second in command
at the radio--my friend Renaud."
"Glad to meet you! Ah--a word with you, Captain?" and Millard, briefly
acknowledging the introduction, went aside with Bartlot.
A heated argument ensued. Voices, lowered at first, rose now and then.
"A mistake--too young, country bumpkin--risk to expedition."
Lee had the uncomfortable feeling that he was the subject of discussion.
Then Captain Bartlot came striding back, his jaw set, his bronzed face
tinged an angry red.
At his command, a couple of stationary engines, housed on either side of
the building, were set to generating. Under their power the huge curved
doors began to roll back, each door moving on twenty steel wheels on a
curved track that carried it back along the side of the building. As he
stepped forward and took a view down that vast vault, Lee Renaud felt
reduced to smallness--of a truth! As he looked upward, there was a sense
of surrounding immensity that left him weak in the legs. Two hundred
feet up, under the ridge of the roof, toy workmen labored on a duralumin
framework that had been lifted up by cranes. Not a sound came from them,
they were too far away.
Lee Renaud caught his breath. Within this mountain of steel and glass,
six football games, a chariot race and a circus could be staged
simultaneously.
"The largest building in the world without internal supports or columns
of any kind," said Jan Bartlot, "and er-r, the only building in the
world that has its own peculiar brand of weather. Ah--ca-chu-ah!" the
Captain ended in a wild sneeze as a heavy shower rained down upon them.
Lee looked about in puzzlement. The sun was shining brightly outside.
"Condensation," explained Bartlot. "All sorts of temperatures meet in
here, form a fog, and occasionally roll down in rain."
"But the Nardak? I thought it was housed in here?" Lee cast his gaze
over the vast emptiness.
"She's coming in now. Don't you hear the buzzer?"
"Bz-z-z!" A radio within the building had picked up the signal from the
approaching ship. Men rushed forward from all sides and took their
stands at stated intervals along the length of the building.
From the magazine illustrations he had seen of dirigibles, Lee Renaud
pictured to himself how the Nardak would come--an elongated balloon
drifting through the air, casting off thousand-foot lengths of rope for
men to seize and drag her down to earth.
But the huge Nardak swept into her dock in a very different manner.