CHAPTER IV

_To the North Pole_

"You stand back! You do not touch me!"

The Venus girl fairly hissed the words. Her eyes were dilated; her white

hair hung in a tumbling, wavy mass over her shoulders. She stood

tense--a frail, girlish figure in a short, grey-cloth mantle, with long

grey stockings beneath.

We were startled. Georg stopped momentarily; then he jumped at her. It

was a false move, for before we could reach her, with a piercing cry,

she was tearing at the instruments on the table; her fingers, with burns

unheeded, ripping the delicate wires, smashing the small mirrors,

flinging everything to the floor.

A few seconds only, but it was enough. She was panting when Georg caught

her by the wrists, and we others gathered around them.

"Ahla!" Elza cried in horror.

I can appreciate the shock to Elza, who had trusted, even loved this

girl.

Dr. Brende stood in confused astonishment, staring at the wreck of the

instrument table. From a naked wire a little black coil of smoke was

coming up. I fumbled about and switched the current out of everything.

We were cut off from all communication with the world. It gave me a

queer feeling--made the small island we were on seem so remote.

Georg was shaking the girl, demanding with whom she had been talking and

why. But she fell into sullen silence, and nothing we could do would

make her break it. It infuriated me, that stubbornness; it was all I

could do to keep from harming her in my efforts to make her talk.

Georg, at last, pulled me away; he led the girl to a couch and sternly

bade her sit there without moving. She seemed willing enough to do that;

she still had not spoken, but her eyes were watching us closely.

Dr. Brende was examining the smashed instruments. "Ruined. We cannot use

them. Those messages--we must send them. I must talk to Robins----"

We went into the corridor, out of earshot of the girl, but where we

could watch her. That we were in immediate danger was obvious, and we

all realized it. Ahla had told some of her people that we were here on

the island; doubtless was planning to have them come here at once and

seize us.

How far away from us were they? I had seen in the mirror the interior of

a cave-like room. Where was it? Might it not be near at hand--over on

the mainland? Might not these enemies arrive on the island at any

moment?

Georg suggested that we send our messages from the aeros. We had my own

car--and a larger car of the Brendes. More than ever now, Dr. Brende was

worried over the safety of his Siberian laboratory; but from the aero we

could talk to Robins.

We went to the landing stage. I wanted to tie up Ahla, but as Georg

said, she could do nothing now that the instrument room was out of

commission. We admonished her sternly to stay where she was, and left

the house.

On the open landing stage my small aero was lying where I had left it;

but a moment's glance showed us it was wrecked--its instruments and its

driving mechanism demolished!

There was no doubt about it now; Ahla had planned to keep us on the

island while her people came and seized us. Fortunately the Brende car

was well housed and barred. We saw that the gates had been tampered

with, but with the limited time Ahla had to work in, she had been unable

to force them. We swung them wide, and to our infinite relief found the

car unharmed.

At once Dr. Brende called Robins. But the laboratory did not answer!

"It may be your sending apparatus," I suggested. "Send your message down

to Headquarters--with their high power they'll get Robins quickly

enough."

He tried that--sending also his answer to the previous coded message

Headquarters had sent him. It was now 11:45. We waited some eight

minutes, during which time I rushed back to the house. Ahla was sitting

obediently where I had left her.

"You stay there," I told her. "If you move, I'll break every bone in

your rotten little body."

Back at the landing stage I found Dr. Brende in despair. Headquarters

could not raise Robins. They had relayed the message to Wrangel and

Spitzbergen Islands--but the stations there reported similarly. Dr.

Brende's laboratory did not answer its call.

This decided us. We had no wish to remain where we were. The Brende car,

far larger than the small one of mine, was fully equipped and

provisioned. We rolled it out, and in a moment were flying in the air.

Dr. Brende's car was large, commodious, and smooth-riding. A pleasure to

fly in such a car! Georg was at the controls. I sat close beside Elza in

the semi-darkness, gazing down through the pit-rail window to where the

island was dropping away beneath us. It was a perfect night; the moon

had set; the stars and planets gleamed in an almost cloudless sky. Red

Mars, I saw, very nearly over our heads.

It was now midnight, and for the moment we chanced to have the air to

ourselves. We rose to the 10,000-foot level, then headed directly North.

It carried us inland; soon the sea was out of sight behind. Lights

dotted the landscape--a town or city here and there, and occasionally a

tower.

Dr. Brende was poring over charts, illumined by a dim glow-light beside

him. "Can we get power all the way, Georg?... Elza child, hadn't you

better lie down? A long trip--you'll be tired out."

"Call Royal Mountain[6]," Georg suggested. "Ask them about serving us

power; I'll stay 10,000 or below. Under one thousand, when we get

further north. Ask them if they can guarantee us power all the way."

[Footnote 6: Now Montreal.]

The station at Royal Mountain would guarantee us nothing on this night;

they advised us to keep low. Their own power-sending station was working

as usual. But this night--who could tell what General Orders might come?

Everyone's nerves were frayed; this Director demanded gruffly to know

who we were.

"Tell him none of his business," I put in. My own nerves were frayed,

too.

"Quiet!" warned Georg. "He'll hear you--and it _is_ his business if he

wants to make it so. Tell him we are the Inter-Allied News, father. That

is true enough, and no use putting into the air that Dr. Brende is

flying north."

Royal Mountain let us through. We passed well to the east of it about

12:45--too far away to sight its lights. The cross-traffic was somewhat

heavier here. Beneath it, at 5,000 and 6,000 feet, a steady stream of

cars was passing east and west.

We were riding easily--little wind, almost none--and were doing 390

miles an hour. You cannot bank or turn very well at such a speed; it is

injurious to the human body. But our course was straight north. Dr.

Brende showed it to me on his chart--north, following the 70th West

Meridian. Compass corrections as we got further north--and astronomical

readings, these would take us direct to the Pole. I could never fathom

this air navigation; I flew by tower lights, and landmarks--but to Dr.

Brende and Georg, the mathematics of it were simple.

At two o'clock we had crossed the route of the Chicago-Great London Mail

flyer. But we did not see the vessel. The temperature was growing

steadily colder. The pit was inclosed, and I switched on the heaters.

Elza had fallen asleep on the side couch, with my promise to awaken her

at the first sign of dawn.

At two-thirty, the Greater New York-East Indian Express overhauled us

and passed overhead. It was flying almost north, bound for Bombay and

Ceylon via Novaya Zemlya. It was in the 18,000-foot lane. The air up

there was clear, but beneath us a fog obscured the land.

At intervals all this time Dr. Brende had been trying to raise

Robins--but there was still no answer. We did not discuss what might be

the trouble. Of what use could such talk be?

But it perturbed us, for imagination can picture almost anything. Georg

even felt the strain of it, for he said almost gruffly:

"Stop it, father. I don't think you should call attention to us so much.

Get the meteorological reports from the Pole--we need them. If they tell

us this weather will hold at 10,000 and below, we'll make good time."

Soon after three o'clock we swept over Hudson Strait into Baffinland. We

were down to 4,000 feet, but the fog still lay under us like a blanket.

It clung low; we were well above it, in a cloudless night, with no wind

save the rush of our forward flight.

Then came the pink flush of dawn. True to my promise I awakened Elza.

But there was nothing for her to see; the stars growing pale, pink

spreading into orange, and then the sun. But the fog under us still lay

thick.

We were holding our speed very nearly at 380 an hour. By daylight--about

five o'clock, after a light meal--we were over Baffin Bay. I had

relieved Georg at the controls. The headlands of North Greenland lay

before us. Then the fog lifted a little, broke away in places. The water

became visible--drift and slush-ice of the Spring, with lines of open

water here and there.

And then the fog closed down again, lifting momentarily at six o'clock

when we passed over the north-western tip of Greenland. The tower there

gave us its routine signal, which we answered in kind. There was little

traffic along here; a few local cars in the lowest lanes.

Shortly after six, when we were above Grantland, another of the great

trans-Arctic passenger liners went over us. The San Francisco Night

line, for Mid-Eurasia and points South. It was crossing Greenland, from

San Francisco, Vancouver, Edmonton, to the North Cape, the Russias, and

African points south of Suez.

At seven o'clock, with the sun circling the lower sky, the fog under us

suddenly dissipated completely. We were over the Polar ocean. Masses of

drift ice and slush, but for the most part surprisingly clear. At eight

o'clock, flying low--no more than a thousand feet--we sighted the steel

tower with foundations sunk into the ocean's depths which marks the top

of our little Earth.

We flashed by the tower in a moment, answering the director's signal

perfunctorily. Southward now, on the 110th East Meridian, without

deviating from the straight course we had held.

It was truly a beautiful sight, this Polar ocean. Masses of ice,

glittering in the morning sunlight. A fog-bank to the left; but

everywhere else patches of green water and floes that gleamed like

millions of precious stones as they flung back the light to us. Or

again, a mass of low, solid ice, flushed pink in the morning light. And

behind us, just above the horizon, a segment of purple sky where a storm

was gathering--a deep purple which was mirrored in the placid patches of

open water, and darkened the ice-floes to a solemn, sombre hue.

Elza was entranced, though she had made many trans-Polar trips. But

Georg, now again at the controls, kept his eyes on the instruments; and

the doctor, trying vainly once more to talk with his laboratory, now so

close ahead of us, sat in moody silence.

It was 9:38 when we sighted, well off to the right, the rocky headland

of Cape Chelusin[7]--the most northerly point of Eurasia. A long, low

cliff of grey rock, ridged white with snow in its clefts. We swung

toward it, at greatly decreased speed, and at an altitude of only a few

hundred feet.

[Footnote 7: Now Cape Chelyuskin, Laimur Peninsula, Siberia.]

This was all a bleak, desolate region--curiously so--and I think, one of

the very few so desolate on Earth. As we advanced, the Siberian coast

spread out before us. Mountains behind, and a strip of rocky lowland

along the sea. There were patches of snow--the mountains were white with

it; but on the lowlands, for the most part the Spring sun had already

melted it. The Spring was well advanced; there were many open channels

in the water over which we were skimming--drift-ice, and slush-ice which

soon would be gone.

Cape Chelusin! It was here that Dr. Brende had placed his Arctic

laboratory--as far from the haunts of man as he could find--a hundred

miles from the nearest person, so he told me. And as I gazed about me I

realized how isolated we were. Not a car in the whole circular panorama

of sky; no sign of vessel on the water; no towns on the land.

It was just after ten in the morning when we dropped silently to the

small landing stage a hundred yards or so from the shore. We disembarked

in the sunlight of what would have been a pleasant December morning in

Greater New York; and I gazed about me curiously. A level lowland of

crags with the white of snow in their hollows; a collection of broad,

low buildings nearby, with a narrow steel viaduct running down to them

from the landing stage. And behind everything, the frowning headland of

the Cape.

The buildings stood silent, without sign of life. There was no one in

sight anywhere. No one out to greet us; I thought it a little strange

but I said nothing.

We started down the viaduct. Under us, in patches of soil, I could see

the vivid colors of the little Arctic flowers already rearing their

heads to the Spring sunlight. I called Elza's attention to them. A vague

apprehension was within me; my heart was pounding unreasonably. But this

was Dr. Brende's affair, not mine; and I wanted to hide my perturbation

from Elza.

The viaduct reached the ground; a path led on to the houses.

Suddenly Dr. Brende called out:

"Robins! Robins! Grantley! Where are you!"

The words seemed to echo back faintly to us; but the buildings remained

silent.

"You'd better wait here with Elza," Georg said.

"I'll go on--see what----"

He checked his words, and started forward. But Dr. Brende was with him,

and in doubt what to do I followed with Elza.

We entered the nearest building, into a low, dim room, with doors on the

sides. In the silence I seemed to hear my heart pounding my ribs. Elza's

face was pale and perturbed, but she smiled very courageously at me.

"Wait!" said Georg. "You wait here."

He turned into a side door leading to another room, and in an instant

was back with a face from which the color had departed.

"They're not in there," he said unsteadily. "Elza--you go outside with

father.... They must be around somewhere, Jac. Come, look."

There was a rustle behind us. Arms came around me, pinning me. I heard

Elza scream, saw Georg fighting two dark forms which had leaped upon

him.

I was flung to the ground, but I fought--three men, it seemed to be, who

were upon me. Then Georg's voice:

"Jac! Stop--they'll kill you."

I yielded suddenly, and my assailants jerked me to my feet. A group of

Venus men were surrounding us. Georg, his jacket torn to ribbons, was

backed up against the wall with three or four Venus men holding him.

And on the floor nearby Dr. Brende lay prone, with a crimson stain

spreading on his white ruffled shirt, and Elza sobbing over him.