In the days that followed, everyone worked steadily at the job of shifting the base camp and setting up new listening posts.
The last link in the preparations, prior to launching the blaster, was the digging of an enormous artificial “lake” in the ice. Then the lake would be drained, in order to provide an immense cup in which to capture the molten iron as it spouted up from the earth. Tom summoned the crewmen to his laboratory to explain this operation.
“I’ll melt the ice with the jet lifters of the Sky Queen,” he told them. “The water will then be pumped off rapidly through a large hose.”
Tom gave orders for the hose to be lashed down with wire cables and the nozzle to be fixed in position with powerful clamps.
Immediately after lunch, Tom and Bud took off in the Sky Queen. Tom brought the big plane over
A WHALE CHARGES 169
the area marked out for the pool and glided to an altitude of only a few hundred feet.
Then, throttling down on the horizontal power, he began circling slowly around and around while the jet lifters poured a steady stream of heat into the snow.
Soon the artificial lake was gushing with melted snow. As the pumps picked up suction, the hose suddenly came to life. It swelled and stiffened, violent blasts of water shooting out the nozzle. Gradually, the lake was drained.
Upon returning to camp just before supper, Tom learned that the sonic devices for transmitting signals back and forth between the blaster and the listening posts were not working properly.
The engineers, however, told him that they had located the cause of the trouble and would have the mechanisms in good working order within forty-eight hours.