The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Tom looked interested, but he said, “We don’t know anything about the winds above the mountains. We could be blown south.”

“That’s right. But we’re a little north of the equator. If the upper winds are anything like they are on Earth, we could be driven north and east. Once past the horse latitudes it’s a different matter. But I have in mind a type of balloon that could get us to the arctic zone.”

“Crazy! Crazy!” Martin said, shaking his head.

“You refuse to do this?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ve always been a little touched in the head myself. Besides, I don’t think the winds will be going the right way for us. We should get down to business and build us a ship.”

Farrington was wrong and probably knew he was just expressing a wish. The air, at the altitude at which they would float, flowed northeast.

However, when the others heard what type of balloon Frigate proposed making, all objected vehemently.

“Yes, I know it’s never been tried out, except on paper,” Frigate said. “But here’s our chance to try something unique.”

“Yes,” Martin said. “But you say Jules Veme proposed that idea in 1862. If it was such a hot idea, why didn’t anyone ever try it?”

“I don’t know. I would have done it on Earth if I’d had the money, Look. It’s the only way we can get a considerable distance. If we use a conventional balloon, we’ll be lucky to get four hundred and eighty kilometers. That still might eliminate a million kilometers of surface travel. But with the Jules Verne, and a lot of luck, we could get all the way to the polar mountains.”

After much argument, the others finally agreed they should give his plan a try. But when the project began, Frigate became uneasy. As the time for lift-off neared, he became downright anxious. Several nightmares about balloons showed him just how deep his apprehension was. Nevertheless, he expressed only the greatest confidence in the project to the others.

Jules Verne had proposed in his novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, an idea which seemed feasible-though dangerous. It worked in his book, but Frigate knew that reality often failed to give diplomatic recognition to literature.

The balloon was made, and the crew took twelve practice flights. These, to everybody’s amazement, especially Frigate’s, suffered only minor mishaps. However, all the training runs were made at low altitudes which kept the aerostat below the top of the mountains walling the Valley. To rise above them was to be carried away from a reasonable distance of New Bohemia and so make it impossible to return before they were ready for the final flight.

The crew would have to get on-the-job training when they ven­tured into the stratosphere. ,

Doctor Fergusson, Verne’s hero, had made a balloon based on the fact that hydrogen, when heated, expanded. This principle had been used in 1785 and 1810 with disastrous results. Veme’s imagi­nary heating device was, however, much more scientific and pow­erful and worked-on paper. Frigate had available a more advanced technology than that in Verne’s time, and he had made some modifications to the system. When the balloon was finished, he bragged that this was the first of its type in reality. They were making history.

Frisco said quite vehemently that nobody had tried Veme’s concept because nobody had been crazy enough. Though he agreed with him, Frigate did not say so. This was the only type of aerostat that could go the immense distances to be traversed. He wasn’t going to back out. Too many times, on both worlds, he had started something and then had failed to see it through. Even if this killed him, he was going all the way.

That it might also kill the others bothered him. However, they knew the dangers. No one was forcing them to go.

The final lift-off went according to schedule just before dawn. Arc lights and torches blazed on the immense crowd on the plain. The envelope of the balloon, painted with aluminum, floated like a wrinkled sausage skin hanging from an invisible hook.

The Jules Verne, at this stage of flight, did not correspond to the layman’s idea of a balloon, a completely expanded sphere. But as it rose the bag would fill out from applied heat and decreasing air pressure around it.