Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Big Dirigible, or, Adventures Over the Forest of Fire - Howard R Garis - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE “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.
