'A bit muddled, in your usual way,' Pencraft nodded. 'But I do begin to sense a loss of options for those buggers. You're right, of course, Jones. Now all you need to do is invoke some magical incantation and come up with where they're going to go.'
Gale had a hand in the air, almost frantic for attention. 'Colonel Henshaw, or Mr. Treadwell, whoever,' she burst out, 'we know where that airship was when it attacked the Barclay. And you—I mean, they—can't hide something that big. Why didn't you send fighter planes after it when you had the chance!'
'Splendid idea,' murmured Pencraft. 'Set the buggers ablaze, all right.' He studied Treadwell. 'It would, you know.
Hydrogen loves to burn. Whoosh! Just like the sausages over the lines.'
Indy blinked. Sausages? They were leaving him behind. Henshaw spotted his confusion. 'Artilleryspotting balloons over the trenches,' he said quickly.
'Tethered to the ground, surrounded by heavy Jerry ackack so they were dangerous as all getout to hit. But once you pumped incendiaries into them, they'd go up like Roman candles.'
'Well, then, why haven't you filled that filthy machine with incendiaries?'
Gale demanded of Treadwell. 'That would finish them off!'
Treadwell responded with patience. He understood her feeling that they might have missed the opportunity to destroy the great dirigible. 'Miss Parker, perhaps I should have made myself clearer with the details. You're right. Set fighters after that zep. The fact of the matter is that we've kept fighter planes at different aerodromes, at the ready, just in case we had a crack at that airship. And when the Barclay was attacked, our fighters were already taking off. Of course, it took them a bit of time to climb to the height where the airship was flying.'
Gale's face turned red. 'I—I didn't know. Sorry—' 'No apology needed, Miss Parker. We should have taken a crack at this long ago. Waited too long, of course.'
'Well, what happened!' Pencroft snapped. 'First off, sir,'
Treadwell responded, 'it was a terrible go. That machine was at twentytwo thousand feet. Our fighters made it up there, but control proved very difficult for them. Bitter cold, and all that. One of our machines had radiotelephone and he kept us in touch.'
'Did they get a crack at that thing?' Indy broke in. 'Barely so, I'm afraid.'
'What I want to know,' Indy said, unusually intense, 'is whether or not they fired tracers into the airship. If they did, then I assume those tracers could have reached the gas bags inside the hull?' 'Absolutely,' Henshaw said. 'Well?'
Indy kept at Treadwell. 'At that height, our machines could hardly maneuver.
We didn't have machines ready with oxygen equipment. Two of our men passed out, it seems. They fell off in spins. Both of them recovered in time. Another fighter's guns froze in the cold air. The remaining three blokes flew ahead and just above the airship to make a shallow diving attack. Each pilot knew he would have only one crack at it. I've done that sort of thing myself. It's a wicked moment, I'll tell you. From what the chap with the RT called in, three of our fighters, including his, emptied their ammunition into the airship. It flew on as if it had been bothered with mosquitos. Indeed, the chap on the RT said it even accelerated.'
'What was its heading?' Indy said sharply.
'East, from what I could tell.' Treadwell studied Indy. 'You starting to latch onto something, Professor?'
'Maybe. Just maybe. I need a few more facts. Tom, is there anything else, anything at all, that we may have missed? Even Castilano's message about that place in Frances, Arques, and the chateaus. Did he say anything in his message about any other place these people may be using?'
'Well, not really.' Treadwell rubbed his chin as he probed his memory.
'There was more, of course, but it was sort of gibberish.'
Indy rolled his eyes. 'What's gibberish to one man may not be the same to another,' he said quickly. 'You of all people—'
'Castilano made some reference to a city in the sky. Something huge in the sky, other than the airship —'
The pieces began to fall into place in Indy's mind with startling swiftness. It was all coming together like a threedimensional jigsaw puzzle, and the more pieces that dropped into place the faster came the conclusions and the clearer became the picture.
'Bingo!' he shouted jubilantly.
16
'It's going to be a rough flight, Indy.'
Harry Henshaw spoke directly to Indiana Jones, but his audience included the rest of the team who would occupy the Ford Trimotor. Cromwell and Foulois sat quietly in the mess dining hall of the British outpost along England's west coast, listening and watching carefully. Henshaw was right.
'Why?' Indy asked. 'We're taking the same route we took to get here. Just going the other way.'
Henshaw studied Indy and Gale Parker, seated by his side. 'Sure, it's the same distance in terms of miles. But that's measuring the miles along the earth's surface. Flying calls for judging and considering the winds as well. And we could be going directly into headwinds. That means more flight time and a slower speed.'
Indy held Henshaw's gaze. 'Harry, you want to get that dirigible or don't you?'
'What kind of question is that?' Henshaw asked, visibly surprised. 'Of course we do, you know that as well as—'
Indy cut him off with an abrupt, impatient gesture.
'Then let's stop looking for problems. Let's do it.' He looked beyond Henshaw to the two pilots.
'Will, Rene . . . can we do it? Fly back along the same route? Handle the headwinds?'
Cromwell shrugged. 'Short of a hard gale, not quite a cakewalk, but with our longrange tanks filled—'
