Bogrov was silent, and a bit sullen for a time. He had been watching the barometer and altimeter closely, and wished they could get the airship down to a lower altitude. Thus far Tunguska had performed flawlessly. Her fluids had remained sound and the engines were running smoothly. And they had only used about 20 % of their fuel to cover all this distance, so he had no worries there. But something about this unexpected jaunt, about the quickness in Karpov’s step again, the glint in the man’s eye, made him feel very uneasy. He looked at the weather report again, noting the front that was slowly building over the North Sea. They might have thunderheads building and rising well above 50,000 feet, which was the maximum safe ceiling for Tunguska.
“We may run into some bad weather if we move west,” he said, making one last veiled protest in the weather report. Karpov paid him no mind.
For his part, Karpov had no scruples about his operation over Germany, and no fears about his imminent visit to England. He was demonstrating a power and capability that no other person on the earth had at that moment, and this was something that fed directly into that unfillable well of recrimination within his darkened soul. Later that evening he was satisfied with his photography of Bremerhaven, and gave the order to steer due west for another 300 kilometers before turning southwest for the coast of England near Norwich. Headwinds began to pick up, and they could not make more than 70 KPH, but Karpov was not concerned.
It was then that they ran into the storm.
The light was fading and they remained at very high altitude when forward spotters, and even the Topaz operators, reported a formation of black storm clouds ahead. Bogrov did not like the look of them, and immediately suggested they alter course.
“We must be 3000 meters above them, said Karpov, squinting through his field glasses.”
“Aye sir, they look to be up just over 10,000 meters, but some of these storms can go much higher, and there can be nasty surprises if we run into one, updrafts exceeding 120KPH, turbulence, wind shear, ice, not to mention lightning.”
“We’ve good lightning rods installed,” said Karpov.
“Yes sir, but we also have those nice expensive radar sets on the nose and brow of the ship, and they’ll do the same. It will be a rough ride, but at least the moon is up, and still almost full, so we’ll have some light when we make the coast- if we make the coast.”
Karpov heard the warning in the man’s tone. “Carry on for the moment. If this storm climbs any higher, we can always take an evasive course.”
The storm did climb higher, an unusual monster that continued to billow up and up with angry black fists of clouds, sewn with fitful flashes of lightning. It was a ‘trop buster,’ a storm that was so high that it broke into the troposphere, where the cumulonimbus clouds began to flatten out at the top in the classic anvil shape. By the time they realized what was in front of them, the storm itself was too wide to circumvent. They were going to have to ride it out, and the ominous rolls of thunder grumbled in the sky as they approached.
“All hands, secure for rough weather,” said Karpov, cursing his bad luck to hit a storm of this size.
The view panes were frosted over around the edges, but they were feeding a low current to the center of the glass where they had embedded tiny filaments of wire to heat the surface and allow for some visibility. The airship was shaken by stiff winds, the duralumin airframe shuddering an squeaking as the wind put unusual torque on the structure. At one point a hard jolt shook the ship, and a crewman in the aft section reported a rivet had broken on one of the beams securing the tail and rudder section. The engineers rushed down the long central aluminum mesh walkway, their boots clattering on the metal grating as they went. With their oxygen masks on, they looked like grim, ghoulish figures, the demon crewmen of a phantom ship.
Karpov went into the interior of the massive airship, leaving the heated cabin and venturing down the cold, drafty walkway. His breath came up short in the chilled, thin air, but he thought he could brave the environment, wanting to show his men the iron strength of his will. It was then that he heard an odd thumping on the canvas high above, beyond the bulbous gas bags, and realized they must be running into hail or ice. The ship careened on the wind, a strong gust nearly knocking him from his feet as he gripped a nearby beam to steady himself. When he reached the aft section he could see that the engineers were busy applying a tough canvass restraining belt around the intersection of several duralumin beams where the rivet had failed.
“It’s moving too much to try and get another rivet through, sir. We can’t drill under these conditions and welding is out of the question. So we’ll secure it this way and hope it will hold.”
