Bert had obtained a mid-afternoon weather forecast from Washington, which he handed to Andy. The prediction was none too favorable. A storm had swept down off the Great Lakes and was now over Ohio. If it continued its present rate and course it would bisect the path of the Goliath. Andy passed the forecast on to Captain Harkins, whose lips tightened into a firm, straight line.
“Looks like we’ll be in for some nasty weather before we get home,” observed the commander of the Goliath. “Keep in touch with Washington, Bert, and advise me at once of any changes in the weather report.”
Captain Harkins ordered the speed stepped up until they were doing an even ninety an hour. In calm weather they would have been averaging a hundred but a westerly wind cut them down ten miles an hour.
Clouds rolled out of the west and the sun was obscured by the drifting banks of gray.
Bert came back to the control room to say that weather reports now indicated spotty weather all of the way home with local showers and thunderstorms.
They ran under a bank of rain clouds and the Goliath got its first taste of dirty weather, but it rode through the shower without difficulty, the rain shooting off its metalized sides in steady sheets.
Dusk found them two hundred miles from Bellevue with storms all around them. Lightning was flashing steadily in the northwest and the sky was full of wind squalls with the clouds rolling and twisting in an ominous manner.
“Just the kind of a night for a tornado,” Andy heard his father tell Captain Harkins in a low voice. The Commander of the Goliath, his face lined with worry, nodded.
The storm was thickening. It would break at any minute. They had stuck to their course as long as they dared before Captain Harkins gave the orders to run before the storm. The Goliath heeled sharply as a vicious gust of wind caught it broadside while it was circling. Then they were running into the southeast with the storm behind them.
Electrical interference was so heavy that it was impossible for Bert to communicate with the Washington weather bureau and learn the conditions they were running into. They simply had to take the course of the least resistance and hope that they could escape the fury of the elements.