“Thanks,” said Timms. “I’ll have a complete description broadcast and we’ll be sure to pick him up somewhere. He can’t fly on forever and he’ll find that disobeying Uncle Sam’s orders and flying over a forbidden area is not to be joked with.”
Andy wrote a brief but thorough description of the mystery plane and Timms departed to get his message on its way to the broadcasting stations from which a complete description and warning to watch out for the gray monoplane would soon be sent to hundreds of thousands of listeners.
“Think Timms will be able to pick up the flyer of this Rubanian plane?” Bert asked.
“It will be something out of the ordinary if he doesn’t,” replied Andy. “Timms may be a little slow to get started but once he is on the job he is like a bull dog; he never gives up.”
Andy made sure that all of the precious specifications for the Goliath were in the big steel vault before he locked the office. They walked down to the one hotel, where they had made their home while in Bellevue, and cleaned up for supper. A regular mess hall had been built at the plant for the crews, who worked, ate and slept in the buildings erected beside the hangar, but technicians and crew foremen lived at the hotel.
The two long tables in the dining room were well filled when Andy and Bert entered and they were joined a minute or two later by Timms.
“The alarm will be all over the country in another fifteen minutes,” said the secret service man, “and we ought to have some news either tonight or the first thing in the morning.”
Structural experts, gas experts, motor specialists and expert fitters were at the table and the talk, as it always did, centered on the Goliath, how much progress had been made that day, what they would do the next and to speculation on the exact day the big ship would take the air and what would be its destination on its first official flight.
“Any news on where we’ll go on our first long trip?” one of the motor experts asked Andy.
“Sure,” replied the young engineer. “We’re going to the North pole to exchange mail with the submarine Neptune this summer.”