The group in the hotel lobby broke up, most of the men going to their rooms to write letters or read while a few gathered around a chess board. Andy had some correspondence to finish and he walked down to his office. Reports for the day showed better than average progress had been made on the Goliath and he wrote these into the permanent record of the construction of the mammoth craft.
For an hour he worked at his desk, catching up on the mail which had come in that morning. All of it was routine with the exception of another short notice from the war department that Herman Blatz, the civilian observer from Friedrichshafen, would arrive at Bellevue the next day. It added that every courtesy of the National Airways plant should be made available to the newcomer.
The note irritated Andy. He was inclined to be suspicious of any newcomer now but he realized that he would have to master that feeling for they were deeply indebted to Doctor Eckener for his many contributions to the advancement of dirigibles. Andy filed the letter from the war department and was about to leave his office and return to the hotel when the blast of a siren cracked the night wide open. It was shrill, penetrating, alarming—the kind of noise that creeps up and down the spine and makes the short hair at the back of the neck stand straight up.
Lights flashed on in the anti-aircraft battery down the field. Hangar doors swung open. Mechanics popped out of beds and into their clothes. Canvas hoods were ripped off the searchlights and the dynamos hummed with energy.
The microphones had picked up the sound of an approaching airplane. Propellers of the army planes spun. Flame whimpered around the exhaust stacks. Ammunition belts were fed into the black, deadly little guns.
Andy ran along the line of fighting planes. They were poised; eager for the word to go. Every other light in Bellevue had been put out. There was only the occasional flicker of the exhaust of one of the waiting planes. He felt out of the picture; the army was in command. He stopped beside Lieutenant Crummit’s plane and the army officer leaned down.
“Room enough in here if you want to pile in and see this shindig,” he shouted.
The invitation was followed by the acceptance in action and Andy vaulted into the cockpit of the speedy fighter. It was lucky they were both slender but even then it was a tight squeeze.
“How do you know when to go?” asked Andy.
“The plane was ten miles away and heading this way when the ‘mike’ picked it up,” replied Lieut. Crummit. He glanced at his wrist watch.