For a fortnight longer, the preparation aboard the Nardak went forward. On former trips the Nardak had been a floating pleasure palace circling the globe with a crew of forty and with twenty passengers in luxurious staterooms. In view of her impending arduous flight into the barren polar wastes, all of this was being changed. Such luxurious features of the ship as the cabin de luxe and the magnificent passenger saloon were being discarded, and small plain cabins installed. This was done to lighten the load on the ship and increase the capacity for the useful load of food and fuel necessities.
During this interim, on a special rush order, an Adron factory pushed forward the work of making six portables after Lee’s little radio model. These were for field work on the Arctic barrens.
In the airship itself, several structural changes were made. There was the protecting of vital parts against the effects of low temperatures and the preparation of certain special equipment for landing without any help from the ground.
Then the great day came. The day for all aboard, and then off, adventure bound!
For the last time the huge ship came out of her hangar on wheels. She was ready now to be loosed, ready to take the air. To the high daring of her mission the city of Adron did homage. Horns blared, great factory sirens roared their calls, bands played. Now a wedge of airplanes zoomed across the sky, come to bid the expedition farewell in their own particular aerial style. For this departing mammoth of the air was answering the greatest challenge of them all—a prolonged exploration flight over the vast frozen Arctic.
On this exploration were going a wonderful picked crew of scientists, geologists, meteorologists—learned men of many professions had striven for a chance to face any hardship, if only they might go on this expedition to the “geologist’s paradise,” the fearful, mysterious frozen Polar Region with its lure of unrevealed secrets.
Out of the hundreds of applicants, only so few could go—some sixty men. Because this dangerous expedition could be no stronger than its weakest member, its personnel had to be selected with an eye to strength, health and disposition as well as scientific ability.
A large order in the way of exploration personnel! Yet Jan Bartlot’s genius for leadership led him to pick an astonishingly capable, loyal, brave body of men to companion him into the wilds of the Arctic.
There was stocky, blond Norwegian Olaf Valchen who came from Spitzbergen, that far northern settlement. He had long been a lone flyer of the icy wastes, a carrier of dynamite and other mining supplies across the Hudson Bay territory.