“You’re right. There won’t be,” said Rand firmly, “and I’ve learned a lesson myself.”
“You’re actually planning the world flight?” asked Tom, who wanted to get Rand back on the subject of Helen’s assignment.
“I can’t get away from you,” smiled the flyer, “so I might as well give you all of the details. Got some copypaper?”
Helen fished a pad of paper and a pencil from a pocket and handed them to Rand.
“If you don’t mind,” he explained, “I’ll jot down the principal names of the foreign towns where I’ll make the refueling contacts. Some of them have queer names and it will help you keep them straight.”
The flyer drew a rough sketch of the world, outlining the continents of the northern hemisphere. He located New York on the map and then drew a dotted line extending eastward across the North Atlantic, over Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Siberia, a corner of China, out over the Kamchatka peninsula, across the Bering Sea, over Alaska and then almost a straight line back to New York.
“This is my proposed route,” he explained, “covering some 15,000 miles. It will take about four days if I have good luck and am not forced down.”
“But I thought the distance around the world was 25,000 miles,” said Margaret.
“That’s the circumference at the equator,” smiled Rand, “but I’m going to make the trip well up in the northern latitudes. In fact, I’ll be pretty close to the Arctic circle part of the time.”
Rand bent over his makeshift map again, marking in the names of the cities where he intended to refuel while in flight.