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“Where did you get these dogs?” Brentford asked Tuluk, who stood at his side.

Tuluk hesitated, as he knew it had not been quite legal, but realizing that they were now quite literally above such considerations, he answered good-naturedly.

“The men of the Trash. The Inuit were hunted, you know.”

“I know,” Brentford reassured him. “You did very well.” And he meant every word of it. So these were probably the same animals that had brought the coffin to New Venice and brought the airship to his rescue. He did not know if was sheer luck or something more mysterious, but after all, he corrected himself, few things are more mysterious than luck.

The animal had a paw on the map case and seemed to be scratching with excitement a particular spot that was designated as unexplored.

Bending a little, the visitors could see the portion of the ice field lit by the searchlight. Rollers and rubble slid past at full speed, rarely revealing stretches of smooth ice. But Gabriel could see something that the others did not seem to notice. Something white that was bounding along with ease at an amazing speed, like some sort of spring-heeled Jack Frost.

“You see Him?” he whispered into Brentford’s ear. “He’s leading us.”

“Who?”

“Kiggertarpok,” said Uitayok, between his teeth.

The three men looked at each other.

The dog yelped. It could see Him, too. It was the Polar Kangaroo that had led the dogs first to Gabriel and then Brentford and now to …

“Das müβte hier sein,” said Petersen.

“What should be here?” asked Brentford, surprised at his sudden Pentecostal fluency in German.

Hardenberg smiled, his hand clenched on the back of the pilot’s seat.

The searchlight revealed a foggy area: at first simple wisps of mist, but then a billow so dense, it became a cloud of white smoke.

“Volcanic fumes. I knew it,” said Hardenberg, as the ship was enveloped.

From time to time, as the clouds cleared a little, they could see that the ice on the ground was progressively giving way to ragged slopes of black stone. They were, it seemed, passing over a small mountain range. The dog whined, its tail starting to wag.

“Home,” said Tuluk, nodding his head, as he watched the animal.

The smoke progressively lessened to a thinner veil, and then, all of a sudden, it cleared. Land appeared in the searchlight. A dark plateau, with stray patches of snow, and curls of vapour from numerous geysers or hot springs.

“Here it is. Welcome to Crocker Land,” said Hardenberg, with a thrill in his voice.

Brentford and Gabriel looked at each other. The land that Peary had seen from afar, and that had remained part myth, part mirage, and perhaps, some suspected, something of a hoax, was now spread under their gaping eyes.

“Da!” Petersen exclaimed, pointing his finger at the edge of the searchlight. “Ein Burg!”

Trom, Hardenberg’s hand now squeezing his shoulder, inclined the ship and made a wide swerve over the place to put it right in the searchlight. For those in the wheelhouse, the manœuver seemed to last forever, and the dog now stood on its hind legs, its muzzle so close to the windshield that its breath made a cloudy blur Petersen impatiently wiped off.

At last, it appeared.

It was a mountain. It was a castle. A dazzling crystal mass that sometimes took the shape of an immense palace, a jumble of spires, pinnacles, turrets, and oriels, which as the searchlight moved reverted for a while to a flashing chaos of facets.

“Greenhouses,” said Brentford, as the searchlight extended to the sides of the crystal structure. Four long hothouses, made of glass or crystal, surrounded the castle at the four points of the compass. This was indeed a human settlement.

Trom adjusted the valves, filling the inner ballonets with air, so that the Ariel could lower itself. As it did, it became obvious that the base of the castle was inside a crater with the greenhouses located around its rim. It was as if a gigantic gemstone had been excavated and the castle cut directly into the transparent, slightly water-green