Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [46]
“I don’t think there’s very much doubt about that,” said the Professor. “We have found the Axial Tunnel: but, after all, if it is only a very deep depression, our balloons can take us out of it after we have touched the bottom. Still, personally, I believe it to be the tunnel.”
“Oh, it must be!” Said Brenda decisively. And so, in fact, it proved to be.
As the moon grew rounder and brighter, the work of preparation for the last stage of their amazing enterprise grew apace. Everything had, of course, been thought out to the minutest detail, and the transformation which came over their impedimenta was little short of magical.
The sledges dissolved into their component parts, and these came together again in the form of a big, conical, drum-like structure, with walls of thick papier mache. It had four long plate-glass windows in the sides and a large round one top and bottom. It was ten feet in diameter and fifteen in height. The interior was plainly but snugly fitted up as a sitting-room by day and, by means of a movable partition, a couple of sleeping berths by night.
The food and water were stowed away in cupboards and tanks underneath the seats, and the gas-cylinders, rockets, etc., were packed under the flooring, which had a round trap-door in the centre over the window.
The liquid air-engines and the driving apparatus of the sledges were strongly secured to the lower end with chains which, in case of emergency, could be easily released by means of slip-hooks operated from inside. There were also two hundred pounds of shot ballast underneath the flooring.
Attached to the upper part of the structure were four balloons, capable at their full capacity of easily lifting it with its whole load on board. These were connected by tubes with the interior, and thus, by means of pumps worked by a small liquid-air engine, the gas from the cylinders could either be driven up into them or drawn down and re-stored. In the centre of the roof was another cable, longer than those which held the balloons, and to this was attached a large parachute which could be opened or shut at will from inside.
VI
When the moment chosen for departure came, there remained no possible doubt as to the correctness of the Professor’s hypothesis. The sun was dipping below the horizon and the long polar night was beginning. The full moon shone down from the zenith through a cloudless, mistless atmosphere. The sloping snow-field and the curved edge of the Axial Tunnel were brilliantly illuminated. They could see for miles along the ice-cliffs, far enough to make certain that they were part of a circle so vast that anything like an exact calculation of its circumference was impossible.
The breeze was still straight to the southward, to the centre of the tunnel. The balloons were inflated until the Brenda — as the strange vehicle had been named by a majority of two to one — began to pull at the ropes which held her down. Then, with a last look round at the inhospitable land they were leaving — perchance never to see land of any sort again — they went in through the curved sliding door to windward. Princeps started the engine, the balloons began to fill out, and three of the four mooring-ropes were cast off as the Brenda began to rock and swing like the car of a captive balloon.
“Once more,” said Princeps, giving his wife the knife with which she had cut the sledges loose.
“And this time for good — or the North Pole — or — well, at any rate, this is the stroke of Fate.”
She gave her left hand to her husband, knelt down on the threshold of the door, and made a sideward slash