Braun stepped over to a chart table. “Here is our position. We will follow the course taken by the Norge and the Italia to the Spitsber- gen Islands. From there we make the dash to the pole. I expect the last leg to take about fifteen hours, depending on weather.”

“I hope we have better luck than the Italians,” Heinz said, un- necessarily reminding the others of previous airship attempts to reach the pole. In 1926, the Norwegian explorer Amundsen and an Italian engineer named Umberto Nobile had successfully reached and cir- cled the pole in an Italian dirigible named the Norge. However, No- bile's second expedition in the sister ship known as the Italia was supposed to have landed at the pole, but it had crashed. Amundsen had been lost in a rescue attempt. Nobile and some of his men were finally rescued.

“It is not a question of luck,” said Lutz. “This airship's design built on the mistakes of others, precisely with this mission in mind. It is stronger and better able to handle rough weather. It has redun- dant communications systems. The use of Blaugas will allow for greater control because we won't have to vent hydrogen as ballast. We have defrosting ability in our controls. Its machinery is made to op- erate at subfreezing Arctic temperatures. It is the fastest airship ever built. We have a network of planes and ships in place that will re- spond immediately if we run into any problems. Our meteorologi- cal capacity is second to none.”

“I have the utmost confidence in you and the ship,” Heinz said with an unctuous smile, as his natural inclination to toady up to oth- ers came to the fore.

“Good. I suggest we all get some rest before we reach Spitsbergen. We will refuel there, and proceed to the pole.”

The trip to Spitsbergen was uneventful. Contacted by radio, the refueling and resupply crew was ready, and the airship was on its way within hours, heading north, past the Franz Josef archipelago.

The dull gray sea below was speckled with pieces of floating ice. The chunks eventually graduated to large irregular pancakes that joined to form ice broken here and there by dark black veins of open water. Near the pole, the ice became a vast, unbroken expanse. Al- though the bluish-white surface looked flat from a thousand feet in the air, land explorers had learned the hard way that it was criss- crossed by ridges and hummocks.

“Good news,” Braun announced cheerfully. “We are at eighty- five degrees north. We will make the pole soon. The weather condi- tions are ideal. No wind. Clear skies.”

The anticipation grew, and even those who were off-duty crowded into the control cabin and peered out the big windows as if they hoped to see a tall striped shaft marking the spot at 90 degrees north.

One observer called out, "Captain, I think I see something on the ice.