09 Lion Adventure by Willard Price Read Free Book Online Page B

enough. You’ve heard of Leal’s balloon safari?’
    Hal nodded. Stories about it had been running in the Nairobi and Mombasa papers. Leal, an Englishman, had been drifting over East Africa in a balloon, taking photographs of the animals. Used to looking at the ground, they rarely noticed the balloon, even when it hung only a hundred feet above them. It made no sound, and unless Leal and his two companions spoke there was nothing to disturb the animals grazing or resting or prowling beneath.
    ‘A balloon would be perfect,’ Hal said. ‘But why should Leal lend us his balloon?’
    ‘He won’t, but I will. He has returned to England, but
    just before he left he made us a present of the balloon for observation work in Tsavo - just to be sure that those poachers you scared out don’t come back. It’s anchored down near Mzima Springs right now. Would you care to go down and take a look at it?’
    The offer was eagerly accepted. A short ride south, and there was the balloon hovering over open country along the Tsavo River and the large water-hole known as Mzima Springs. The trail line was lashed to a great stump, holding the balloon firmly in place. A nylon rope ladder reached from the basket to the ground. In the basket stood an African ranger with a pair of binoculars glued to his eyes. From this vantage, as high as the roof of a ten-storey building, he could keep watch over some ten square miles of territory.
    At the foot of the ladder stood another ranger with his bicycle, ready to ride back and give the alarm if poachers were sighted.
    At a signal from Crosby, the look-out climbed down.
    ‘Not room in the basket for four,’ the warden explained. ‘Let’s go up.’
    They climbed the swaying rope ladder and stepped into the basket.
    It was truly a basket with woven sides and bottom and you could see through the cracks. It wobbled and bounced as they came down into it. It was a rather close fit, little more than three feet square.
    Eight ropes fastened to the edge of the basket rose to a ring and from the ring twelve lines went up to the balloon itself. The balloon, said Crosby, was about forty feet in diameter.
    ‘What holds it up?’ Roger asked. ‘Hot air?’
     
    ‘No,’ Crosby said. ‘A hot-air balloon with the same lifting ability would have to be more than three times as large. Coal gas would do better and helium even better. But the best lift comes from hydrogen and that’s what is in that bag. Hydrogen is the lightest gas known. It is fourteen times as light as air.’
    Roger looked up. It struck him as odd that the bottom of the bag was open. There was a hole big enough for a man to crawl through.
    ‘Doesn’t the gas ever come out through that hole?’ he asked.
    ‘No, because the gas, being light, tries to go up, never down.’ ‘So if we weren’t tied to that stump we’d go up.’ ‘We certainly would.’
    ‘And how could we make the thing come down?’ There’s a way to do that. This is a valve line. It goes right through the balloon to a valve at the top of the bag. Pull that cord and it lets a little of the gas out and the balloon will stop going up. Let out a little more gas and it will slowly come down. You can quit any time when you are low enough to suit you.’
    ‘Of course you lose some gas that way,’ said Hal. ‘Suppose you want to go up again. What do you do?’
    ‘See these bags under your feet? They’re full of sand. You throw out enough sand to lighten the load and up you go. You start out with seventy of those small bags of sand. You can rise to any height you like, according to the amount of sand you toss out.’ ‘It sounds easy,’ Roger said.
    ‘I don’t want to fool you,’ the warden replied. It isn’t easy. It’s really a very tricky business. The air is full of
    currents going up or down or crosswise. A plane would just plough through them, bumping a little. But a balloon has no motor - it goes where the wind goes, up or down or across. If there’s a strong