The Radio Flyers

Eric Redmond and Angus Selkirk head a secret polar expedition. The two of them start out in their plane on May 2, 1926, racing the Byrd and Amundsen expeditions. A leak in the gas line forces them to land, and the irregular ice smashes one ski and the propeller blade. Eric takes blankets and food, and starts on a brief reconnoitering trip. When he returns, both Angus and the crippled plane are gone. Eric presses on toward the pole. He gets adrift on an iceberg, which carries him, as he thinks, across the pole and down the other side of the world. Here everything is strange-a fixed sun directly overhead, tropical warmth, an upward-curving horizon. At last he figures it out-the world is hollow, with a central "sun" and he has gone over the edge, at the polar orifice. There he meets Helga, a Viking descendant.