A dauntless young woman and her two friends, boy and girl, set off from Paris in one of the many colorful balloons on this adventurous jaunt. Oddly assorted clues make the date a conundrum--while other improbabilities include balloonists dropping out, apparently without tragedy, over the Himalayas, on the slopes of an erupting volcano, etc. It's all not-very-clever fantasy and too predictable to be exciting, but the balloons are gorgeous, the finely detailed landscapes beneath them beguiling.