A period of silence for a time after Prester Kleig's pronouncement.
As he entered the first door leading into the Secret Room, Carlos Kane met and passed him with a smile.
"You called for winged volunteers, did you not, Kleig?" he asked quietly.
Kleig nodded. "You are going?" he said.
"Yes. It is my duty."
No other words were necessary, as the men shook hands. Prester Kleig going on to the Secret Room, Carlos Kane going out to join the mighty armada which must fight against the minions of Moyen.
The words of Prester Kleig were heard by the pilots of the sky-lanes. The passenger pits, equipped with self-opening parachutes which dropped jumpers in series of long falls in order to acquire swift but accurate and safe landing—they opened at intervals in long falls of two thousand feet, stayed the fall, then closed again, so that drops were almost continuous until the last four hundred feet—and pilots, swiftly making up their minds, dropped their passengers, banked their planes, and raced into the east.
All over the Americas pilots dropped their passengers and their loads if their franchises called for the carrying of freight, and banked about to take part in the first skirmish with the Moyenites.