Don sighed and made a minute adjustment on the synchro knob.
"Well, we haven't flipped yet," he said. "We'll stay on deck all the way. Not such a good target that way. Take a look back there, Pete. See anything in the air to the east?"
"Yeah." Pete had been looking back. "There's plenty back there. And they're in a hurry."
Don jerked his head around, then glanced at the mountains before them.
"So are we. They built this thing to win races, not lose them. Hope they knew what they were doing." He pulled a panel lever all the way back and the flier surged forward, pressing them back into their seats.
"Hang on," he said. "Some of these corners are going to be tight."
The ship swung into a narrow valley between two hills, bucking and twisting as Don worked the control back and forth. As a high cliff loomed up in front of them, he pulled the flier up, then around in a screaming turn. A second later, they almost touched the tips of trees as they swung around the shoulder of a steep hill. The flier dropped abruptly, seeking the floor of a gorge, then swung violently as it followed a swift flowing stream.
Don guided it into a side gorge, then suddenly pulled up, to jump through a notch in the surrounding hills. For an instant, the flier paused, hovering in the air over a deep, wide valley, then it dropped like a stooping falcon, sweeping sideways at the end of its drop, to come to rest under an overhanging rock formation. The pilot snapped off switches and leaned back.
"We've got a small-sized walk ahead of us," he said, "but it's through some pretty dense growth and we'll be invisible from the air." He grinned.
"The way I dove into that first canyon, anyone with detectors on me would assume I was heading for the Doer—if he knew the country fairly well. Hope that's the way they know it—just about that well."