“We’re not going back,” he replied with grim simplicity. “But you are—here and now.”
This was madness right enough! Our only chance was to get him into conversation, turn the current of his thoughts somehow, coax him back to earth.
“Not going back?” I grinned at him as if he were being really funny. “Where are you going, then?”
“We’re going on—Sylvia and I.”
He smiled at her fondly, nodded as though sure of her assent. She uttered a little cry of alarm, clutched at me. All the time, while we were speaking, he was steering the airplane automatically with one hand, bringing her round and round in wide, flat circles where we lost the minimum of height.
“On?” I said in innocent inquiry, while my brain worked desperately. Curiously enough, in that moment of crisis, I found my head as clear, my nerves as steady, as they had ever been in my life. All my dizzy turmoil had vanished. I forgot that I had ever had a panic in the air. I was merely trying to think of some scheme by which I might be able to replace him at those controls. “On—where?”
He jerked his hand upward.
“Up there! On and on, until we come to—” He stopped himself suddenly, his face diabolically suspicious. “You think I’m going to tell you, don’t you? You think you’ll be able to follow us? But you wont! You get out—here and now—d’you understand?”
I tried to be cunning.