The ship was losin’ speed; the Stormbird was leading by a long distance; and even the Imp was drawing close again. Jane didn’t wait for any more trouble. She unsnapped her safety belt and, calm as you please, put one leg across and into the fore pit. Then she pulled forward, and came into the pit with Ned. She crammed herself down into and on him, and grabbed the stick. Ned’s feet were loose on the rudder-bars, but the stabilizer kept the plane on an even keel without much help from the controls.
Jane shook Ned again; and he was conkin’ out fast. He pulled off one glove and looked at his right hand. It was red and swole up, and across it was a red streak, a scratch. He looked up with eyes full of pitiful request for help, and tried to talk. Jane was desperate; she cut the switch to hear him.
“Sick,” he mumbled. “Scratch—somebody on field. Bumped against me. Must be—poisoned. Oh,—I can’t—go on——”
And he slumped forward in the pit. Jane snapped on the ignition, kept the stick steady, pulled Ned back up, and pleaded in his ear.
“Try, Ned! Try to get up! Try to get back into the other pit. I’ll handle the stick. You get back—try! Please try!”
Sick as he was, he tried. He dragged himself up and tottered in the air, while Jane assisted all she could. Then Ned tumbled into the rear pit, half on the seat, and without makin’ a move to get up, passed out completely.
Jane settled to the controls with all the fire she had—which was plenty! She snapped on the ignition and opened the throttle wide as she could. The motor blasted. The plane almost jumped ahead. The Imp, which was almost nose to nose with the Alton again, gradually dropped back. There was the Stormbird, far ahead. Jane fixed her blue eyes on that plane, and kept the throttle open, and prayed.
She didn’t understand perfectly then what had happened to Ned. It was this: while he was on the field, talkin’ with Alton—while Jane was talkin’ with me, private!—somebody brushed past him, and then Ned discovered a scratch on his hand, lookin’ like it was made by a pin. He thought nothin’ of it, but that scratch was full of a drug. What it was we don’t know yet, but it was powerful, and without the shadow of a doubt it had been used by somebody in the Stormbird people’s pay—somebody, probably at Stud Walker’s behest. The object was to put the Alton out of the race by cripplin’ its pilot—and, if it hadn’t been for Jane, the trick would have succeeded! But with Jane at the stick, it was far from succeedin’!
Jane stretched that ship to the limit. The Imp bobbed far behind. Territory unreeled under her. The Stormbird loomed large again. Both ships were goin’ their limit. The race settled down to a question of which ship had the more speed and power and stamina, and the victor would be decided by a very narrow margin. Jane kept the throttle wide, and waited for the Alton to do its stuff—and it did.
Slowly she drew up. She kept the Alton on a level with the Stormbird’s tail for a hundred miles. Then slowly the differences in the ships began to tell. The Alton crept up. An inch. Another inch. Another inch—forward always, at a mad airspeed, the motor blasting like a demon loose out of hell, the whole ship shaking, the wires screaming. The earth spun and veered. Another inch—another. Little by little the Alton crept up on the Stormbird until, prop even with prop, they drove ahead without either gainin’ a mite.