“Take over, Barry,” drawled Tex O’Grady’s voice. “I want to find out if I am still in one piece. When Rosy starts bucking like that she’s tougher than any bronc I ever forked on my daddy’s ranch in Texas!”
Unfastening his safety belt, Captain O’Grady heaved his lanky frame out of the seat and went back to talk with the navigator. Barry swept his glance over the instrument board. He tried the controls, to feel out any possible storm damage. Satisfied that there was none, he looked below.
A sea of rolling, silvery clouds lay in every direction. It was beautiful, but menacing. The ceiling below that overcast, Barry judged, would be zero. It might hide either land or sea, hills or marshes, for all that anyone knew. The storm had carried the Rosy O’Grady a number of miles off her course.
The four big engines’ steady drone of power sounded reassuring, until Barry remembered the last reading of the gas gauge before the lightning had knocked it out. There wasn’t enough left for fooling around, while the Rosy found out where she was.
After a few minutes, Captain Tex O’Grady loafed back to the cockpit.
“The radio’s out,” he told Barry. “That means we can’t get cross bearings to find our position. Curly Levitt is getting a fix now on some stars. Trouble is, he’s afraid his octant may have been knocked out of kilter when it fell off the navigation table, back there in the storm. Why don’t you go back and cheer him up?”
Barry thanked the lanky pilot and unfastened his safety belt. He suspected that O’Grady was just giving him an opportunity to stretch his legs. If a fellow needed cheering up, nobody could do a better job of it than “Old Man” O’Grady himself.
Lieutenant Curly Levitt was up in the top turret sighting through his instrument when Barry stepped back.
“Three stars is enough for a fix,” he shouted above the engines’ thunder. “Just wait till I shoot Venus.”
“Better not—it might really be Sirius!” punned Barry. “Anything I can do to help?”