"Made it all right, by God!" exclaimed Bohannan, excitedly. "No damage, either. If the floats had smashed when they hit the gate, there'd have been a devil of an explosion—vacuum collapsing, you know. Close call, but we made it! Now, if—"
"That will do!" the Master curtly interrupted, with steadfast eyes peering out through the conning windows. Now that the first élan of excitement had spent itself, this strange man had once more resumed his mantle of calm. Upborne on the wings of wondrous power, wings all aquiver with their first stupendous leap into the night-sky, the Master—impassive, watchful, cool—seemed as if seated in his easy-chair at Niss'rosh.
"That will do, Major!" he repeated. "None of your extravagance, sir!
No time now for rodomontade!" He glanced swiftly round, saw Captain
Alden by the dim aura of light reflected from the instrument-board.
Blood reddened the captain's left sleeve.
"Wounded, Captain?"
"Only a scratch!"
"Report to Dr. Lombardo. And have Simonds, in charge of the stores, replace this broken pane."
"Yes, sir!"
Alden saluted with a blood-stained hand, slipped his gun back into its holster and got up. He swayed a little, with the swinging slide of the air-liner and with the weakness that nerve-shock of a wound brings. But coolly enough he slid open the door leading into the main corridor, and passed through, closing the door after him. Where his hand touched the metal, red stains showed. Neither man of the pair now left in the pilot-house made any comments. This was all in the day's work—this and whatever else might befall.
Spiraling vastly, up, up climbed the giant plane. A colder air nipped through the broken window. Cloud-wisps began to blur the glass; the stars began to burn more whitely in a blacker sky.
The Master touched a button at the left side of the steering-post. Below his feet, as they rested in their metal stirrups, an aluminum plate silently slid back. An oblong of dim light blurred up through the heavy plate-glass sheet it had masked.