The nurse slipped back into the canvas-walled barracks that housed her patients.
“And Hal,” the Colonel had himself in control again, “Hal, boy, I want you to know that even in my first selfish grief, I didn’t entirely forget your hopes and plans. Days ago I wired to my men at the Axion factories to speed the finishing work on your two planes, and to rush them to San Francisco. Our mechanics will have everything ready for the demonstration at the Onheim Contest, if you get there in time. And whether you tackle that Onheim Contest for me or not, isn’t what really matters—the main thing is, you’ll find your Wind Bird ready for you and your great flight.”
Hal’s head seemed to whirl in an ecstasy. He had suppressed his every longing till he became a being that snatched a few hours’ sleep, scouted floods with tensed nerves as long as a shred of daylight lasted, and plunked onto a cot for a minimum of rest. Now in the twinkling of an eye, the suppression was off.
With the speed he knew how to get out of a plane, he could be in Denver at mid-morning tomorrow, and on to San Francisco in the early hours of that night. After that he could sleep a round of the clock and still be in time for the Onheim trials.
Instead of going back in the gyroscope dog plane that he had brought down and put to such good use, Colonel Wiljohn turned over to him one of his speed monoplanes, the fastest thing that had come into the flood country.
For all of Hal’s feverish haste to be off, delays of various kinds held him for several hours. The monoplane, which had seen considerable service, had to be fueled and groomed for the long diagonal across more than half the continent. Friends that he had made in these grueling times of day-and-night labor hunted him up to congratulate him on the work he had put over and to wish him God-speed for the future.
By the time Hal had stepped into the cockpit of the speed plane, it seemed that the whole population of Tent-City-on-the-Flood-Edge had turned out to do him honor.
Colonel Wiljohn wrung his hand fervently.
“Your coming down here has been of more worth to me than I can ever put into mere words,” he said. “And I only wish I could be there when you start the great flight.”
“I wish that, too,” Hal reached a hand down to his friend.