He wrenched out of the grasp of the startled Fuz McGinnis, and sped back toward the strange tower hangar. Men had already trundled the limp-bladed rotor machine in through the wide door at the base. Hal slipped in, closed and locked that door.
Fuz was a true friend, he meant well—but Fuz couldn’t know what this thing meant to him. To fail at this would mean he could have no heart for that dream flight, his exploring of the ocean airpaths on the wings of the winds. A failure couldn’t conquer the ocean! He’d either succeed at this—or die at it.
As Hal Dane leaned against the inner wall of that tower hangar in which the gyroscope plane was prisoned, he could hear the excited voice of the speaker of the day addressing the crowd through the great radio amplifier that carried his message to all the throng gathered there.
“It has been said,” the voice of the speaker rang out, “it has been said that the climax of aviation had been reached when man learned to fly as well as birds. For birds most surely had the lead on man, having flown for something like twenty million years, while man has merely tried his wings out during about twenty years.
“Man learned of the birds. He patterned his flying machine after the principles of bird flight. He made the ailerons to shift at wing tip and thus to bank his machine in soaring, just as a bird lifts its wing tip. He patterned his light, very light framework after the bird’s hollow bones. So man learned to fly like a bird.
“But now we are going to show you that man has learned to fly better than a bird.
“Think of the lark, she has to have space ten times her size to dart forward in before the lift that soars her aloft.
“Take the great South American condor with wing spread of ten feet. Put him in a twenty-foot pen and you have him a prisoner for life. The condor needs many times more than the twenty-foot space for his forward run before his great pinions will catch the air and lift him up into the skies.
“But man has surpassed the birds. He has learned to fly, and he has learned to rise without great space.
“Within this restricted tower is man’s latest achievement, a gyroscope on a Wiljohn-Dane plane. With no space to dart or glide, this plane will rise straight up.”