“Mechanic’s paste takes some of it off,” David replied.
Presently David went back to his cabin and lay down on the bunk. He had spent a sleepless night, and the day had been a hard and depressing one. He half dozed, but his subconscious mind worked busily on, and presently he seemed to hear Dulcie speak.
“Wally has one on his hand, too.”
Wally! David lifted his hand and looked at the aniline stain spreading across the palm; the stain where he had rested his hand on the broken bit of indelible lead. There had been a splash of water on the floor. It must have softened the lead. Indelible pencils were always like that. Wally had a stain on his hand, too, did he?
David got up and, squaring his muscular shoulders, buttoned his coat. The action was automatic—the gesture of a man buckling on armor. He went to the control room, gave a brief order, then went swiftly to Cram’s door, knocked, and turned the knob. Wally was reading.
“Cram, you have never been up on the observer’s platform, have you?” David asked smoothly.
“Oh, hello, Ellison,” said Wally. “No, I’ve never been up in flight. I went up there back in Ayre before the Moonbeam was finished.”
“It’s a great sight over the ocean, especially now, at sunset. Come along, won’t you? I’m going up for a minute. There’s just time before dinner.”
Wally hesitated, then rose with evident reluctance. “All right,” he said. “I suppose I ought to be able to say I’d been up there in flight, but it’s the last thing I’ll care for, I bet.”
He followed David into the hull, through devious ways up ladders and along narrow catwalks.