"My thanks for it, and your presence," Croft accepted and helped her from the car. "Hai, Rob—don't fool with the engine, will you, while I don my new attire?" He turned away and disappeared through the hangar doors.
And there he opened the bundle with unsteady hands and lifted what it contained. Trousers, or rather breeches, they seemed of leather as soft as the finest earthly ooze grain—a tunic—a helmet—leg-cases fashioned to strap on. And Naia of Aphur had designed them, had planned them, directed their making, had brought them to him this morning. Croft's hand actually fumbled the buckles as he put them on. Yet in the end the thing was done, and he stepped forth clothed from toe to head in russet brown, save for the front of the helmet, through which shone his face.
"Zitu!" cried Rob, and Naia's eyes were shining as he advanced toward them followed by the hangar's crew, and mounted into his seat.
Over the fuselage edge he looked down directly into their blue depths. And suddenly they lost their glint of pleasure, grew dark and a trifle strained in the white oval of her face. "Take places!"
The hangar crew ran to the stations Croft had already assigned.
"Ready!" Two of the men laid hold of the propeller and sent it around.
With a roar the engine caught on. A cloud of backdriven dust half veiled the men who steadied the huge plane against the drag of the motur holding it, checking it as it strained and quivered like a hound against the leash.
"Let go!"
The men fell back. The plane quivered, moved slowly in advance. Out across that same desert where once Jason had driven the first motur in a mad, reckless dash to save Naia of Aphur's life, he now shot forward in the first quickening dash of Aphur's first airplane. Forward—faster and faster—faster and faster—then up. Obedient to his shifting of the controls, the huge machine tilted, seemed to rear on its haunches, lifting its nose, its wheels, rising, rising—free of the ground at last—free and rising, higher and higher, up! up!