George did, and sure enough somebody came out and chased the cows off the field.
“I still can’t land there,” George remonstrated. “The field is too small.”
“Sure you can,” the Commander assured him; “I’ve done it.”
George circled the field again. He said it looked like a good-sized pocket handkerchief to him and was surrounded by tall trees.
“Are you sure you’ve landed there?” George insisted.
“Sure, I have,” the Commander reassured him. “Go ahead, you can get in it.”
George thought to himself that if the Commander had got in there, by golly, he could too. He said he finally squashed down over the trees, falling more than gliding, and dropped into the field with a smack that should have cracked the ship up but didn’t. He stopped fifty feet from the row of trees by standing on his brakes and cutting the switches. He said he didn’t know how the hell he was going to get out of the place without dismantling the ship.
That night, in the Commander’s house, over a drink, George asked him, “Come, now, Commander, tell me the truth. Did you really land in that field?”
“Certainly I did,” the Commander said. “It was back in 1912, and I was flying a Wright pusher.” George sneezed into his drink. The Wright pushers land so slow they can be flown off a dining-room table.
“And do you remember those trees around the field?” the Commander asked. George remembered. “Well, they were only bushes in 1912.”