“Cocktails or candles!” grunted Norris, and inched the wheel forward.
The last inch did it.
“Seventy!” proclaimed the needle.
“Cocktails!” answered Norris. He drew the wheel back lovingly.
The great gray wings tilted as the tail sank. They bit the air. The first low bush shot beneath the spreader board.
“I like Martinis best,” said John Norris.
“Thank the Lord!” prayed the youngster on his left.
Two minutes later on Langstrom a red-faced mechanic burst from the armament stores with a stubby blue pistol in one hand and a carton of shells in the other. If Norris or his companion, Crawley, had looked back then they would have seen a red Véry light burst, high above the hangars. The mechanic with the stubby pistol was loading rocket shells and firing as fast as his fingers could charge the piece. But the crew of the XT-6 had their eyes on the road to Panama. The recall rockets were unavailing.
And between their eyes and the undercarriage spread broad wings. They did not know and they could not see that the XT-6 was minus a wheel. The rubber-rimmed disk had snapped the retaining cotter pin, spun to the end of the axle, and dropped off as the ship took the air.
It would be candles, not cocktails, at Cristobal, unless⸺