"Air pocket anyhow!" Captain Hawes insisted. "This ain't a textbook. This is the real thing."
If Dr. Duerkes had flown as many ships as the captain, he'd know how it felt to bump through an air pocket. Captain Hawes would not be surprised if he found air pockets in the moon's nonexistent atmosphere.
"Strange!" the inventor murmured. He gazed out of the window. He saw something stranger still.
It was a curiously shaped cloud, colored green.
"Umph!" Dr. Duerkes grunted again. "Who'd expect a cloud this high?"
Captain Hawes looked away from the controls and gasped. He strained against his safety belt as he put the ship through a series of intricate gyrations. A smooth, well-modulated stream of cuss words broke from his lips.
"By the wings of Pegasus!" the captain cried. "That wasn't an air pocket! Some idiot A. A. gunner is shooting at us!"
Even as he spoke a second green cloud appeared beside the first and the ship lurched again, even as a faint pop, like a distant explosion, came to the fliers' ears.
Captain Hawes switched on the radio and called to the ground crew.
"Is there a war down there?" the pilot asked. "If there ain't, tell that gun crew to cease firing. If there is, tell 'em to stop anyhow, because we ain't an enemy ship!"