“Since none of us has ever gone over, perhaps we’d better rehearse a jump this evening, before we try it on the crowd,” he suggested, in the hope that action would halt dissension.
But Burt Minster had by no means given up the controversy. He had merely been planning.
“This Jenkins who is running the fair intimated to-day that he might raise the ante if we pulled something particularly spectacular the first day,” he said slowly. “And we need the money, if we’re ever to get back where we started. Well, I have a scheme that’ll settle this nerve question once and for all, and give us a big lift toward buying another plane as well.”
“Out with it, then,” snapped Del O’Connell. “I’m willin’ already.”
Burt Minster laid a hand on the parachute packs.
“We have two of them, and we planned that the jumper should wear both, as is customary. Well, instead of that, we’ll both jump, you and I, at the same time.”
“And what would that prove?” snorted Del.
“I’m not through yet,” Burt rebuked him. “We’ll announce the thing as a race to earth, the man landing first winning. You see, you don’t have to pull the rip-cord that opens the parachute the minute you leave the ship. You can fall free—an army expert fell almost two thousand feet before he opened his ’chute—”
Del O’Connell’s eyes glinted.
“’Tis not a bad idea at all,” he admitted, and looked upon Burt Minster with less rancor. “I like it fine.”