“Never mind me!” the instructor said. “Put your safety belts on—quickly!”
His students did so, and then the plane started bucking again. Poor Mr. Garland was flung against the wall this time, but he recovered himself and hobbled into the pilot’s cabin to see what was wrong. Ted heard his classmates babbling in fright all around him. He and Randy tried to quiet Jill’s mounting terror.
“Take it easy,” Ted said to her. “It may not be anything serious.”
Mr. Garland was back in a few minutes, and Ted could see that his face was grave.
“We’ve got to bail out, kids,” he told the class grimly.
“Into that?” cried one of the boys, pointing to the forest below.
“We’ve no other choice, the pilot tells me,” Mr. Garland replied, his voice shaky. “There’s a fire in the jets, and we can’t crash-land without wrecking the plane.”
Terrified, the students stared at him, as though they still could not believe what he was saying.
“He says there’s an open space ahead of us where we can parachute down,” Mr. Garland went on. “He’s sending a message for help now. We’ve got enough supplies and air to last us until a search party comes from Lowell Harbor. There’s no cause for alarm.”
There was no more time for talk. Despite his obviously painful injury, the teacher quickly distributed chutes and showed the children how to put them on. The chutes were specially designed for use in Mars’s rare atmosphere. Next, space helmets were donned. Then Mr. Garland lined the children up with their rip cords fastened to an overhead cord for automatic opening of the chutes when they jumped. Ted, his sister, and Randy had stayed together, and they found themselves the first three in line to jump.