"No such luck!" Dave cried and heeled the Albacore around toward the northwest. "I'll have to wait until next time for my chance to duplicate your neat little trick. No. I just took a look at the gas gauges? Did you ever do much camping out, Freddy? I mean, just go out and live off the land, and all that sort of thing?"
"I have a little," Freddy replied. Then sharply, "But what the blasted blazes are you raving about, now? What is the matter?"
"Not a thing, not a thing!" Dave chanted and stuck the nose down slightly to pick up all the extra speed he could. "Only we've been using up fuel like there was a filling station out here every other mile. Unless Lady Luck gives us one awful big break we may have to do some camping out tonight somewhere maybe in the wilds of Thailand or Burma."
"But we can't, Dave!" Freddy cried before he could check his tongue. "We've got to get to Raja, or ... or Lord knows what may happen."
Dave turned around and squinted an eye at his pal.
"Brother, are you kidding?" he muttered. "Or didn't you think I knew that?"
[CHAPTER FOURTEEN]
Raja, the Invisible
For the ten millionth time in the last five minutes Dave Dawson let his eyes come to rest on the main and emergency gas tank gauges on the instrument board. Both needles were pressed hard against the zero peg, and they had been that way for the last five minutes. It was as though the powerful engine in the nose was now simply running on its reputation. Of course, that wasn't true. Even when the gauge shows you have no gas there is always a certain amount left in the feed lines that will permit the power plant to function for a bit longer. But the Bristol Taurus had been turning over for five full minutes on seemingly dry tanks, and as far as Dave was concerned that was most certainly some kind of a record for aircraft engines.
And so as he stared at the gauges again there was bewildered amazement in his eyes ... and a cold lump of fear in his stomach. If Freddy's navigation had been accurate, and if the land marks they had been able to sight from their high altitude really were those that were marked on the flight map Serrangi had given them, they were still a good fifty or sixty miles short of their destination!