“I wouldn’t know,” Dave replied with a chuckle. “But being as how you’re such a curious cuss, I’ll ask him when he comes in.”
“Eh?” Freddy echoed.
“Skip it, pal!” Dave laughed. “I was only—Hey! The guy’s in clear air, now, and he’s making a beeline for us. And from here it looks like he’s half standing up and waving at us out the side window.”
“That’s right!” Freddy cried, squinting across the mile or so of air space that separated the two planes. “The blighter is waving his arm off for fair. Now what, I wonder?”
“Search me,” Dave said. “But keep your eyes skinned, Freddy. This may be the beginning of some funny business. It’s up to us to be cagey of even a guy on a bicycle.”
“Have no fear of that!” the English youth said grimly. “But I imagine he’s pretty harmless. Can’t say that I see his dinky little air kite bristling with machine guns.”
“But you can’t see into the cabin!” Dave barked. “So don’t go taking things on face value. Be ready to grab hold of your hat in case he starts pulling something out of the air.”
Dave wasn’t sure whether Freddy snorted or not. Besides, he was too busy watching the small light plane draw closer and closer. A very familiar tingling sensation had come to the back of his neck. It made him a little annoyed to experience the sensation, because it undoubtedly was crazy to think that that little winged sky kite could give the well gunned Vultee any trouble. Still, the feeling was there at the back of the neck, and too many times in the past had it served as the advance warning of trouble for him completely to ignore it. And so he watched the small plane wing in close, but he sat stiff and taut in the seat, and every nerve and muscle was tensed for instantaneous, lightning fast action.
When it got in real close he could see that only the pilot was in the small cabin. There was no passenger in the other seat. For a second his heart looped over, and he got set to bank the Vultee off, when the smaller plane continued to head dead for him. However, in the last moment allowed the light plane swung around until it was flying wing tip to wing tip with the Air Corps ship. Dave automatically eased back the throttle to let the other keep pace, and stared across the air space at the light-complexioned, flaxen-haired man in the Cub’s cabin.
At that moment the Cub’s pilot put his hand out the cabin window, made frantic motions with it and pointed eastward and down.