“No thanks.” Gale shuddered. “I’ll never look at a wrecked plane if I can avoid it. I don’t mind helping to shoot down. That hardly seems real—sort of a game. But the results! I’ll leave them to others.”
“As you like it,” Mac agreed, in a friendly voice.
Mac and Jimmie walked away, but the girl stood there staring at the hole in the ground as if trying to convince herself it was really there. Then suddenly she exclaimed:
“Oh! Good grief! I nearly forgot!”
At that she threw on her flashlight to begin circling that black hole.
Like a reaper mowing a field of grain, she covered just so much ground with each circle of her light.
In the midst of her fifth circle she paused to exclaim: “Oh! Good!”
Bending over she picked something up to thrust it deep in her pocket.
She had been at this for some time with no further discoveries, when suddenly she caught the gleam of another light moving about the edge of the palm trees. Curious, with a little suspicion welling up in her being, still pretending to search, she wandered in the direction of that other light.
The mysterious gleam wavered about on the ground for a space of seconds, then blinked out. Instantly Gale lifted her light, at the same time clicking on a device for doubling its power. The result, considering the time and the place, was rather startling. Within the circle of light, blinking but apparently unmoved, stood a tall, dark complected young woman. Her hair and eyes were very black. She was dressed in a long silk gown of deep purple, dark as night.