“Yes,” Mary thought, “we’ve got a real ship.” For all that, she could not help recalling the many times “real ships,” big passenger planes, had crashed against the stone wall of the Rockies.
“The Himalayas are much higher than the Rockies,” she said.
“Oh, much higher! One peak has never been scaled. It’s been tried time and again. Many a poor climber is buried beneath their snows.”
Mary scarcely heard this last remark for the airport loomed just ahead.
Having bidden Judy good-by with a promise to join her again in an hour, she found herself in the midst of a veritable mob of U.S. airmen, who, in their joy at seeing her, threatened to wreck her precious flying hands, squeezed the life out of her and talked her deaf and dumb, all in the same five minutes.
After that, order was restored and they led her to a back room. There they set her on a stool to join her in a toast to the god of the Himalayas and the future, drunk with honest-to-goodness American coffee.
By the time she managed to drag Sparky into a corner for a private conference, she was quite out of breath.
She Cornered Sparky for a Private Conference