Kink started banking for the field halfway up the slope which faced it. As the nose swung toward the clearing the pilot stopped the spiral when the radiator was pointed toward the field at an angle.
While the tense Finley wondered, momentarily, what he was going to do, Forell sent the Briston into a gradual side-slip. It dropped down the mountainside with scarcely thirty miles an hour of forward speed, and he did not swing the nose for the right hand strip until the ship was at the very end of the towering trees which formed the barrier.
He dropped it over them, fishtailed it with the rudder, and set it down squarely in the middle of the landing lane. It trundled past the tree with scarcely ten feet of clearance on each wing, and came to rest twenty yards from the woods at the upper end.
The landing had been perfection itself.
“Sounded like water in the jets!” yelled Kink as he snapped off the switches.
Finley nodded as he hit the ground. That had been his diagnosis of the trouble, exactly.
He measured the field briefly with his eyes, and got the tool-kit out as Forell climbed out.
“We’ll take a look,” Finley drawled. “Let’s hope it’s just a jet.”
“——, there’s no hurry,” announced Forell, lighting a cigaret. “We’ll either have to get those trees—some of ’em—cut down, or else tear the ship down and send it home. We can’t get out.”
“Can’t get out?” repeated the bewildered Finley, jet wrench in hand. “Why—”