“I suppose he used it to get to his other ships, and then flew them between a cloud and a light, so the shadows appeared, just as the shadow of your Dart showed to us the first night we tried being Airlane Guards,” Garry suggested.
“But why should he hide it in the swamp, and need it at all? If he had a biplane, he could take-off from miles away,” Chick argued.
“It’s as much of a puzzle as that mixed-up affair of a chart that may be an airplane design, or a camouflaged drawing of a privateer or old-fashioned brigantine that has treasure hidden in it,” Chick mused. “Now, we’d better get to our watching. Doc is my assignment. He’s eating breakfast, so I’ll go and get some, too.”
“Control Chief Vance has gone to bed,” Garry said. “I won’t have very hard work keeping track of the cottage he lives in, from the platform where I watch the helicopter. Don, you’ll be free, then.”
“Well, I’ll work on the inking in of the new tracings,” the young pilot decided. “Wouldn’t it be odd if my study of airplane design had some good effect in clearing up our mysteries?”
“It certainly would!” agreed Chick, moving away.
While he used square and compass, drawing pen and India ink, making the perfect outlines and shading on tracing paper which perfected the multitude of parts’ designs, before the working blue-prints were made by Chick and Garry, Don kept that idea in the back of his head.
It would be fine, he mused, to be able to use the knowledge he had gained, especially about airplane construction and the creation of the original plans for new models, to solve the puzzling, baffling set of unexplained circumstances.
The possibility seemed far-fetched, though.
“How can it help that I know about streamlining the body, and the struts, and even the flying wires?” he asked himself, “or what can I make of wing-taper, and camber, and all that?”