Chick was back very soon with the big, rubberized square of black.
“Now,” Don came from an adjoining room where they had discarded flying togs that morning, “I’ll take the Dart, and go aloft—and fly out over the swamps. Chick, you and Garry adjust that focusing cloth over the projector head so it cuts off all the stray light that the beam lens won’t concentrate on the aperture plate. Then, when I set off a green Verey light, and it goes out and I have time to get my eyes used to the dark again, you open up the beam, and start turning the projector, with this film in it, trained on a cloud near where I am. We’ll soon test my theory.”
He got a mechanician, half asleep in the lonely hangar shops, had his help to start up the refueled Dart, warmed up the light ship, and signaling for the “mech” to release the tail he had been steadying against propeller blast, on the runway, Don sent the small craft into the water, taxied along its gently ruffled surface, got on the step and with full gun went soaring up to test a theory.
Short was his turn and abrupt his wingtip bank, to get himself headed for the marshes.
There, with a chosen altitude that he judged to be right for the angle of projection, he made ready to see if the tower beam had sufficient concentration and intensity to make a ghost of a film picture show on the cloud its beam might strike.
The green Verey flashed out, burned and died.
Gliding, watchful, Don’s eyes accustomed themselves to the dark.
A moment passed. Then, as he banked to come back, he saw it.
From a luminous cloud the spectre ship flew out at him!