As the ship soared on its vast curve, it came, soon, to the top of the loop. It was precisely “on its back,” upside down. The controls were heavy, inert in response.
Had he maintained control elements in the same position the engine should have carried the ship, with its speed almost nil, just to the point where the nose would have dropped by engine weight, acted on by gravity.
Then, going down on the descending side of the wide arc, it could be caught, at the bottom of the loop, leveled, and sent onward.
Don did not delay for that to happen.
Instead he shifted the stick far to the side, holding it there.
Before the nose dropped, the slight forward speed enabled the ailerons to act: the wing dropped, the other came up, and since Don held the slick steady, the ship, from being on its back, executed half of a “barrel roll,” so that it was right side up, and, naturally, at the top of a big circle, pointing its nose exactly backward from its original direction.
Quickly Don caught the ship’s wings as it turned on its fore-an-aft axis.
Thus he had climbed to the top of a big loop, had turned the ship from being upside down to the correct flying position, facing back on the course.
He kept the throttle full open, flying level for an instant.
They were looking away from the search-lamp. Its beams no longer menaced Don’s clear vision. Besides, being so much higher, the rays were spread, diffused.