Don had to be told. Then he was in such a position that the left wing hid the object of Garry’s excited explanation.
Garry, over the edge of the wing, saw that the helicopter, its horizontal blades bringing it higher, the tractor propeller drawing it forward, rose toward them on a slanting line that seemed meant to bring the odd craft up under their own ship.
Chick, as Don altered the course to get the wing out of his line of vision, sent over a parachute flare, lighting up the scene with its white, revealing gleam.
Don saw their adversary.
From that had come the rockets: he felt sure of it. Flung out, or discharged from some outboard contrivance, their ignition powder had sent them in calculated proximity to the Dragonfly—for some deadly purpose!—to put the ship out of control, no doubt!
“There’s a man in that cockpit!” Garry told Don, better able to see past the swiftly revolving horizontal blades as Chick’s flare turned night into day beneath them.
Chick, looking, saw more.
“It’s—it’s—” he could hardly make his lips form the words. “It’s the—Thing that never—was—the Man who Never—Lived!”
He saw the green of the head covering, the slick, glistening, formless body in its slippery oilskins, the flicker of light reflected from shiny rubber gloves.
Up at them came the helicopter, its course calculated to fall on an angle that would drive them upward, or turn them away from the airport, or—if Don sought to side-slip—bring them on a level with that dreadful Thing at its controls.