Garry, in the silent-motored, and fast little “crash” launch, would follow the shore to a channel known as Crab Channel. Down its somewhat deep and broad course he could turn inland, coming closest to the scene of their mission.
Then, hidden from inland eyes by tall grass, he could use a strong flashlamp to signal to Don, who would be circling wide. If Don saw the signal, and thus knew that Garry was ready, he would put out his flying lights. Then, dropping low, he would circle over the area Garry must reach.
With his own motive power so quiet, Garry could locate easily the sharp, intermittent periods of noise as Don alternately fed full-gun and gunned down. The noise, they knew, and Don’s low altitude, would fully occupy the attention of their quarry.
Don would hold his tight circle, climbing a trifle, gliding, keeping his motor alternately full-gun and still. Garry, creeping in through the most available channel offshoot, could locate the object of the ruse and then, surprising him, set off a self-igniting flare, attack, and at least hold the Demon, victim of the surprise, until Don could set down and help make his capture certain.
Everything went smoothly. Garry gave his signal. Don’s low flying lights winked to blackness.
Over the swamp, two hundred feet up, he cruised back toward some hidden adversary, menacing, terrible, watchful.
Swiftly, silently, Garry’s light motor impelled the “crash” launch up a channel which, with his alert ears guiding him, brought him closer and closer to the dark spot wherein, from the water level, he saw a weird sight.
Floating on a still, shallow pool, supported by its queerly designed pontoons, the helicopter was hardly visible in the shadowy eel grass: its horizontal blades, tilted by some device to a vertical line, made only a thin, invisible angle to the sky, although Garry, from his lower point of vantage, saw the outline against a starry background.
Intermittently, from the cockpit, and thus concealed and throwing its beam upward only, came the periodic flickers of a handkerchief-wrapped flash torch.
Its intermittent, dim glow illuminated the almost shapeless form and backward-thrown head of the Thing that never was, the Man Who Never Lived.