The man meant “business” and that might spell trouble for an amateur. Better far would it be to set down and see what came of it.
As he saw the roadway ribboned out straight ahead, with no headlights observable in either direction, Bob lifted the nose a trifle, adjusted the throttle until, with the road streaming backward under him, he saw it very gradually growing wider and clearer.
Almost perfectly he landed. Being a straight road he had lots of time to taxi, with his gun cut and his only care being to hold the ship on its wheels and not let a wing-tip scrape the asphalt.
To his surprise the other pilot did not land.
Instead he seemed to be circling at a very low altitude, not a hundred feet up, and with only bare flying speed, diving ten feet to catch up his speed and then climbing back to circle again.
“We can’t leave this crate standing on the highway,” Al called as soon as Bob had the engine running at idling speed. “Suppose a Sunday driver comes along at sixty miles an hour?”
“What else can we do?” Bob swung in his seat.
“That’s so. If we go up he’ll ride us down, and we might not make as good a landing—you might not, I mean.”
“Yonder comes a car!”
As Bob pointed, Al leaned out and stared.