got unsteadily to my feet. In the blurred green darkness I could see that Jetta was not looking at me. Gutierrez held the mouth of the sack open. As though I were an upright log of wood, De Boer lifted me.
"Pull it up over his feet, Gutierrez."
The oblong sack was longer than my body. They drew it over me, and bunched its top over my head. And De Boer laid me none too gently on the floor.
"Lie still. Do you get enough air?"
"Yes."
The black fabric was sufficiently porous for me to breathe comfortably inside the sack.
"All right, Gutierrez, I have the gag."
I felt them carrying me from the control room, twenty feet or so along the corridor, where a door-porte opened to a small balcony runway hung beneath the forward wing. Jutting from it was a little take-off platform some six feet by twelve in size. It was here that the balloon-basket was to be boarded. The casket containing the ransom gold would be landed here, and the sack containing me placed in the car and cast loose. It was all within the area of invisibility of our flyer.
De Boer knelt over me, and drew back the top of the sack to expose my face.