I shuddered. “Why, then, is not Hancock with us?” I asked.
“There are traditions of loyalty in his family,” answered Jones. “Hancock is queer. Now we go up. Hold fast.”
The scoutplane creaked and rocked and plunged like a ship in a gale as, foot by foot, he jerked her head into the higher air. The gleaming glow parallelograms of the battleplanes seemed to shoot downward as we soared above them. We had passed them when, like some black air monster, a large, dark plane glided beneath us. I felt our scoutplane thrill as she shot upward, so suddenly that she rose almost to the perpendicular, jerking us back against the uprights.
Jones was straining madly at the wheel, and I realized that the dark plane was in pursuit of us. I saw her swoop out of the night, missing us by a yard. She disappeared. I heard the divided air hiss as she approached again, and the next instant the blinding searchlight enveloped us, and a voice hailed us, piping thin through the frosty night. Then the light was astern, and groping impotently beneath us as we rose to a higher level. Jones strained at the vertical rudder, pushing the plane’s nose up and still upward, battling like a weather-beaten bird against the wind.
Again the searchlight found us, and then, out of the heart of it, turning the keen white glare to a baby pink that fringed it, there hissed a light ten times more brilliant, snapping and crackling, into the void. Jones veered, still mounting. The dazzling light flared out again. The upright that I held snapped in my hand. I slipped in my seat, but David reached out and held me.
Once more the Ray flash came, but under us. The darkness and our pilot’s courage had saved us. The searchlight groped far underneath. Our scoutplane dipped, soared, dipped, caught the wind, and we volplaned at furious speed for miles down a gradient of cushiony air.
I felt Elizabeth tremble, and placed my arms around her to hold her. Jones stayed the plane and clapped his numbed hands together, whistling through his teeth. He jerked his head around. The moon was beginning to rise; it was a little lighter, and I saw that his face was dripping wet.
“A thread of an escape!” he said. “If she had struck us fair with the Ray we’d have buckled up like paper. Snapped one upright, didn’t it?”
There was a cut of two inches in the steel—a clean cut, and the edges fused as if from fire.
“That was Hancock’s dispatchplane,” said Jones. “He carries no light. But—the voice didn’t sound like Hancock’s.”