removed the chocks from before the wheels, and the big ship started to move.

“We’re off!” Mary thought with a little choking sensation at her throat.

Sparky cursed some small, foreign plane that, taxiing across the field, caused him to swing sharply to the right.

“Looks like he did that on purpose,” said Mary.

“May have, at that,” was the reply. “There are some Hitler sympathizers down this way.

“Well,” he sighed ten seconds later. “I fooled him. Now the runway’s clear, so here we go.” The powerful motors roared in unison. They rose sharply toward the stars. Ten minutes later they were out over the blue-black sea and still slowly climbing.

“The sea is so black,” Mary thought. “The sky is all filled with night. Hours of this! How can I bear it?”

Then, as a sense of real joy, the feeling that must come to a night-flying bird, passed over her, she whispered, “But we’re rushing east to meet the dawn.”

“Get on your oxygen mask,” Sparky commanded, crashing into her dream. “We’re going up where there isn’t any weather and mighty little air.”

Their masks were attached by rubber tubes to pipes running from the oxygen storage tanks. When Mary had pulled on her mask she sighed, “Ah! That’s great! Isn’t it wonderful that they should mould our masks to fit our faces!”

“It’s a grand idea,” Sparky agreed, “but you’ll get tired enough of it before we greet that dawn of yours. We’re going up to twenty thousand feet and stay there for hours. We’ll make better time that way and there’ll be no bumps. You can even sleep if you want to.”

“Sleep!” Mary’s voice rose. “I’d never do that. Suppose you fell asleep, or—or something happened to you!”

“I never get sleepy and nothing ever happens.” Sparky settled back in his place. “Talk when you feel like it,” he drawled. “I like the sound of your voice.”

“Oh, you do,” Mary laughed.

They climbed to twenty thousand feet. It seemed to Mary that she could feel the intense cold creeping through their cabin’s walls and her four-inch-thick suit of wool, leather and fur. But this, she knew, was pure imagination.

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