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And presently the big patrol vessel was almost above them. It hung there, a dark winged shape dotted with colored lights. A signal flash a sharp command to Georg, but, of course, he could not answer. Then the Director's finder picked him out. The volan was fluttering, spiralling slowly as Georg struggled to hold his place. And then the patrol launched its tender. It came darting down like a wasp.
It had an airlock. More, it carried a cargo of solid-fuel rockets which could be shifted to firing racks outside its hull. Starting from the platform, where it had no effective weight, it was capable of direct descent to the Earth without spiralling or atmospheric braking. To make that descent it would, obviously, expend four-fifths of its loaded weight in rockets.
Below us the Shining One had paused spiralling, swirling, vibrant with all its transcendent, devilish beauty; had paused and was contemplating us.
He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out, while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations of dizziness, of nausea, and of a spiralling fall to nothingness. Then there was silence. The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a preposterous number of times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely solid, absolutely firm and fixed.
The chatter of a squirrel high up somewhere in the branches of an oak, recalled him to his wits. Down came spiralling a few bits of bark and acorn-shell, quite in the old familiar way. Farther off among the woods, a robin's throaty morning notes drifted to him on the odorous breeze. A wren, surprisingly tame, chippered busily. It hopped about, not ten feet from him, entirely fearless.
The ancient stone stair, spiralling up round the time-worn pillar that seemed to have no beginning or end, gave at intervals on to doors which looked like apertures in a cliff. Through one of these he turned and at the end of a brief passage came to his sister's sitting room. In that mediæval setting of ponderous stone, it looked almost fantastic in its daintiness.
He had intended making a hazardous landing beyond the rebel lines and returning afoot to try and rescue Jack. But this newest development in the situation caused him to open the motor and start to spiralling upward. Meantime, what of Jack.
The Floriot rolled easily forward, speeded up, and gathered headway. Gabriel suddenly rotated the rising-plane. The great gull soared, careened and took the air with majestic power. The watchers on the mountain-side saw its hooded lights, that glowed upon its compass and barometric-gauge, slowly spiralling upward, ever upward, as Gabriel climbed with his two passengers.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam.
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