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"We can't see the surface of the thing at all, Lucian," said Eyer. "I'll simply have to feel for it." "Well, you've done that before, too. We can manage all right." Down they dropped. The updraft was now a cushion directly under them. And then their wheels struck something solid. The plane moved forward a few feet with a strange sickening motion.

But the little man had not gained his intrepid reputation as a Telly cameraman without cause. He moved fast, both to get the small French machine gun into Joe's hands and to get himself into action as a cameraman. He snapped, "What's the situation?" Joe, circling, circling, praying the updraft wouldn't give out on him before it did on the others, on their opposite hill, said, "We weigh too much.

One of them fired at him at too great a range, and then both, realizing that they were dropping altitude too quickly and that soon Joe would be on their level, turned away and sought a new updraft. As they banked, their faces were clearly discernible. One raised a hand in mocking salute. "Look at that curd-loving Bob," Joe laughed grudgingly. "Here, let me have that gun."

They got the wind against their nose and started a humming dive, feeling in the alien updraft for the obstruction which caused it. Invisible Globe The buzzer of their radiophone was sounding, but so intent were they on this phenomenon they were facing, they paid it no heed.

"I need my equipment to get long-range shots, like when one of them crashes!" The little man was scanning the others through his view-finder, even as he argued, and shrugging out of his own jacket. The updraft gave out and the rate of climb meter began to register a drop. Joe swore and shot a glance at his opponents. Happily, they, too, had lost their currents, both were now heading for him.

"We could have gotten into a turbulent updraft and been carried to the upper, eastward winds. The altimeter was trying to keep up with the boat and just couldn't, half the time. We don't know where we went. I'll take Abe's estimate and let it go at that." "Well, we're up some kind of a fjord," Tom said. "I think it branches like a Y, and we're up the left branch, but I won't make a point of that."

On top of that, those are Maxim guns they've got mounted, not peashooters like this Chaut-Chaut." "That's your side of it," Freddy said, not unhappily. "I take care of the photography. Get closer, Joe. Get closer." Joe had found another light updraft and gained a few hundred feet, but so had the others. They circled, circled. His experience balanced their advantage of the lesser weight.

Joe knew that the plane pilot would later drop it over the airport where it could easily be retrieved. In the direction of Mount Overlook he could see cumulus clouds and the dark turbulence which meant strong updraft. He headed in that direction. Except for the whistling of wind, there is complete silence in a soaring glider.

Their eyes were alight, their lips in firm straight lines of resolve, as they dived down upon the invisible obstruction whatever it was from whose surface the telltale updraft came. It was Eyer who made the suggestion: "Let's measure it to see what its plane extent is." "How?" asked Jeter. "Measure it by following the wind disturbance. We travel in one direction until we lose it.

"Yeah, but suppose the current is going down?" "Then we avoid it. This sailplane only has a gliding angle ratio of one to twenty-five, but it's a workhorse with a payload of some four hundred pounds. A really high performance glider can have a ratio of as much as one to forty." Joe had found a strong updraft where a wind ran up the side of a mountain. He banked, went into a circling turn.