I had my parachute folded in its neat, dry pack at my back; but Pete's was in the sea. If she struck us and smashed us, I might leap free; but Pete would drop like a plummet.
I dodged her, steering wider to the right; and with another swift, stabbing spurt's he flew for us. I put nose down and dodged; and nose down, and diving, she stabbed at me; but she nose-dived a hundredth of a second too late to strike. I was under her feet. No possible relic of doubt of her intent; none. She had tried to smash me. There was no use and I had no second of respite to wonder why. The fact completely engaged me.
For the moment, I had forgotten Pete in saving myself. Now I did not consciously in recollect him. I looked over the side and caught sight of his feet. There he was, still safe; but his feet were twisted. He had half turned, as he clung to the wing, and was looking back.
Behind us and below was the blue monoplane turning upside down as it went into a "loop." I could not now see the pilot; but an image of her, photographed in the split of a second when she had dived at me, developed in my mind. I saw her small, helmeted head, a hue of her hair on the pink of her cheek; goggles over her eyes; her grey gloved hands were on the controls.
She had arrested her descent, after having dived past me, by going into the "loop." Though it turned her upside down it was the quickest way to bring her plane about under me to follow me. Of course only a good pilot, with excellent nerves, could do it.
She flew below me, upside down, showing the blue undersurfaces of her wings as she followed me. I watched her; and had a moment for amazement. Against myself I argued that the pilot could not be the lovely girl who had spoken to us on the sea.
That blue monoplane, flying upside down, righted itself; it turned over, on the wing, and gave me good view of the pilot. I saw her slim shoulders, her slim arms, her grey gloved hands, her small, helmeted head. She never moved her head; she never looked up at me; but she began climbing, aimed at me. Climbing, she gained on me; she had the wings of us; she had the better plane.
I went to the left and for a few seconds my shift of direction seemed to escape her. Then, without looking up at all, she veered to the left in one of her queer, sudden stabs and climbed closer to me.
She seemed bent on striking at me from below.
The madness of such a purpose no longer denied it in my mind. I had to think of her as mad, that girl who had flown down to us on the sea and now, having drawn us fourteen thousand feet into the sky, attacked us. The sea, nearly three miles below and with the vessels veriest specks upon it, spread beneath me as a floor upon which I must fall. Sickeningly, it spread beneath me. It was a moment when the sensation of height, which a pilot learns to ignore, re-imposed itself upon me. My palms sweated cold; I could feel the sweat on the soles of my feet. Struck, as Selby and Kent had been struck, I would fall spinning, faster and faster each second; faster a thousand feet down; two thousand; a mile; yet another mile to fall, spinning; still another mile of nothing below.
I twisted my shoulders to feel the pack of the parachute. I might leap clear, as Pete had done. But he could not do it again; and neither Selby nor Kent had been able to, from a plane sent spinning.
I looked down at the girl. She was mad—and something more. It was at this moment, when she made a stabbing swerve to follow me, without looking up, that I began to feel the cold tingle of the sensation that mere madness was insufficient to explain her. I had encountered something more remarkable than mere madness in the sky.
I was flying, with full throttle, for the cloud ceiling. I was giving my engine all I had. For the clouds, with their layers of concealment, displayed the best chance of escape. I might dive and dodge; but Pete was on my wing, there was three miles of the clear below us to the floor. I preferred to race her for the ceiling; I went through and came out on the other side.
For a second I had the sky to myself; the ceiling was become a floor of soft, gleaming float through which suddenly shot the blue monoplane with the helmeted girl in the cockpit.
Then occurred the amazing, revealing thing. She was beside me but she paid no attention whatever to me. It was as if she did not see me, as if the thrust through the cloud had blinded her—or again completely changed her.
She flew past, making no strike at me; and, as I watched her, an idea like this ran in my head. She had been normal when she had been with us on the sea; it was after her dive through the clouds that she had altered and flown amuck. Had her return through the cloud restored her?
The change in her was as utter as that.
There she was flying off straight and evenly, as sanely as anyone. But now—now, in one of her short, ugly stabs, she banked and was about at me.
I dodged to the left; and at first she made no change in her course; then she stabbed to her right. I put about, watching her; and again, after a half second, she shifted so tardily that I avoided her easily and she passed us, looking neither to right nor to left. She never moved her head; she stared straight ahead.
I caught a glimpse of Pete's legs tense, twisted, more excited, even, than before. My eyes went to her and I saw her banking but never moving her head. How queer that motionless helmet! Then, less from what I actually witnessed in that flash than from a sudden culmination of memories of all the last minutes, I began to know what we were against.
It was no girl who had flown at me to knock me from the sky; it was no girl who had sent down Pete and had killed Selby and Kent yesterday and on the day before.
Nor was it a man, flying amuck, who piloted that plane. It was nothing human at all. It was an automaton. The pilot, goggled and helmeted and gauntleted, was in the image of a girl—indeed, in the image of the girl who had talked with us on the water—but the image was lifeless. It was of steel and wood and wax.
The pilot of that mad, blue monoplane was an effigy. It was nothing with heart or with mind; it was nothing of flesh and blood; it was nothing mortal. It was a mechanism.
Of course, I knew that a mind must direct it; but the mind was removed at a distance, controlling the monoplane by radio, endowing it with an immunity to consequences and with a mercilessness far beyond mere madness.