Above the floor of clouds, which had been our ceiling, another ceiling spread and I flew up to it, pursued by the effigy. I went through this ceiling and the effigy burst through after me, blind as before.
This time it remained blind; the control did not follow it up. He remained below and soon recalled the effigy. At least, the plane dived through the clouds, leaving me alone.
I skimmed over a crack in the ceiling, peering down. There was a blue monoplane with a living pilot; there was the monoplane of the mechanism. The pilot shepherded it upon his own level, five hundred feet below the ceiling. He sent the effigy a thousand feet ahead of him where he let it lead him as though on an invisible leash. They went away to the west.
I gazed about for bearings. Land was in sight. What land? I studied shore contours while I followed the monoplanes. There was the turnip-shaped bulge of Great Bay; there lay the straight key of Long Beach; there was Atlantic City. We had whirled to the north, as well as landward, in our manœuvering.
The pilot, with the effigy on its long, invisible leash, led to the right—to the north—of Atlantic City. No other airplane was in sight at this moment. The blue monoplane of the girl who was the original of the effigy, had vanished.
I realized that I had had no glimpse of her since she had flown into the ceiling at the moment before the effigy was discharged at me through the same clouds. Having played her part in the plan of this morning, she had gone home, I supposed. The control pilot, with his mechanical slave, must be headed for home. Whether or not he would have chosen to remain, stabbing at me with his mechanical slave, he could not. He had to have fuel.
My fuel gage was bobbing altogether too near "empty". And I had rested on the sea with engine stopped, for several minutes since I had left shore. The blue monoplanes must have left their station before Pete and I flew from ours; constantly they must have been in the air, burning fuel. Yes; beyond doubt they were forced to go home.
They led me over breakers and the beach. Forty seconds or three miles ahead of me they flew, cutting across the narrow neck of New Jersey toward the Delaware and Trenton. Inland they led me; so their landing place was on some lake or river or pond.
Slowly they stretched the space between us; they had the speed of me. Still I held them in sight, two specks over the horizon, throughout the ten minutes we took to cross New Jersey. On over Pennsylvania they flew.
Now I could scarcely see them. Probably they could not see me at all; for, since they flew northwest and I followed, the sun was behind me.
Suddenly they appeared more plainly to me; suddenly I succeeded in gaining upon them. The explanation was simple; they had reached their goal and were circling, preparatory to descent. So I rushed up on them, a mile nearer every twelve seconds.
I saw, then, a third speck rise above the ragged contour of hills and join them; a third plane was in the air, associating with them. The girl again?
I became able to see them not as specks but as monoplanes with wings and tail and pontoons—and pilots. The plane, which had arisen from some hole in the hills, closely accompanied one of the others.
Whether this one was the pilot plane or the slave machine, I could not see; for I could not distinguish them. I could keep the third airplane, newly arisen, separate from the other two; that was all.
The third plane put itself directly above the one which it had chosen for its attention; and, as I rushed up, I saw a speck, which was a man, descend from the upper airplane to the lower.
This told me which was the slave machine. It told me, too, that though the automaton, by radio direction, could fly and manœuver the monoplane, it could not make the delicate manipulations necessary for the landing; a living pilot must be put aboard. So the third airplane had risen with an extra pilot and transferred him in the air.
The monoplanes separated; all three descended and disappeared. I flew over the hole in the hills and discovered a little sparkling ellipse of a lake with a wide spread of green sward, with the parallelograms of gardens and roofs beside it. Scurrying upon the lake, like three pale blue water-bugs, were the seaplanes just descended.
I circled, looking over the edge and noticed Pete's legs again.
"Go down," they signalled to me. "Go down."
Go down was what I wanted to do; but before going down, I must reckon a bit. Once down upon that pond, beside the three blue water-bugs, it was exceedingly doubtful that ever I would rise again, except with the water-bugs consent.
In the sky over the sea, the business of two of those blue water-bugs—perhaps the busi—ness of all three, for the third might be the girl's—had been, this morning, an endeavor to destroy Pete and me. Follow them down?
"Down!" kicked Pete's legs at me.
I considered my fuel gage. Empty; empty, it warned me. My carburetor was not yet coughing from lack of gas; I had gas for a minute or two. But then I must make, whether I chose it or not, a forced landing. Where?
Where in the hills, except in the little lake of the three blue monoplanes, was water for my pontoons?
Down!
The girl of the grey eyes and the gentle voice, the girl of the brown hair and clear cheek, the girl of the slim, gauntleted hands who had spoken to us on the sea, she undoubtedly was below; she and her effigy.
I can not claim that, as I circled above the lake, any true clue to the meaning of the remarkable phenomenon of the effigy, came to me. Yet it was the fact of it which, more than anything else, drew me down.
In a moment, following a dive which suddenly magnified to exaggerated proportions the miniatures we had seen from the sky, we were levelling over the lake. My pontoons touched; spray flew. We were down.