And there before them lay a figure in leather Vairking armor, a golden figure smiling up at them, little Quivven, whom they thought they had left behind.
“Yes,” she replied. “I usually accomplish what I set out to do. When you sent me away, I persuaded one of the guards to lend me his suit. Then I returned, helped with the loading, and hid myself while you and Doggo were writing notes to each other. But I nearly died of fright when you were turning me over and over, up there in the sky.”
Myles sighed resignedly. “I can’t send you back now,” he said, “though what I shall do with you in Cupia, the Builders only knows!”
So the three friends completed the preparations, and then sat down together for a meal.
It was too late to start their flight that day and, besides, a rest would do them all good; so they encamped for the remainder of the afternoon and the night.
The next morning, as the first faint flush of pink tinged the eastern sky, they took their farewell meal on Vairkingian soil. Then, swathed in tapestries and with goggles in place, they took their stations in the plane, and headed straight for the bank of steam.
As they passed within its clouds, all sight was blotted out.
They had decked the fusilage over like an Eskimo kayack, only Cabot’s well-wrapped head protruding. Within, Doggo manipulated the levers and watched the altimeter and gyro-compass by the light of a Vairking stone lamp; strange mingling of modernity and archaism. Cabot’s vigil was for the purpose of guarding against flying too high, and thus piercing the cloud envelope and exposing them to the fatal glare of the sun.
On and on they went. Cabot could see nothing. The hot vapor condensed on his wrappings, seeped through, and scalded his head and shoulders unbearably. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He pulled in his head and tore off the bandages. The relief was instantaneous. He seized the levers, and Doggo took his place at the opening.
But at last even Doggo succumbed. Having braved the heat too long, he collapsed weakly on the floor of the cockpit.
“It’s my turn,” Quivven shouted, above the noise of the motors. “Now aren’t you glad you brought me along?”
And in spite of Cabot’s remonstrances, she swathed her golden head and stuck it through the opening.