But even from
the distant hangars it could be seen that something was wrong.

"Close the door, Paula," said Bell. He had seated himself at the
controls, and scanned the instruments closely.

This machine was heavy and large and massive. The boat-body between
the retractable wheels added weight to the structure, and when Bell
gave it the gun it seemed to pick up speed with an irritating
slowness, and to roll and lurch very heavily when it did begin to
approach flying speed. The run was long before the tail came up. It
was longer before the joltings lessened and the plane began to rise
slowly, with the solid steadiness that only a large and heavily loaded
plane can compass.

* * * * *

Up, and up.... Bell was three hundred feet high when he crossed the
hangars and saw tiny faces staring up at him. Some of the small
figures were pointing across the field. The big plane circled widely,
gaining altitude, and Bell gazed down. Ribiera was gesticulating
wildly, pointing upward to the soaring thing, shaking his fist at it,
and making imperious, frantic motions of command.

Bell took one quick glance all about the horizon. Toward the sea the
sun shone down brilliantly upon the city. Inland a broad white wall of
advancing rain moved toward the coastline. And Bell smiled frostily,
and flung the big ship into a dive and swooped down upon Ribiera as a
hawk might swoop at a chicken.

Ribiera saw the monster thing bearing down savagely, its motors
bellowing, its nose pointed directly at him. And there is absolutely
nothing more terrifying upon the earth than to see a plane diving upon
you with deadly intent. A panic that throws back to non-human
ancestors seizes upon a man. He feels the paralysis of those ancient
anthropoids who were preyed upon by dying races of winged monsters in
the past. That racial, atavistic terror seizes upon him.

Bell laughed, though it sounded more like a bark, as Ribiera flung
himself to the ground and screamed hoarsely when the plane seemed
about to pounce upon him. The shrill timbre of the shriek cut through
the roaring of the motors, even through the thick padding of the big
plane's cabin walls that reduced that roaring to a not intolerable
growl.

* * * * *

But the plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, and
climbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitated
hangars, and climbed above the hills behind