birdman, Johnny strapped himself in, pulled down his goggles while
Bland eased in the motor. He saw Bland glance to right and left with
the old vigilance. He felt the testing of controls, the unconscious
tensing of nerves for the start. They raced down the calf pasture,
nosed upward and went whirring away from a dwindling earth, straight
toward the heart of the dawn.

It was like drinking of some heady wine that blurs one's troubles and
pushes them far down over the horizon. Johnny forgot that he had
problems to solve or worries that nagged at him incessantly. He forgot
that Mary V, away off there to the southwest, had probably cried
herself to sleep the night before because he had disappointed her. He
was flying up and away from all that. He was soaring free as a bird,
and the rush of a strong, clean wind was in his face. The roar of the
motor was a great, throbbing harmony in his ears. For a little while
the world would hold nothing else.

They were climbing, climbing, writing an invisible spiral in the air.
Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with
telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to
yield the control and to watch closely how the thing was done.

They swooped like a hawk that has seen a meadow mouse amongst the
grass. They climbed steeply, swung clean over, so that the earth was
oddly slipping past far above their heads; swung down, flattened out
and flew straight. It was glorious.

A second time Bland looped, and yet again. It was exactly as Johnny
had known it would be. He who had flown so long in his day-dreaming,
who had performed wonderful acrobatics in his imagination, felt the