Hank thanked her, bowed, and went to his suite to pack. Lamblo entered just as he had finished. She wrapped his waist with her arms and pressed one side of her face against his stomach.
"Oh, Hank, I have a terrible feeling about this trip. A premonition of death. I won't ever see you again!"
Tears wet his shirt. He lifted her up and kissed her.
"Don't worry. Premonitions mean nothing. I'll be fine."
He sat down on the bed and put her on his lap.
"I'll be gone about nine or ten days. You'll just have to control your randiness until I get back."
"It's not that!" she cried. "You know it's not! I love you, Hank!"
He planted a smacker on top of her blonde hair. He smelled fresh air and a very faint odor of violets. She was beautiful and lots of fun and a great bed partner and exuded outgoingness and courage. He was very fond of her, but he did not love her. Still, in a sense, he did love her. And so he was not wholly lying when he said, "I love you, too."
She got off his lap and turned to look up at him. Those blue eyes were so full of love and trust that he felt guilty.
"Enough to marry me?" she said.
Now was no time to hesitate.
"Sure," he said.
Why not? He would never have Glinda, and he was not certain that, if he did, he would like it. On the other hand—life was so otherhanded and underhanded, too—was he a coward? Afraid to hurt her by saying that he did not love her? When she would be hurt much more later on if things soured between them or he regretted having this impulse?
"Sure," he said again, smiling. He had thought of a good reason to delay any wedding.
"Sure. I'd marry you. But, Lamblo, what if I'm faced with having to choose between the Quadlings and my own people? I mean... I don't know what's going to happen. For all I know, there may be war, my country might invade this world. Just to keep your people from invading, I'm sure."
But he was not so sure.
"Your world is an unknown quantity. The Army officials will be afraid that Amariiki might be a danger to the United States. To our whole world."
Lamblo had backed away from him. She said, "But your people will find out that we're no threat to them at all. We're not, you know, and you'll tell them that."
"They might not believe me. Anyway, they won't quit trying to get here. They know this world is here, and just because it is, and because they've never been here, they'll come. They have to. It's true that, as of now, no other government knows about this world. But some other nation might find how to open the way. If this happens, then the government of that country will try to get here. My government knows this. They'll want to be the first here."
"And you'll help them do it?"
"Well, I really don't know. It's my patriotic duty. Still..."
"Glinda has told the counsellors what might happen if more Earthpeople come here. It would be terrible! Ghastly! Surely, Hank, you have a higher duty! A duty to humanity! You're not some tribal savage who thinks only of his little group and everybody else can go jump off the edge of the world!"
Hank sighed, and he stood up.
"I'm late now. I have to go now. We'll talk about this when I come back."
A minute later, he was on his way to the hangar. He felt unhappy. He knew that, when he got back, he'd be confronted with the same situation. What would he do then?
He had no idea. However, he could think a lot about it while he was gone. If he had any time to do so.
When he got to the hangar, he found his passengers and Glinda there. He was irked. Glinda had come down to see the two rulers off but had not bothered when he had left for the first trip. After all, wasn't he the ambassador from Earth to Oz? He did not apologize for being late. He put his carpetbag in the storage compartment, and he said, "All's ready. Let's go—"
While Glinda embraced the kings, he went to the front of the plane and spoke in a low voice into Jenny's left ear.
"I changed my mind about you doing the piloting. I mean, I'll let you do it under certain circumstances. Just now, as a test, I want you to turn on the motor, taxi out, and take off. When we land at the first station, I'll teach you some simple signals for use while we're in the air. Later, we should be able to work out a more complicated system."
"May I ask why you changed your mind?" the airplane said.
"Sure. I was letting my pride override my sense of reality."
"What does that mean?"
"I'll explain some other time. Glinda is fidgeting. We'd better take off before the Queen of Hearts has my head chopped off."
"What?"
"Never mind."
The royal band was blaring nearby. Hank could barely hear himself now. He gestured at the two rulers, and they left Glinda and hurried towards him, one of them too stiff in his movements and the other too flexible. Hank helped them get into the rear cockpit. He had transferred the joystick to the front cockpit because he could only operate the machine guns from that position. Two of the hawks got in with Their Majesties, and the other, Listiig, flew to the front seat. Hank got in, waited until the mechanic had put ether in the carburetor, and then yelled, "Contact!"
Despite the band's noise, Jenny heard him. While Hank restrained the impulse to turn on the ignition and to keep his hands and feet off the controls, the propeller began turning slowly. The engine whined, then roared. Hank looked at Glinda and smiled. The wind from the propeller was unravelling her auburn hair and blowing her skirt up to her crotch. She was not trying to keep the skirt down; three centuries had made her indifferent to any code of modesty except her own.
After warmup, Hank checked the water temperature, oil pressure, and tach rate. Then Hank gave the signal for the mechanics to pull the chocks from the wheels. The plane began moving, left the hangar, and headed toward the northwest corner. Apparently, Jenny knew the direction of the wind by looking at the windsocket or she could detect it by her sensory system.
Hank felt uneasy, but he clamped down on his strong desire to take over the controls. Jenny taxied perfectly, did as well as he could, turned, faced into the wind, then began moving forward. Hank, fascinated, watched the stick and pedals move. Were they doing this because Jenny moved them, as he would have done, or did she move the rudder and ailerons first and the cockpit controls followed? He would have to ask her.
The takeoff was fine. When the altimeter registered a thousand feet, he knocked hard twice on the instrument panel. Jenny dipped the left wing in acknowledgment.
Hank had ordered Jenny to level off at three thousand feet altitude. She did so, and he wondered how she knew when she was at that point. Did she have some means of reading the altimeter?
He kept his eye on the indicator instruments and the landmarks for a while, then talked with his hawk-navigator. Hank had memorized the landmarks the first time around, but he asked Listiig about them. It would give the hawk a sense of importance or at least of usefulness.
After a while, Hank said, "There is much I don't understand about this world, of course. I was wondering, for instance, why Ot became dispossessed?"
Listiig, standing on his left shoulder, her talons digging into the leather jacket, the wind ruffling her feathers, screamed in his ear. "I heard about the mind-spirits attacking the flying machine! It's obvious what happened! One of them tried to take Ot over! It ousted the one that possessed her but failed to get into her!"
Hank grimaced with disgust. This was no explanation.
"No, I mean, just what is a mind-spirit or firefox?"
"Why, it's a spirit of the dead that has been cleansed of its sins and is sent out to live again in a body! Or it's an evil spirit that escaped from the Faroff Land and tries to take over a body!"
"Sure," Hank said. Apparently, all he was going to get was a religious explanation. Which was none at all. "Do you belong to a church?" he said.