'Thank you, sir.'
She smiled at him again and stretched her arms lazily. Mark swung his legs to the floor and sat up, looking out into the hot sunshine across the shimmering water. Both of them felt that it was time to make a move, but the day did not encourage activity.
'What shall we do?' he asked her.
'I don't know. You suggest something.'
Mark reflected. The tennis courts were not far away, but they would be simmering like hot-plates on such a day. There was the swimming pool; or they might go a little way up the coast and bathe, or . . .
'What about the New Sea? We've neither of us seen that yet.'
She turned, surprised.
'But it's ever so far from here—right beyond the mountains. Three or four hundred miles. Even in a plane-'
'In an ordinary plane it would take some time,' he agreed, 'but not in my Sun Bird. You wait till I show you. It's just an afternoon jaunt for a rocket plane.'
'A rocket plane? Like the new American mail carriers?'
'Well, hardly as big as all that, but she is a rocket plane. There aren't many of them about yet, but there will be soon: they're the coming thing, not a doubt of it.'
The girl looked doubtful.
'But are they quite safe?'
'The Sun Bird's taken me safely enough all round the continent and brought me across here. Besides, do you think I'd suggest your going in her if she weren't the safest thing in the skies? You wait till you see her. Hurry up and change, then I'll show you.'
Margaret Lawn made her way obediently towards the lift. The business of changing she performed almost automatically, using her mirror with an unwonted perfunc-toriness. Her holiday was progressing in an expected and yet in an unexpected manner. Mark, for instance, had not been entirely unexpected—not that she had ever seen or even heard of him before, but the occasion was bound to provide a playmate of some kind. He might have been called Tom or Dick or Harry: he happened to be called Mark. Nevertheless, the state of affairs at present was not quite as she had foreseen. Events were not proceeding quite according to the course plotted for them. She had a sensation as though she were trying to steer a car with a wheel which had too much play. One got along without accidents, but there was an unwonted breathlessness, an unusual lack of assurance. More disturbing she found the growing conviction that she did not want to steer, and that it no longer amused her to apply the manoeuvring skill which she had displayed on previous occasions. This was the more irritating in that there was nothing striking about Mark to account for it. He was really a perfectly ordinary young man, and Margaret, like many another, had not felt that she was destined to fall in love with an ordinary young man. And yet it was happening—had happened. She was irritable with herself. She, Margaret Lawn, who had hitherto with justification considered herself reliable, capable, and a mistress of difficult situations, was undergoing an unwilling change; realising, with feeble protest, that she quite incredibly wanted to hand over the controls. Changing, full in the face of all her principles, from an active to a passive: and, worse still, half enjoying the change.
It did not take her long to slip off her light frock and put on more serviceable clothes. In general—that is, apart from present emotional uncertainties—she was a young woman who knew her own mind and disdained the more elementary tricks. Her reappearance on the balcony was made with little delay.
'Will it do?' she asked.
Mark rose from his chair and looked at her neat white riding suit with approval.
'My dear, it couldn't be better. Even if it wouldn't do, it suits you far too well for me to say so.'
They took a taxi to the aerodrome where Mark's orders for his machine to be wheeled out set the mechanics bustling.
Rocket-propelled planes were still such a novelty that his was the first to be seen in Algiers. A few were in experimental service upon the mail routes, but the general public knew them only from photographs. A privately owned stratosphere rocket was all but unique upon the eastern side of the Atlantic, and as she was drawn clear of the hangar most of the ground staff within sight hurried to lend interested assistance.
'And that's your Sun Bird}' Margaret said, watching the attendants trundle the little plane into the sunlight.
Mark nodded. 'How do you like her? Looks a bit quaint at first sight, I'll admit.'
'I think she's lovely,' the girl answered, without moving her gaze from the glittering silver shape.
The Sun Bird's proportions differed noticeably from those of propeller-driven aircraft. Her fuselage was wider and decidedly shorter, and the wings stubbier and broader. Two windows were set right in the nose and others well forward in the sides. Despite the unfamiliar shape caused chiefly by new problems of weight distribution, there was no effect of squatness: she looked what she was, a compact little bundle of power, as different from the ordinary plane as a bumble bee from a seagull.
Mark made a short investigation—somehow he never managed to feel as easy about foreign mechanics as he did about the home variety—but he found no cause for complaint. The fuel tanks were full and all the necessary adjustments had been faithfully made. He unlocked the cabin door and slid into the driving seat, beckoning the girl in beside him. She followed and looked round with interest. The two seats were set side by side right in the nose. In the small cabin was room for more seats behind them, but either these had never been fixed, or Mark had had them removed. Against the sides was a series of lockers and cupboards, and to metal staples set in the floor and walls were attached straps for the purpose of securing any loose baggage.
Mark was shouting final instructions to the ground staff, warning them to stand well clear unless they wished to be grilled. Then he slammed the door, cutting off all sound from the outer world. He advised Margaret to lean her head against the padded rest behind her seat.
'The acceleration's a bit fierce when we take off,' he explained.
She leaned back obediently, and he looked out of the window to make certain that the men had taken his advice to heart.
'Right. Here we go then.'
He gripped the stick with one hand, and with the other advanced a small lever set in the left arm of his seat. A roaring drone broke out: a cluster of fiery daggers stabbed from the bunch of rocket ports in the tail. The whole sturdy little ship shuddered and jumped. Then she was off, hurtling across the field, spitting flames behind her. Margaret felt as if a great invisible weight were pressing her back into her seat.
Suddenly the Sun Bird seemed to leap from the ground. Nose up, she soared, climbing into the blue African sky at an angle which caused the watching ground staff's jaws to drop. For a few minutes she was visible as a glitter of steel and a flash of fire in the heavens, then she was gone, leaving only a trail of smoke to show her path.
The chief mechanic shook his head; the Sun Bird struck him as being a bit too new-fangled, he felt no temptation to ride on a roaring rocket. His comrades were agreeing among themselves that her climb was magni-fique, but that the din of her discharge was epouvantable.
Mark flattened out at twenty-one thousand feet and turned the nose to the south-east. He smiled at the girl.
'Like it?'
'It certainly is the last word in lifts, but I'm not quite sure that I really like it. I'm not frightened, but—well, it is a bit breath-taking at first, isn't it?'
'You soon get used to that.'
They had to raise their voices only slightly, for the makers had lined the hull with an efficient sound-deadening material, and the windows consisted of double sheets of non-splintering glass with a semi-vacuum between. The result was to reduce the roar of the rocket discharges to no more than a constant, muffled drone.