He said: "I think so. The _volan_[12] out there is large enough for two. You'll trust yourself to it with me? You're not afraid, are you?"
[Footnote 12: A small winged board without power, used for emergency descents by volplaning down from disabled aeros.]
"Oh, no," she said. "What you say we must do, we will do."
"We must go higher, Maida. Then, you see...."
He told her his plans. And mounting up there into the silent canopy of stars, his fingers wound themselves into the soft strands of her hair which lay upon him; and his heart beat fast with the nearness of her.... Told her his plans, and she acquiesced.
Twenty thousand feet. The cold was upon them. Shivering himself, he wrapped her in a fur which the basket contained. At 25,000, they took to the _vol plan_. It was a padded board a dozen feet long and half as wide. Released, it shot downward; a hundred feet or more, with the heavens whirling soundlessly. Then Georg got the wings open; the descent was checked; the stars righted themselves above, and once again the earth was beneath.
They had strapped themselves to the board, and now Georg undid the thongs. Together they lay prone, side by side, with the narrow, double-banked wings beneath the line of their shoulders, and the rudder-tail behind them. Flexible 'planes and tail, responding to Georg's grip on the controls.
Fluttering, uncertain at first, like a huge bird of quivering wings, they began their incline descent. A spiral, then Georg opened it to a straight glide northward--rushing downward and onward through the starlight, in a wind of their own making which fluttered the light fabric of Maida's robe and tossed her waves of hair about her.
A long, silent glide, with only the rush of wind. It seemed hours, while the girl did not speak and Georg anxiously searched the sky ahead. Underneath them, the dark forests were slipping past; but inexorably coming upward. They were down to 5,000 feet; then Georg saw at last what he had hoped, prayed for, but almost despaired of. A beam of light to the northward--the spreading beam of an oncoming patrol. It was high overhead; but it came forward fast. A sweeping, keenly searching beam, and finally it struck them. Clung to them.