changed,
softened, deepened to a mysterious shadowy expanse, with here and there
a brightness where the sun touched a hilltop.

"We better drop a little," Bland shouted. "I gotta keep my bearings!"

Swiftly the vague outlines sharpened. Groves and groves and groves
appeared beneath them. And small islands of twinkling stars, set in
patterns and squares, with here and there a splotch of brightness. And
single stars that had somehow strayed and lay twinkling, lost in the
great squares of dark green.

"We gotta make it before dark," Bland yelled. "I been away a year. I
need daylight--"

They gave her more gas, and Johnny became conscious of the motor's
voice. Eighty miles she was doing now, on a gentle incline that lifted
the earth a little nearer. The glory before them was deepening to ruby
red that glowed and darkened. Beneath the heaped radiance lay a sea of
stars--and beyond, a smooth floor of polished purple.

"There's Los Angeles--and over beyond is the ocean!" called Bland,
turning his head a little.

Johnny sucked in his breath and nodded, forgetting that Bland could not
see the motion.

"Gimme the control--I gotta pick out a landing! I'll head for
Inglewood. They's a big field--"

Inglewood meant nothing at all to Johnny, even had he heard the name
distinctly, which he did not. It cost him an effort to yield the
control, but he pulled hands and feet away and sat passive, breathing
quickly, gazing down at the wonders spread beneath him. For this was
his first amazed sight of Los Angeles, though he had twice passed
through the city in a train that clung to dingy streets and left him an
impression of grime and lumbering trucks and clanging street cars and
more grime, and Chinese signs painted on shacks, and slinking figures.

But this was a magic city spread beneath him. It glowed and twinkled
behind the thin veil of dusk. There seemed no end to the lights which
overflowed the lower slopes of the cupped hills at their right and
hesitated on the very brink of the purpling ocean before them.

Bland shut off the motor and they glided, the plane silent as a great
bat. The city disclosed houses, and streets down which lighted cars
seemed to be standing still, so much greater was the speed of the
Thunder Bird. They passed the thickest sprinkle of lights and headed
for dark slopes midway between the indrawing hills. Many pairs of
bright lights crawled along a narrow black pathway. Now the oce