e routine orders to Hans. And he gestured to
Gutierrez. The movements and acts of everyone had been definitely
planned. And this, too, Jetta and I had anticipated.

"Time to make him ready, Gutierrez. Bring the sack in here. I'll
fasten him away."

I was not garbed like the others. They could move out on the wing
runway under Hanley's eyes at short range, or climb in and out of the
balloon car, and not be visible.

Gutierrez brought the sack. A dead-black fabric.

"Shall I cut him loose now from his chair, Commander?"

"I'll do it."

De Boer drew a long knife blade, coated black, and thin and sharp as a
half-length rapier. Gutierrez had one of similar fashion. No
electronic weapons were in evidence, probably because the hiss of one
fired would have been too loud for our barrage, and its flash too
bright. But a knife thrust is dark and silent!

The Spaniard's eyes were gleaming as he approached me with the bag,
as though he were thinking of that silent knife thrust he would give
me at the last.

Dr. Boer said, "Stand up, Grant." He cut the fastenings that held me
in my chair. But my ankles and wrists remained tied.

"Stand up, can't you?"

"Yes."

* * * * *

I got unsteadily to my feet. In the blurred green darkness I could see
that Jetta was not looking at me. Gutierrez held the mouth of the sack
open. As though I were an upright log of wood, De Boer lifted me.

"Pull it up over his feet, Gutierrez."

The oblong sack was longer than my body. They drew it over me, and
bunched its top over my head. And De Boer laid me none too gently on
the floor.

"Lie still. Do you get enough air?"

"Yes."

The black fabric was sufficiently porous for me to breathe comfortably
inside the sack.

"All right, Gutierrez, I have the gag."

I felt them carrying me from the control room, twenty feet or so along
the corridor, where a door-porte opened to a small balcony runway hung
beneath the forward wing. Jutting from it was a little take-off
platform some six feet by twelve in size. It was here that the
balloon-basket was to be boarded. The casket containing the ransom
gold would be landed here, and the sack containing me placed in the
car and cast loose. It was all within the area of invisibility of our
flyer.

De Boer knelt over me, and drew back the top of the sack to expose my
face.

"A little gag for you, Grant, so you will not be tempted to call out."

"I won't do that."