The _Navion_ took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel. "Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter. "It's only air; nasty old air." The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened. "_Low?_ Call _this_ low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll _really_ get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the _Navion_ dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream. "Marty!" Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The _Navion_ went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal. And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings--there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!" The _Navion_ broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ... "Marty!" ... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you--?" he asked gently. She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm. "Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry." "Look," he told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I _can't_ get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while." Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. _Why_ do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."