"You've picked the only branch worth a man's while," Cantor said, and Potter was conscious of wonder at the enthusiasm that flamed an instant in the man's voice. He had known Cantor well. Cantor had been about his hangar, yet the man had never shown an especial interest in aviation. "They've loaded me up with the notion that I've got to work," O'Mera said. "Maybe so, but I don't see why it shouldn't be about as easy to drive a 'plane as it is a car." Potter glanced sidewise at Cantor, saw his eyes were extraordinarily bright, his usually colorless cheeks were tinged with red. The wine was exhilarating him, stirring his blood to quickened movement and unleashing his tongue. Usually there was an air of reserve, the appearance of weighing each utterance, about him. It was not evident now. Potter set himself to listen. "You'll find enough to learn," Cantor said, and plunged into an explanation of what must be learned and how it must be gone about--an explanation that was thorough, interesting, full of expert information. Potter was astonished. He was something more than astonished, he was filled with a thrilling excitement, the excitement that comes to a man when he feels he is standing at the gate of some climax. Cantor was explaining such erudite matters as the tail-spin, the nose-dive, looping the loop, and how one gave his machine the spurious appearance of fluttering downward out of control--so to deceive an unwary adversary. He was very clear, very positive. No man, thought Potter, could talk like that who was not a master of the air, who had not been a super-skilled pilot.... What did it mean? Where had Cantor flown? Why had he concealed this ability? "They tell me," O'Mera said, "that we'll get the final touches in France or Italy or Egypt. I hope I go to France. Somehow flying in northern Italy, with Alps sticking up under one, doesn't sound attractive." "It's not bad," said Cantor, confidentially, "not really bad. Just fly high enough. What's the difference what's under you?" "You talk as if you flew over the Alps every morning before breakfast," said O'Mera, with a laugh. "I didn't know you had even been off the ground." "Did I say I had been, eh?" Cantor said, a trifle tipsily. "Did I say I was a flyer? Tell me that? No, I just told you _how_ to fly. Very different thing. Everybody knows _how_ to fly. Books are full of it. I could read it out of books, couldn't I?" "I suppose you could," said O'Mera, a bit belligerently, "but you didn't say that you did. What you said sounded as if you knew--like it was first hand." "Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't. What's the difference, anyhow?" He drained his glass and looked about for the waiter. "You wanted to be told, and I told you. And I told you _right_.... Who said I was ever up in the air?" O'Mera shrugged his shoulders. His Irish head was hard, and liquor had a way of battering against it futilely. "And who said I wasn't?" Cantor wanted to know. "Search me," said O'Mera.