The co-pilot fairly leaped into his right-hand seat, his safety belt
buckled in half a heartbeat.
"Check," he said in a new tone. "Where?"
The pilot pointed.
"I saw something dark," he said briefly, "where there was a deep dent in
the cloud."
The co-pilot threw a switch. Within seconds a new sound entered the
cabin. _Beep-beep-beep-beep._ They were thin squeaks, spaced a full
half-second apart, that rose to inaudibility in pitch in the fraction of
a second they lasted. The co-pilot snatched a hand phone from the wall
above his head and held it to his lips.
"Flight two-twenty calling," he said crisply. "Something's got a radar
on us. We saw it. Get a fix on us and come a-running. We're at eighteen
thousand and"--here the floor of the cabin tilted markedly--"now we're
climbing. Get a fix on us and come a-running. Over!"
He took the phone from his lips and said conversationally: "Radar's a
giveaway. This is no fly-way. You wouldn't think he'd take that much of
a chance, would you?"
Joe clenched his hands. The pilot did things to the levers on the column
between the two pilots' seats. He said curtly: "Arm the jatos."