That evening the planes seemed to be coming overhead in squadrons. Blade was careful to get well under cover, and when he started off the next morning he moved more cautiously than before.

It was a good thing he did. Just before noon he saw nearly a dozen planes diving on something only a few miles ahead. Then he heard a steady crashing of explosions. After a few minutes the explosions died away, the planes flew off, and several new flying machines came whirring in over the treetops. They looked like immense gleaming sausages with lift propellers in the wings and drive propellers in their high tails. When one of them hovered, then landed a mile ahead, Blade decided to get out of sight. He was at the base of a tree when he heard the soldiers approaching. By the time they came in sight he was thirty feet up, hard to pick out even if they'd thought of looking.

When the soldiers passed, he still wasn't completely sure he ought to try meeting them. They looked as if they were on a combat mission, they might be rather trigger-happy, and if they were they were carrying enough firepower to make themselves thoroughly deadly to Richard Blade. Slings and clubs against automatic rifles wasn't his idea of safe odds.

However, these soldiers didn't seem to have much idea of how to handle themselves in the woods. He could almost certainly follow them anywhere, without having to meet them if he didn't want to.

So he climbed down the tree and set off on the trail of the soldiers.

The soldiers not only moved noisily, they moved slowly. Blade's main problem at first was not overtaking them and being seen. After a while he realized that wasn't going to be much of a problem either. The soldiers' training hadn't included anything about how to move cross-country in hostile territory. They marched looking mostly ahead, occasionally to the side, never above or behind.