Gockel Hot Sassy I

toward the port side of the gondola, Trotter said, “Easy, easy.”The sudden shift of Corky’s 170 pounds could cause the mini-blimp to the pilot compensated for this further shift of weight.As the airship steadied, Corky lowered his left hand from the gunwale to a ballast-tank bracket, then his right. The metal was cold and wet, but with his leather-and-nylon gloves, he got a firm grip.Peering down, he saw that his dangling feet were still eighteen or twenty inches from the roof.He dared not drop that far. Though he would most likely keep his [538] balance, he would wallow, perhaps even bobble, which was a risk they couldn’t take this close to the roof.While Corky moved slowly, balancing breast-down on the gunwale, one leg in and one leg out of the gondola, Trotter employed his own body as a counterweight, shifting starboard on his bench, and he used the controls to fine-tune the attitude of the vessel.The blimp wallowed but not dangerously.At a signal from Trotter, Corky slid the rest of the way out of the gondola, though he did not at once drop free of it. First he hung by both hands from the gunwale, while