by Joan Clark
CHAPTER XII
QUICK ACTION
Against fluffy white clouds below a bright blue sky, an airplane spreadits graceful shape.
Down on the Rand-Elwin field a host of students and visitors watchedthat ship of the air. Its pilot was Hal Dane. For a space he cradledalong, a mere speck gently floating up there in the immensity of theether. Then like a mad thing his ship began to fall, rolling andtwisting and turning. At impossible angles it came to life, righteditself to spring upward--only to fall into worse dilemmas. Now he wasdiving, only two hundred feet above earth, and flying upside down. Onthe verge of crash, and in an agonizing slow roll, the ship slid backinto normal flying position. High again--then a dangerous glide over thedragging tops of trees, and only the climbing reversal of the Chandellesaving him from wreck. Young Dane began to fall into the most deadlyspin of them all, the whirling stall. He verged on that spin, yet neverquite permitted it to become a spin. Instead, he slipped and stalled andtrod the air until he fought his plane back into safety.
It might seem that young Dane was a daredevil fool risking both his neckand his plane in a useless show-off. But the group watching from theRand-Elwin field knew there was a purpose and a real reason behind everyone of these stunts. Hal Dane had been sent up to demonstrate that theRand-Elwin School prepared its flyers to face practically every knownemergency. Deliberately Hal Dane had forced his ship into spins andstalls that many a pilot would have come out of--in a casket and with alily in his hand. Instead, with the stored-up skill bought of splendidteaching and relentless practice, the boy rolled or whipped or glidedout of every danger.
Dropping out of freak flying into a series of long, swooping curves, Haldescended toward the field and made a landing so gently that he wouldhardly have jarred a glass of water on a dinner table.
Other flyers went up. There were planes all over the sky, outdoingthemselves in loops and spins and whirls.
This was a big day at the Rand-Elwin field. Colonel Bob Wiljohn, a manof immense wealth and interested in the future of aviation, was a guestof the school. As part owner in the Wiljohn Airplane factories, atAxion, he was acting as representative of his firm in a search for youngpilots of sufficient training and capability to handle their makes ofplanes as demonstrators. It was a compliment to an air school to have aman like Colonel Wiljohn inspect its student ranks in search of men forhis aviation program.
After lunch and an inspection of equipment, rooms and hangars, theColonel and his constant companion, his grandson Jacky Wiljohn, were outon the field again.
Colonel Wiljohn was a tall, muscular man, with a look of youth in hiskeen gray eyes despite the lines on his tanned face and his white hair.The type of man that kept young by his intense interest in big thingsand the future trend of affairs. Jacky, his grandson, was gettingaviation in the blood at an early age. The little fellow with hisclose-clipped hair and wide-open black eyes, must have been only five orthereabouts, yet he could speak familiarly of water-cooled engine, andstruts, and spar, and other lingo of aircraft.
The Colonel was not only a builder of planes, but also a flyer of somenote. It was natural that he should want to view the Rand-Elwin fieldfrom the air as well as from the ground.
Hal could see one of the big, new trimotors being trundled out for hisuse. A pilot in helmet and flying clothes warmed her up and slid underthe controls. Hal's eyes widened. It was Fuz--Fuz McGinnis that was totake her up. Some honor for the old boy! He'd liked to have been inFuz's boots himself. But Fuz deserved it; he was a crack airman, thatboy.
Colonel Wiljohn and Jacky, the youngster grinning happily over hisminiature aviation togs, were already aboard.
Down the runway came the plane, maneuvered some slight obstruction, thengathered speed and soared into the air like a great bird of the skies.
McGinnis must be on his mettle; he had achieved the rise full twohundred yards within the end of the runway. A brisk shout of admirationfollowed his take-off--then the shout died into a composite gasp ofdismay.
"The wheel--look!"
Just at the rise of the plane, the wheel on the left side had crumpledand now swung a useless, dangerous mass beneath the ship.
"Mercy on him," moaned Hal, "half his landing gear ruined! He's in for asmash!"
"Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred are against him," half-whisperedRex Raynor who was standing near, eyes glued on the beautiful planecircling so gracefully in the sky above.
Both he and Hal knew well enough what was likely to happen when theaviator came down to a landing with only one wheel to make the groundcontact. A crash, an overturn, a complete capsizing that would spell theend for the occupants. And that boy Jacky in there too, a young life tobe so horribly snuffed out.
None of the occupants of the ship were aware of what had happened. Theycircled serenely, while all unknown to them a death trap swung beneaththeir speeding plane. That slight obstruction on the runway must havecracked the gear, but the actual buckling of the wheel must not haveoccurred till the very moment of the take-off, and so had passedunnoticed.
For the throng of sightseers crowding the field, the dangle of brokengear had slight significance as to the terrible danger it presaged. Butevery student, pilot and mechanic knew what must eventuallyhappen--unless the aviator in the damaged ship could be warned!
On the ground, men rushed about, shouting, pointing to gear of othermachines, hoping to attract the attention of those in the air.
But for the flyers in the roaring ship, the shouts from far-away humanpin-points on the earth below must have been as mere whispers, asnothing at all. There was no sign that any of this ground commotion everreached the ship.
Other pilots began to rush out machines and warm them up, preparatory torising in the air to carry their warning shouts and pantomime withincloser range of the damaged sky ship.
Raynor was one of the first of these. Even as he raced his engine forthe take-off, Hal Dane shouted after him, "Wait--I'll be with you--giveme one second!"
With strength that he had hardly known was in him, the boy wrenched offthe whole metal-spoked wheel of a bicycle that leaned against a hangarwall. The next instant he had leaped to the cockpit, carrying thewrenched, wracked piece of machinery with him. With that broken wheel hehoped to pantomime, to talk in dumb show, and reach the doomed flyerswhere shouting failed.
To overtake them was the problem of the next moment.
The great trimotor had risen high in the air, and instead of circlingover the various sections of the Rand-Elwin field had zoomed off into asudden flight at a speed that would soon make it a diminishing speck onthe horizon.
Other planes darted after it, striving desperately to hang on to itstail, to keep some glimpse of it in eye. Once lost from view, the planewould be doomed--none to warn it--a crash in some landing field!
But the trimotor had speed, and the start. The diminishing speck becamean atom, became nothing--the vast universe of the sky swallowed it up.
Pursuit ships began to turn back. It looked too hopeless. None knewwhere the big ship was headed. With no track or clew to follow, even aslight deviation now at the beginning of the flight would lead them intoa diverging angle miles and miles away from the true course of thedamaged plane.
Raynor was among the few that held doggedly on. Because his boat was afast one, he was leaving the others. He plunged straight ahead in acourse he seemed to have set for himself from the beginning.
Once he called through the tube, "Clanton--commercial field--Wiljohnleft packet of papers there--must be going back for them--"
It was a desperate chance. Wiljohn might be going to any of a hundredplaces. Even if they sighted a ship and tailed it into Clanton, it mightprove to be any of the thousands of sky craft that filled the air thesedays.
Still it was the only clew they had. They could follow it blindly--thatwas all.
Twenty-three miles from the Rand-Elwin Field to Clanton! With its newerspeed and power, the bi
g ship could make it in say nine-tenths of theirown flying time. A mere fraction of time, a few moments out of alleternity! Yet those few moments could spell death to three unwarnedpassengers.
On the fringes of Clanton, Raynor overhauled a few leisurely flyingships from the commercial field. On ahead, and drifting back throughtheir hum, was another and more powerful sound of motors. That could bethe trimotor. If it were not, then their whole desperate race had beenin vain.
They were now pressing up towards that larger ship, whatever it was,that was leading them into Clanton. Its motors seemed to reduce ever soslightly--cutting in for the landing field, it must be.
Raynor was making it in with every ounce of speed, pushing forward,overhauling the big boat by faint degrees. He must make it now, catchher before the ground swoop, circle her to give the warning signals.
Hal, with a hurried call to the pilot, slipped the hearing tube fromunder his helmet, and began a swift clambering out on the plane wing.The thrill of the old circus stunt days was upon him. He felt the oldsurges of power and balance shoot through him as he wing-walked, went tothe very tip, carrying with him his signal of the broken bicycle wheel.
He must catch Fuz's attention. Colonel Wiljohn's, little Jacky'seven--make one of the three see him, sense the danger message he wouldpantomime. If necessary, he would climb aloft to upper wing space,circus-stunt there silhouetted against the sky,--anything to catch theeye!
Fuz his friend, this gray-haired grandfather, this child--any risk tosave them!
But as Hal prepared to climb struts to the plane top, he saw it was toolate. Time had passed for catching any eye by acrobatics now.
Like a meteor, the boy shot down the length of the plane wing, droppedback into the pit. In a frenzy, he shouted through the tube, "Risk itwith me--one chance--give me the control!"
It was a risk, in more ways than one. With an instructor from his flyingschool beside him, Hal Dane began to disobey orders, began a stunt thatmust mean the end of his flying certificate.
Already the trimotor was circling for the glide to landing--and todeath!
There was no time left to ride abreast, to wave, to make any signal forthe eye. But there was the ear, the hearing, still a last chance left totry. Even though Raynor's ship rode behind, it could send soundtraveling forward through the air. Would Fuz McGinnis catch that sound?
In an agony, Hal Dane cut the motor, speeded it. Cut, speed! Cut, speed!"T-t-t-tat t-tat t-tat!" The old code, the call!
Through the air, Hal sent wave after wave of sputtering sound, astaccato call, "S. O. S.--danger--keep flying!"
But McGinnis in the plane ahead seemed deaf to any sound save the roarof his own motor.
He was swooping low--and lower!