rack at thebase of the tower, and Danny had no wish to hear the roar of thatcylinder's stern exhaust for a time.
Even the novelty of flying the newest rocket-ship in the service hadworn off. Besides, he had patrolled his route, and he told himselfthat the "Infant" needed a rest.
The "Infant," better known on the records of the A. F. F. as Morgan,David E., Lookout, Station 39-G, was sleeping soundly on the elevatingtable where a map of the district was mounted under glass. Hischerubic face was pink and white, more suggestive of the age of threethan of twenty-three. And O'Rourke, glancing at him protectingly, hungup a paper to keep the sunlight from striking the young man's face.
The Infant had been Danny's special charge from the day he entered theservice, and now, except for the Chief and some other officials, onlyDanny knew that the Infant was there to teach and not to learn. Forbehind those eyes that might have been taken from one of Rafael'scherubim lay a brain that Danny had learned to respect.
"Fifteen minutes more. I'm givin' you," he said inaudibly; "then I'llbe on my way, and you'll do your own squintin' and peekin'." But theInfant's fifteen minutes were cut to that many seconds--
Danny had been looking toward the south before he had turned to gazeat the Infant: his eyes came back to the same point to take up theirreconnaissance. But now, where clear sky had made a blue back-drop forrugged peaks, was a line of black. And the line, while Danny watchedin disbelief, moved like a smoky serpent: its head stretched out andout while from behind it there came the ominous line of black.
* * * * *
All this happened in a matter of seconds, and the moving head ceasedat last to move; the line no longer grew. But, where it had been atfirst a thin mark of black, it changed now to billowing gray.
It was fifty miles away at least; but it showed clear and sharp. Andthe first gray had hardly bloomed from its black beginning before thelong arm of Danny O'Rourke had swept the sleeping Infant to the floor,while, with the other hand, he swung an instrument of telescopicsights upon distant smoke.
He set it in careful focus--took a reading for distance--another fordirection--and while he was doing it he was vaguely conscious of onesingle sharp flash in the sky above that far-off cloud. In hisrange-finder it showed once, like a glittering star; then it vanished,but the trained eye of O'Rourke observed its passage like a ray oflight overhead.
The pink-faced youngster on the floor was still protesting sleepilywhen O'Rourke slammed down a switch and heard a voice answer promptlyfrom an instrument on the wall. Danny shouted out his bearings on thefire:
"Thirty-nine-G! O'Rourke speaking for Morgan. Reporting fire on a widefront--bearing Two-O-Seven to Two-Four-Nine! And for God's sake,Chief, get a line on this quick. The whole thing shot up in asecond--fifty miles of fire!"
Another voice broke in excitedly. "StationFourteen-Fourteen-Fourteen!" The voice was stammering in evidentconfusion. "The whole earth has exploded--it's on fire now! I--I--"
The Chief's voice broke in with a quiet, "Bearing, please! Report yourbearing, Fourteen!"
And the stammering voice steadied to give a figure.
"Headquarters speaking," said the quiet voice. "Orders for O'Rourke.For the love of Pete, get on that fire, Danny. Every instrument in theoffice is chattering. Every patrol ship has spotted that blaze. Youcan't all be crazy. It's in Section Eight--never mind the exactbearings--you'll find it without any trouble I imagine. Now beat it!And let me know what kind of a fire this is that starts on afifty-mile front! You're in charge till I come."
* * * * *
Ten seconds later, had the Infant been watching, which he had not--forhis eyes were all on the distant smoke--he would have seen thebeautiful curving sweep of a scarlet projectile, whose screamingpropeller swept her off and up; he would then have seen it lie backflat as the great stern exhaust made a rocket of the ship to send itroaring into the heights.
And in the air-tight cabin of the newest fire-fighting machine of theA. F. F., Danny O'Rourke pulled his body out of the slumped positioninto which his quick acceleration had forced him; then set his ship onher course to where a distant smoke made puffballs of gray against acloudless sky. And, like his Chief, he was wondering with a wondermentthat bordered upon disbelief what manner of fire this was that shotlike a fifty-mile serpent across mountains and valleys.
He was over it in less than ten minutes, flying high to clear the tinydots slipping swiftly across his view-finder. They were otherfirecraft; he saw them darting in and down from all sides. Forhimself, he took the line of smoke at its western end where it hadbegun. Here it would be at its worst, perhaps, although no reportswere in as yet.
The radio had been bringing in messages unceasingly as patrols andfirecraft answered the call. Some nearer than himself were reportingthemselves "on the fire"; he saw them grouped in the usual echelonformation up to windward of the blaze. They darted down and in as helooked, and Danny thrilled at the sight which had never yet failed toreach the core of his emotional Irish nature.
The smoke and fire swallowed them up; their red bodies and short blackwings drove unswervingly into the holocaust of flame.
"Like a bunch o' bats out o' hell!" said Danny admiringly. "And 'tishell they're goin' into!" Which fact there was none to dispute withDanny O'Rourke who knew, if any man did, the full truth of the remark.
* * * * *
He saw them as they struck the fire; saw the whirling blast of snowthat drove under them as they went into the fight with the wildestenemy of man; and he knew that a smothering blanket of carbon dioxidewas driving with hurricane force upon the flames.
On the instrument at his side flashed the "Ascend!" order of thesquadron commander, and an instant later the flight reappeared a halfmile away.
The commander must have sighted O'Rourke's ship. "Shall we repeat oversame course?" the instrument spelled out, while Danny, circling above,watched the effects of the drive.
It had checked the flames, that first blast of the CO_2 squadron; hesaw blackened, jagged trees where a roaring furnace had been. But theflames were building up again. "Repeat!" O'Rourke answered; thenwatched them drive in again.
From a wooded valley beyond a low range came a call for help. A loneship in the red and black of the service had driven down into thatvalley that was like a cauldron of seething flame.
"I can't touch it!" a thin voice said. "The up-draft kills my blast."
Danny O'Rourke was sending out another call. The answer came frompowerful sending instruments.
"Nitro squadron Hundred and One, on the fire!" it said, and gave aposition in quick figures. Danny's own voice transmitter was on. Hesnapped out the position of the lone fighter. "Get in there!" heordered; "Show your stuff! No--wait! Follow me; I'll lead you in!"
And to himself he added: "Now we'll see what pure nitrogen will do ina real scrap."
He closed a switch, and from a compartment at his back a low whinerose and grew to a scream. It was echoed in a shriek more shrill fromthe bow where a port had opened to take in the air. And Danny knewthat that air, of which eighty percent was nitrogen, was being rid ofits oxygen in the retort at his back, and the nitrogen alone waspouring out beneath him in a tremendous and ceaseless blast.
The squadron had appeared--a row of dots that came in on a longslanting drive from the ten thousand level. They swung into faultlessformation to "ride his tail" into whatever flaming breath he mightlead. And Danny O'Rourke threw his red ship down and into the valleythat seethed with a brew from the Pit itself.
* * * * *
There had been pines in that valley, and firs towering hundreds offeet in the air. They were living torches now, half seen through awhirling chaos of flame. It billowed as if the very gases that burnedwere tortured in the burning. The black-red of smoke-choked flamesparted at times to show a deadlier white light below--a white, glaringheat in the heart of this gigantic, furnace--a scintillant, quiveringhorror
on which Danny fixed the cross hairs of his sights as he rodehis screaming meteor down into the pit.
"Bats out o' hell!" And now the brood was returning, it must haveseemed. But beneath them, as they passed, that vivid whiteness wentdead. Yet before it changed Danny saw unbelievable things--pools ofmolten rock, glaring white through the smoke.
Up and out at the end of the valley! And Danny gasped for breath evenin the shelter of his cabin's insulated walls. And, used as he was tothe red menace that they fought, he went sick at sight of a messagethat spelled itself beside his controls.
"Ship number six down. Failed to come out." It was signed with thename of the squadron commander who had followed where he
The Hammer of Thor Page 2