by Max Hennessy
‘Sounds as though I ring ’em up on a cash register,’ Ira commented.
Sammy had just rolled back in his chair, hooting with contemptuous laughter, when the telephone rang. Courtney’s voice came over the wire, cautious and hesitant. Like Sammy he seemed to be suffering from the previous night’s entertainment.
‘Ira,’ he began, ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. You’ll remember there were a lot of my business friends at the party last night.’
Ira’s eyes met Sammy’s across the desk. ‘I met a few,’ he agreed, wondering what was coming.
‘They raised an interesting point, Ira. If anything happened to you on this flight, it’d get a hell of a lot of publicity. It might even look like a lack of preparedness and that’d take a lot of living down.’
‘Who by, Felton?’ Remembering Boyle’s words, Ira couldn’t resist the sarcasm. ‘You, in your office? Or me, floating about face-down in the Atlantic?’
Courtney appeared not to have noticed. ‘People who put money into business expect results, not failure, Ira,’ he said. ‘When we have success, it has to be seen as success, and when we have failure, that has to be seen as success, too. I’ve learned to back both sides of the coin. If you succeed, all well and good, but if you fail, I want to make sure you’ll be safe.’
Ira drew a deep breath. ‘Felton,’ he said. ‘What the hell are you getting at?’
Courtney paused and Ira guessed he was transferring his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
‘What safety devices are you carrying, Ira?’ he asked.
‘Very lights, smoke bombs and a twelve-pound two-man raft developed by Byrd.’
There was another long pause, then Courtney’s voice came again. ‘You figure that’s enough, Ira?’
‘We talked it over carefully. That’s as much extra weight as we can carry.’
‘It still isn’t much. You ought to have more than that.’
‘We pared it down to the limit.’ Ira was beginning to grow suspicious now. ‘The whole enterprise rests on how light we can keep the aeroplane.’
Courtney wasn’t finished. ‘You thought about a radio, Ira?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re too heavy. And, Felton, I don’t want radios. It’s petrol I want.’
‘Fred Loerner came up with a newspaper story about a guy who’s invented a lightweight one. Couldn’t we get you one?’
‘I’d like to see it first.’
‘Ira’ – Courtney sounded worried – ‘we’ve been offered dough to use parachutes and life rafts and a few other things.’
‘Like radio?’ Ira said.
‘Well, yes, I guess so.’
Ira drew a deep breath. ‘Listen, Felton, we worked out all this long since. You know we did. We know just what we can carry. With anything extra and a full load of petrol, we’d never get off. My answer’s simple. It’s “no”.’
‘Ira…’
Ira was beginning to grow angry. ‘We knew in Medway what we wanted, Felton,’ he said. ‘And that’s as much as we want. All these other things will make her too heavy. Either we risk our lives with too little or we risk them with too much. Take your pick. Insist, and we’ll be taking your aeroplane off through the wall of the hangar at the end of the field and that’ll be that.’
There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone, then Courtney’s voice came again, dubious and worried, ‘OK, Ira,’ he said unwillingly, ‘I guess you’re the boss.’ Putting down the telephone Ira picked up the file in which they kept all the progress and maintenance sheets and slammed it to the desk in a fury. No one in the office said anything, then Sammy began to light a cigarette.
‘Big Chief Penaluna has spoken,’ he said dryly.
They were still staring at each other when the telephone rang again. His eyes on Ira, Sammy picked it up, listening for a while, then he held it out. ‘For you, Ira,’ he said.
It was Loerner. ‘Hello there, Captain,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some news for you. I thought it might interest you. I’ve just been in the agency offices with the story of last night’s shindig. They were all hoppin’ around like fleas on a mad dog. They’d just got a wire in from Virginia.’
Ira was in no mood to listen to Loerner. ‘What is it?’ he snapped. ‘Civil War broken out again?’
‘No, Captain.’ Loerner sounded hurt at his tones. ‘And it’s nothin’ to laugh at, either.’ He paused. ‘Or maybe it is at that. For you, anyway.’
‘Come on, Fred.’ Ira was growing irritated. ‘What have you got?’
Loerner paused. ‘Hold on to your hat, Captain,’ he said. ‘You’re probably front runner now. The Pathfinder crashed at Hampton. Davis and Wooster were both killed.’
Chapter 8
There seemed to be a great deal of confusion about the first stories of the disaster. Although every newspaper in New York plastered the crash across its front pages, they all appeared to carry a different account of how it had happened.
It seemed at first that Davis and Wooster had been killed immediately, then that they’d been burned to death, but then it seemed that the vast tri-motored Pathfinder hadn’t caught fire at all and they’d been suffocated by fumes leaking from a split petrol tank into their cabin. As each new livid account was devoured for details and the newspapermen crowded up, wanting their comments, the air of uneasiness in the Courtney hangar that Courtney’s demands had started spread and grew deeper.
‘Makes you think,’ Woolff said soberly. ‘It might have been us.’
‘Not in the Courtney,’ Ira said firmly. ‘We’re not flying a giant with three motors.’
‘All the same’ – Sammy’s face was grave – ‘it shows there’s more to this business of getting across the Atlantic than just flying.’
Ira laughed. ‘Particularly on mornings like this with everybody having the heeby-jeebies,’ he said.
Sammy looked at Woolff and his mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘It’s a hell of a long way, all the same,’ he pointed out.
‘We just flew two thousand nine hundred miles,’ Ira said.
‘With a stop after the first one thousand two hundred,’ Sammy reminded him. ‘To fix a sprung pump.’
Ira didn’t reply. He knew the way Sammy and Woolff were thinking. A change was coming to flying. Everyone who knew the first thing about it was aware of it, because the new inventions that were appearing were removing the blind spots and proving that aeroplanes were no longer too hazardous for daily use. But it wasn’t hard, nevertheless, to believe that perhaps the strides they were taking were sometimes too big for them, that they were perhaps trying to run before they could walk, that the change that was coming was coming too soon.
‘Suppose the pump goes one thousand two hundred miles over the Atlantic?’ Sammy persisted. ‘There’ll be no San Antonio field there to put down on, no bunch of grease-monkeys to produce a dud pump and take the bits out for us to use.’
Ira gestured impatiently. ‘Suppose the wings fall off?’ he said. ‘Suppose the Wright Brothers had thought about wings falling off or pumps going? They’d never have got off the ground. Blériot wouldn’t have got across the Channel. Alcock and Brown wouldn’t have made it to Ireland. In this kind of flying, Sammy, you’ve got to take a risk somewhere. You can’t expect guarantees.’
While Sammy was eyeing him, still not entirely convinced, Alix appeared, driving a hired car. As she edged it into the group of newspapermen outside the hangar, they pushed forward immediately and began to fire questions about Davis and Wooster at her. Her face was pale and set, but as she opened her mouth to answer Ira took her arm and whisked her towards the hangar, brusquely shoving the newsmen aside.
‘Not here,’ he said shortly to her from the side of his mouth. ‘Everybody’s just waiting to see us all getting the wind up. Let’s get inside before we pull the cork out.’
She swung round as Sammy slammed the door behind them and stood with his back to it, watching them
with sombre eyes. She seemed a little lost and out of her depth.
She made a nervous movement with her hand, the harsh excitable Alix of the night before lost again in one of the bewildering changes of personality that made up her character. ‘Ira,’ she said. ‘Are we doing what’s right? Trying to fly to France, I mean.’
Ira smiled. ‘Plenty of other people seem to be thinking of doing it, too,’ he reminded her.
She glanced at Sammy and Woolff by the door, then she turned to Ira again. She had obviously been thinking the same thoughts that had occurred to them. ‘But are we advanced enough to be doing it?’ she said. ‘Or are we trying it ten years too soon? We’re not away yet from the wooden-hangar-cow-pasture-landing idea of flying. It’s only two years since they court-martialled Billy Mitchell for believing in aeroplanes. We don’t know much about instruments, and we don’t know a damn thing about ocean-crossing.’
She was watching him with a tormented expression, as though for the first time she’d really stopped to consider the odds. ‘Fonck’s crew,’ she said. ‘Davis and Wooster. The way those guys flying the mail go in. Every other week there’s one lost. For heaven’s sake, Ira, I’ve never sat down and thought about it until now! It’s like the casualty list for a battle!’
‘Perhaps their luck was out,’ Ira said.
‘Suppose yours is out?’
Ira’s eyes were sombre. The thought had occurred to him, too. For this project they were attempting, they were going to need all the good fortune they could muster. With the best aeroplane and the best motor in the world, with all the best preparations and the best organisation, a little bad luck could still kill them. Headwinds. Bad weather. A faulty spindle in a fuel pump. A speck of dirt or condensation in the petrol feed line. A sharp stone the wrong way up on the runway on takeoff. There were a thousand things that had to fall neatly into line.
They were all a little like sailors on uncharted seas, all of them on a course that had never been traversed before, and though their knowledge was increasing with every test they made, they were still feeling their way – if not exactly in the dark, certainly not yet out of the shadows. None of them really knew what they could expect of their machines and, callous as it seemed, even the deaths of two men might add something to the accumulated knowledge of those still alive. They all accepted that neither Noel Davis nor Wooster would have begrudged them that.
He became aware that Alix was still watching him, her eyes burning with intensity. Over her shoulder he could see Sammy waiting, too, his back still against the door, his thin face peaked, and Woolff, his big cap sideways on his head as usual, his eyes troubled.
‘Good luck’s largely a matter of hard work and preparation,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the aeroplane, and with the Viking pump instead of the Hughesden, there’s nothing to stop the Whirlwind turning for its nine thousand hours. It’s time we stopped worrying about luck and started thinking about infallibility, because that’s what’ll get us across the Atlantic, not mascots and crossed fingers and prayers.’
* * *
When the first shock had gone and realism had set in, Davis’s death seemed to provide a good opportunity to study what might conceivably go wrong with their own aeroplane and Ira demanded that Loerner dig up every report on the crash he could lay his hands on.
Loerner looked puzzled at the request. ‘Will it help any?’ he asked.
Ira nodded. ‘If they did something wrong,’ he said, ‘knowing what it was might stop us doing it, too.’
The dull weather persisted and, since it was clear there was to be no flying, they spent the day installing the new fuel pump and compass, and fitting a carburettor heater and the special thirty-by-eight tyres with strengthened walls which had arrived from Cleveland.
The late papers were still printing stories of the Hampton crash but the reports were unreliable and they were unable to get the facts straight until the following day when they gathered in the office and Loerner pushed typewritten sheets across the desk at them one after another.
It appeared now that a mixture of all the stories they’d heard made up the truth. There’d been discussion about the Pathfinder’s chances for some time because, on his earlier flights in Pennsylvania, Davis had seemed to be a little dubious about his machine and had insisted on more complete tests, and the rumour that had been going the rounds that all was not well with it now seemed to be true. Although the Pathfinder was fast, when delivered from the factory it had been found to be over half a ton heavier than expected and every calculation that had been made about fuel had been thrown out.
When the final load tests had begun, full tanks had brought its weight up to almost a ton more than its engines had ever hoisted into the air before and, balanced on a pinpoint as the calculations were, it had been necessary to make a last check that the machine could lift the necessary weight before flying to New York for the trip to Europe.
As they had begun their run, however, the Pathfinder, like Fonck’s machine, had moved far too slowly. It had taken the whole length of the field to gather sufficient speed and, even as it had lifted into the air, it was clear that its climb was not steep enough, and that the trees at the end of the runway, which it had cleared with ease on earlier unloaded flights, were going to be in the way. Davis had banked the machine to the right to avoid them but, poised only just above stalling as the overloaded machine was, the turn had brought the speed down just too low and the nose had dropped. Davis had had to make a quick decision to set the machine down, but the land ahead of him had been marshy and the watchers had seen a huge splash as the big biplane had disappeared from sight.
They had started running at once, but they were too far away and, though the aeroplane was far from a total wreck, the nose was buried deep in water and soft wet soil and the big tanks behind the crew had moved and crushed the cockpit. Trapped and breathing fumes from spilt petrol, Davis and Wooster had died of suffocation and drowning.
* * *
Ira listened grave-faced as Loerner gave him the facts.
‘This makes you front-runner,’ the publicity man ended soberly. ‘Chamberlin’s not decided yet whether he’s taking a radio or not and there’s talk of more trouble between him and Levine.’
Ira frowned. ‘There’s still Byrd,’ he reminded. ‘He’s got his arm out of plaster now.’
Loerner gestured. ‘Byrd!’ he snorted. ‘They’re saying in the newspaper offices that he doesn’t want to go until he’s seen it can be done.’
‘Perhaps one or two newspapermen would like the job instead,’ Ira growled. ‘As four men have been killed so far in this little circus, maybe he’s just being sensible.’
All the same, the situation had changed radically, he knew, and he studied the little red monoplane with worried eyes.
‘What’s eating you, Ira?’ Sammy asked.
Ira rubbed his nose. That morning he had walked the length of the runway on Roosevelt Field, noting the dips and hollows and the rough patches that might damage an overloaded undercarriage, and he had discovered that the winds across Long Island had a strange habit of changing direction. Mostly they blew from the south-west during the daytime, so that a take-off would be over the hangars and blocks of houses, but if they could be ready before daylight and get off before the night-time wind changed, they would have a clear lift over fields and a golf course, with only a set of telephone wires to worry about.
He turned to Sammy and grinned. ‘Maybe I ought to have done what my father did,’ he said. ‘And started building my own planes. It’d have been safer and I might have been wealthy now.’
Sammy jeered. ‘You’d miss the excitement.’
Ira shrugged. He had a feeling that the excitement of aviation was probably already gone, just as the joy of seafaring had gone with the passing of the sailing ships. Intuition and instinct – the knowledge of where inspiration began and impulse left off – which had been as important to the first of the men who had braved the air as it had been t
o ships’ captains like his own grandfather, with their sense of wind and weather, were being slowly thrust aside by invention and by small bright numbered dials and quivering needles. The mystique was already fading because the day was approaching when the sky between continents would be as familiar to man as the route marks along the highways, when instruments would be more important than instinct, and pilots would be merely men who could understand the banks of coloured switches.
He drew a deep breath. ‘I’m getting sentimental, Sammy,’ he grinned. ‘Perhaps it’s a sign of age.’
* * *
Since the party, Courtney had not been near the hangar. Several times they had rung his apartment without success, and now, with a dozen small technical queries cropping up, they were informed he was in Washington and had left no forwarding address.
Woolff became indignant. ‘I’d have said his place was right here on the field,’ he pointed out.
Alix glanced at Ira. ‘He asked me last night if I’d like a bigger share in the Courtney,’ she said slowly.
Ira looked at her quickly. ‘And would you?’
She said nothing for a moment, then she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I said I would.’
Woolff looked worried. ‘Can you raise the dough?’ he asked.
‘I can sell the bungalow at Medway.’
‘Will you?’
She paused before answering. ‘I guess maybe it would be a good idea if I did,’ she said.
Courtney’s continued absence and the need for money that had obviously prompted his offer to Alix was in the minds of all of them as they arranged for coffee and settled down to thrash out the problems implicit in the scribbles, in notebooks and on old envelopes and scraps of paper. Most of them were trivial in themselves but were surprisingly important when fitted into the whole.