Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

  “How about a minimum explanation, at least?”

  “It’s—it’s got something to do with keeping Congress happy. Adrian wants a high and a low so no one will scream if we come out on the high side. Don’t mention it to Frank. He won’t understand the politics. It’ll only upset him.”

  Dick put together an upscale cost estimate that brought the Talus close to two million dollars a copy. It was not hard to do, since Frank was still grappling with some unknown unknowns in the plane’s controls. At lunch the next day, Adrian Van Ness smiled arcanely at him and squeezed his arm. “I appreciate that estimate,” he said. “It’s nice to have another realist at work around here.”

  Dick did not get the point but he nodded and smiled back, not inclined to dispute a compliment from this WASP, which for him at this point meant White Anglo-Saxon Paragon.

  At home, he continued to enjoy Cassie Trainor. She was still working at the Honeycomb Club, playing a defiant game with him, daring him to love her in spite of her refusal to take his advice. He played the game right back, dating other women whenever he felt like it. He was not quite ready to love Cassie but he liked her more and more. She entertained him with impersonations of horny airline passengers and panting Buchanan executives. Cassie had developed a contempt for the male sex that was invigorating, as long as it did not get personal.

  On weekends, they did not see as much of each other because Dick spent Saturday and Sunday in the air with Billy McCall in his dark green Lustra I. Billy had been surly at first. He made it clear that he was teaching Dick to fly strictly as a favor to Frank Buchanan. Like most pilots, he had a low opinion of navigators, except when he needed one. Frank had apparently told him it was important to keep the computer guru happy so he would send Adrian Van Ness only soothing reports.

  Billy loved flying too much to remain surly in the air. From the start he taught Dick the way Frank Buchanan had taught him. Frank called it the laying on of hands. For the first several hours Dick simply kept his hands on the yoke and imitated everything Billy did, while he explained it. By now Dick had mastered taking off and landing and other elementary maneuvers, such as the turn and the climb and the dive. Today they were going to explore something more ambitious: spins.

  Ten miles at sea, Billy began his lecture. “An airplane is a three-axis all-attitude vehicle,” he said. “It can be flown in any attitude accidentally or on purpose. I want you to be able to fly this baby upside down, in an inverted spin if necessary. I want you to be able to handle every kind of spin in the vocabulary.”

  He proceeded to put the plane into an oscillatory spin, a translational spin and a flat spin, which Dick later learned was usually fatal in a single-engine plane. Each time they pulled out with Dick’s sweaty hands on the yoke and numb feet on the elevators while gravity threatened to pound his chest cavity to jelly.

  Returning to the Buchanan airport, Dick made a classy landing, lining up the plane in the middle of the runway in spite of a tricky crosswind. Billy pushed back his fifty missions cap and socked him on the shoulder. “You’re ready to solo,” he said. “Only thing left to discuss is philosophy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you believe is up there in the sky. You think there’s a Big Air Traffic Controller who’s gonna take care of you when you get your ass in a tight spot?”

  Dick shook his head.

  “You don’t think there’s anything up there?”

  Dick nodded.

  “You’re wrong,” Billy said, staring at the northeast runway, where a blue Cessna was taking off. “There’s two ladies up there. The Lady of Luck and the Lady of Death. They go for some guys, no one knows why. Sometimes guys go for them. No one can figure that one out either. Except they’re both beautiful.”

  The Cessna’s right wing dropped alarmingly. The pilot was obviously a student. Billy paused while the instructor jerked the plane level and climbed for survival. “Sometimes you can feel the Lady of Death’s hands resting on top of yours on the throttles. The Lady of Luck just watches and smiles. Pretty soon you figure out she doesn’t give a damn. Only thing to do then is laugh in both their faces.”

  Billy smiled bleakly and socked him on the shoulder again. “Now you’re ready to go. Take her down to Laguna and back,” he said. “Keep an eye out for other planes. They’ll be a lot of them around today.”

  The Lustra was a very forgiving plane. It lifted off the runway as if it were part balloon and in ten minutes Dick was at five thousand feet, about five miles off Long Beach. He looked around him and felt a loosening in the center of his chest.

  Freedom! He could go north or south, climb into that azure sky or dive toward that dark blue sea. He could loop or roll if he had the nerve. The sky filled his eyes. He owned it. He owned that burning sun and that iridescent blue dome, he owned the ocean and the coast line with its thousands of little houses and tiny boats in narrow harbors. He even owned that big-bellied Southwest Air Lines DC 3 plodding toward him en route from San Diego to San Francisco or Seattle.

  Dick banked and dove and climbed. He did not try any loops or snap rolls or immelmans. He was an unstable mixture of courage and caution. Having seen a few planes crash, he knew how dangerous flying was. The stunts could wait for a little more confidence.

  Closer to shore, he swooped low enough to watch the surfers riding the big waves. He wondered if he might see Cassie. She often surfed at Laguna. Sure enough, there she was. He recognized the streaming auburn hair, the long lithe body swaying on the board as it slithered and bounced down the almost vertical incline while the white mountain of water crested just behind her.

  That did it. Dick lowered the nose, picked up speed and hauled on the yoke to climb into the blank blue sky and go over the vertical into his first loop.

  Cassie recognized the plane. She paddled out on her board and stood up to wave. Dick did three snap rolls and came out of the third one with the nose much too high. He was within a whisker of stalling into a probably fatal spin at five hundred feet.

  Sweating, he roared up to a thousand feet for another loop and a few chandelles. He was on his way to becoming the hot pilot of his repressed dreams. Screw those punctilious medical bureaucrats who had turned him into a navigator because he had astigmatism in one eye! Dick Stone was flying in California.

  Back at the airport, Dick’s landing was not quite so classy. The crosswind was blowing harder and he almost hit the runway with his left wing. He pancaked to safety. Billy frowned but the Lustra was undamaged. He signed Dick’s log book and they adjourned to a nearby bar to celebrate.

  Billy drank hard as usual. He was in a lousy mood. “You know Sarah, Cliff’s wife?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  “Nice woman. Smart.”

  “How’s she put up with him? I mean—do you think she really loves him?”

  “I don’t know,” Dick said, his loyalty to Cliff tying his tongue. “Women are funny about that sort of thing. You have some reason to doubt it?”

  Billy shook his head. It was hard to tell whether he was saying yes and it did not matter, or no and he did not care. Dick wondered if there was a third possibility.

  He drove home in a boozy glow, hoping Cassie would be there to help him celebrate his first solo. Not only was she there, she had a bottle of champagne in a bucket and frosted glasses in the freezer.

  “How did you recognize the plane?”

  “I’ve flown in it,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  Cassie smiled mockingly. “Jealous, Mr. Stone? I can’t believe it.”

  “Curious.”

  “It didn’t work out. I didn’t want to fly as high as Billy likes to go.”

  Dick decided it was none of his business. “You’d rather hang around with a nice, unimaginative front-office man? Dull, normal sex once a week?”

  “That’s right,” Cassie said. “I hate excitement.”

  He started undressing her. She was only weari
ng shorts and a pullover shirt. In ten seconds she was naked. Dick ran his hands down the firm breasts, the supple belly, into the warm luxurious pussy. “You’re a bitch,” he said. “Why the hell do I like that sort of woman?”

  They spent most of Sunday in bed. Dick drove to work in a state of semi-exaltation. Was he falling in love with Cassie? She was unquestionably American. You could not get more American than Noglichucky Hollow, Sevier County, Tennessee.

  He put Cassie out of his head and looked forward to telling Frank Buchanan about soloing. He was pretty sure Frank would tell Buzz McCall at lunch. He wanted to see the surly surprise on the SOB’s swarthy face when he found out the navigator had turned pilot.

  Dick never got a chance to say a word about soloing. When he walked into the design department, the place looked like the mental ward at the county hospital. People were tearing up blueprints and cursing and pounding their desks and glaring out the windows as if they might jump, even though they were on the first floor. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “They’ve canceled the Talus,” Sam Hardy said. “The fucking Secretary of the Air Force awarded the contract to Convair’s B-Thirty-six. It’s the goddamndest decision I’ve ever heard. Even the Russians can build a better plane than that lumbering behemoth.”

  “Where’s Frank?” Dick said.

  “Upstairs arguing with Adrian Van Ness. Trying to keep something alive.”

  Dick wondered if his cost estimate had anything to do with the disaster. Had he exaggerated too much? Where was Cliff Morris?

  Frank appeared in the doorway to the corridor with tears in his eyes. “It’s all over,” he said. “Not only have they canceled our contract. They’ve ordered us to destroy all nineteen of the prototypes we’ve built. Today. They want them chopped up by sundown. They want all the tools, jigs, designs destroyed. They want to wipe the Talus off the face of the earth. Adrian’s surrendering to the slimy bastards. For the good of the company.”

  “Why?” Dick said, more and more appalled at what he may have helped to do. “What’s their reason?”

  “Stability problems. Somehow they’ve gotten their hands on our internal reports. Did you ever give them to anyone, Dick?”

  “Never.”

  “No matter. It’s easy enough to rifle files at three A.M. Adrian may have done it himself. He’s perfectly capable of it.”

  Frank turned to his demoralized staff. “I’m quitting. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life designing planes for lying politicians to destroy. I advise you gentleman to imitate my example as soon as you can afford it.”

  “Wait a second, Frank,” Dick said. “We’re not going to let you do this. There’s a hundred other planes waiting for you to design.”

  Emotion drained from Frank’s face. “That’s what Adrian just said.”

  “Dick’s right, Frank,” Cliff Morris said. He threaded his way through the empty desks. “Adrian’s right too, even if he is an SOB.”

  Frank found it hard to believe Cliff was defending Adrian. “Cliff, you’re hoping Sarah will have a son, aren’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “If he does, you’ll love him in a special way, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” Cliff said, growing more and more uneasy.

  “You’d be in despair if he were killed?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “This was my son.”

  “I’m quitting with you,” Sam Hardy said. “We’ll start another company.” Dozens of similar declarations swept the Black Hole.

  “Let’s do some drinking on my expense account before we go,” Frank said.

  The designers departed for the Honeycomb Club. Dick wandered into in his office and discovered Cliff was there waiting for him. “Do I get the maximum explanation now?” he said.

  “The problem didn’t go away. We—we never had a chance,” Cliff said.

  Dick stared at his blank computer screen. Things began coalescing in his head. “Especially after you gave Adrian all the reports about the stability problems and my upscale cost estimate.”

  “Dick. You’ve got to be realistic. This is a business, not a goddamn experimental flight laboratory. Adrian’s traded that plane for a promise of an order for two hundred Excaliburs, redesigned as troop and cargo transports. So Frank’s heart is broken for a while. He’ll get over it.”

  A week ago, a month ago, Dick Stone might have nodded and agreed with these words. But something remarkable had just happened to him. He had become a pilot. He had learned to fly in a plane designed by Frank Buchanan. He had been taught by a pilot who had learned from Frank by the same mystic laying on of hands.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t know exactly why.”

  “You better learn to like it if you want to keep working for Adrian,” Cliff said. “He wants you to wipe out everything you’ve got on the computer about the Talus. Then we’ll go to work on my files.”

  “No!” Dick smashed both his fists down on the desk. “I won’t do it. I won’t let you do it. Don’t you have any appreciation for this plane? What it means—not just to Frank but to the whole history of flying?”

  “I appreciate it as much as you do,” Cliff said. “But I appreciate keeping the goddamn company in business too.”

  “I’d rather stand on Hollywood and Vine with a tin cup.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Adrian Van Ness said.

  He paused in the doorway, smiling sardonically. “Maybe Dick is right,” he said to Cliff. “We’ll just pretend to destroy the files. We’ll tell the SOBs in Washington we’ve wiped them out to the last comma. What’s another lie in this messy business? We’ve got an underground vault we built during the war in case the Japs bombed us. We’ll put them there. But you both have to promise me not to tell Frank Buchanan. As far as he’s concerned—the wipeout was total.”

  “Why?” Dick asked, not even trying to conceal his contempt.

  “You can’t trust an emotional basket case like Frank.”

  Slumped on the couch, Cliff nodded wearily. Adrian Van Ness turned to Dick. How did he know he was vowing to tell Frank Buchanan the truth? “You agree, Dick? Or would you prefer an actual wipeout?” Adrian asked.

  Adrian’s smile made everything perfectly clear. He was the man in charge. Dick nodded numbly. Now he knew what Frank Buchanan meant about making noble promises when you worked for Adrian Van Ness.

  Was this a second laying on of hands? Not if he could help it, Dick vowed. In his head a voice whispered: What do you think of California freedom now?

  TRIO IN BLUE

  She had lost him, Sarah thought, watching her defeated husband slouch across the lawn to his white Buick convertible. The destruction of the Talus had ruined something less visible but far more important between her and Cliff. She had failed to comfort him, reach him, last night as they made love. She was four months’ pregnant. But that had not made the difference. She felt a new—or old—distance between them, a strange, almost bitter withdrawal to the status of perfunctory husband again.

  An hour later, helping Maria hang the wash in the backyard, Sarah was startled by a swooping plane. She looked up in time to see the green Lustra zooming straight up into the blue sky and tipping into a loop that turned into a spin that flowed into a half-dozen snap rolls.

  How did Billy know? She watched him inscribe himself against the sky like the rhythmic line of a modern abstract painter. Intricately doubling back on himself, exploding into effervescent heaps of loops, he wrote coded messages in lazy barrel rolls and unbelievably intricate inverted spins. It was painting and music combined in a dance of death-defying skill. She could almost hear the orchestral crescendos as he stood the plane on its tail, its back, its wingtips. She saw him at the controls, gravity pounding at his chest and brain.

  Sarah wanted to be with him. She wanted to share the danger and the exaltation. But she knew she could only do it by calling that scribbled number on the card Billy had given her five months ago. He w
ould never call her. He would only send her this coded declaration of his mastery of the sky. A terrible sadness seeped into her soul.

  Cliff Morris and Dick Stone spent the day storing the records of the Talus in the underground vault. They did not have much to say to each other. There was no trace of Frank Buchanan or his designers, which added to the sense of desolation as they collected blueprints and reports and stuffed them into boxes.

  That night Cliff called Sarah and told her he would be working late. He and Dick Stone went looking for Frank Buchanan. He was not at the Honeycomb Club. In fact, no one was at the Honeycomb Club. The place looked as if it had been hit by a couple of fragmentation bombs. A tearful Madeleine, wearing slacks and a sweater, told them the designers had started a brawl with the engineers that wrecked the place.

  Madeleine said Frank and Billy McCall and a half-dozen designers had left there last night so drunk they could hardly walk but they insisted on driving Frank’s Ford. She hoped they were not dead at the bottom of one of Topanga’s ravines.

  They took Madeleine along and drove to Frank’s house in Las Tunas Canyon, several miles north of Topanga. They found their heroes were not dead but were all drunker than they had been the night before, if that was possible. Cassie Trainor and a half-dozen other women from the Honeycomb Club were trying to console them.

  Cliff accepted some Inverness and told them he and Dick had stored the records of the Talus against Adrian’s orders. “Who knows what’ll happen in the next couple of years? Adrian might change his mind. Or a new secretary of the Air Force might decide to go for it,” he said.

  Cliff looked steadily at Dick Stone, waiting to see if he would let him get away with the lie. He said nothing. Was he here for the same reason? To regain a few shreds of his manhood?

  “Your loyalty is touching, Cliff,” Frank said. “But nothing can alter the fundamental facts. Our plane is lying in pieces in some junkyard in El Segundo or Long Beach. Getting drunk is the only sensible response. Join us.”

  He refilled Cliff’s glass to the top with Inverness. Across the room, Cassie Trainor smiled at him. She had her clothes on. But Cliff’s imagination undressed her in a flash of desire. He was quite certain that if he drank this Scotch and joined the party, Cassie would soon be wearing nothing and so would he.