The 15th had swung around to face the onward hurtling Nazi ships. Lennox was top guard, O’Gilvey bottom guard. Flight commander Dick Halsey was leading the squadron.
At a radioed command from Halsey, Lennox and O’Gilvey began their converging movement. Lennox knew a moment of exultation as his Spitfire screamed down toward the approaching Nazi Messerschmitts. Then he pressed the button in the control stick which electrically activated his guns—and his eager confidence exploded in sudden, utter horror. They remained silent, inactive.
Frantically, Lennox pressed that control button—again, again, and again, until his thumb was numb with the pain. But nothing happened. Desperately, he joggled the stick, even stamped with one foot on the bottom of the plane in the hopes that the shocks would untangle any snarl in the electrical connections that might have occurred. Again no results—and all the while the oncoming Messerschmitts roared closer. Streaks of flaming tracer began to lick toward the Spitfires.
Helpless because of the inactivity of his guns, there was only one thing left for Lennox to do, and he did it. He banked, climbed for altitude, and roared away from the battle.
Frustration, appall, rage, and grief raked him in a vicious crossfire. At a safe distance, he circled to watch impotently the ensuing catastrophe to the 15th.
O’Gilvey roared up, his guns flaming. But the wily von Thelm, seizing the opportunity offered by Lennox’s withdrawal from the fight, led his Messerschmitts up and over the 15th’s V formation. Then, with altitude and a rear position to their favor, the Nazis swooped down in what became simply a massacre. Flight commander Dick Halsey was among the first to go down in twisted, flaming wreckage, and, deprived not only of his cool, sure leadership but of a battle tactic which had been effective so long as to have become a habit, the Spitfires were demoralized into utter, senseless confusion. Only a little more than half managed to reach their hidden base again.
Lennox had explained to the wrathful pilots of the 15th, and for a moment they had believed him. Then one tried the apparently faulty guns in Lennox’s Spitfire—and the resulting blast had all but knocked in one wall of the barn. There was nothing wrong with the guns, then, and a checkup of the electrical firing connections brought to light nothing which might have caused their silence during the battle over the Channel.
Called up before an official board of inquiry, Lennox repeated his story. He told it simply and without prejudice. Impressed by his earnestness and sorrow and his record of action in China and England, the board had released him without sentence or stigma. But Lennox had become an outcast among the pilots of the 15th. While not actually convinced that he was a coward, they taunted him as such, resenting the fact that he, an American, had been responsible for the deaths of four British fliers, innocent or not. The only one at the airdrome who sympathized with him was Benjie Callahan, the wiry, little mechanic who presided over the repair shop in the barn. This was because Benjie was a Free State Irishman and also a firm believer in Gremlins.
According to Benjie, it was the Gremlins who were responsible for Lennox’s downfall. And Lennox, grateful for the little Irishman’s friendship, pretended to agree. Lennox had heard of the Gremlins before, of course, for they were a modern legend. No one knew just how or when it had originated, but tales of this mischievous little people of the air were already known to pilots the length and breadth of England. The pilots of the 15th were no exception and had even made their own individual contributions to the form and content of the myth.
The nomenclature is slightly on the wacky side, but the Gremlins do not seem to mind. Male Gremlins are just that. Female Gremlins are called Fifinellas, little male Gremlins, Widgets, and little female Gremlins, Flipperty-Gibbets. These are the ordinary kind of Gremlins, but as might be expected, there are other varieties. Among these are Strato-Gremlins, Night-flying Gremlins, and Nautic-minded Gremlins.
To those who believe—like Benjie—it is the Gremlins who jam controls, clog oil lines, fog windows, cause gasoline leaks, strange engine disturbances, and other inexplicable technical mishaps. They are not intentionally mean, however, but just inquisitive and mischievous. In the latter mood, their favorite form of prey is the overconfident pilot, and in one way or another they always succeed in bringing about a swift return of his inferiority complex.
* * * *
Lennox ate his usual solitary breakfast in the mess room. Later he wandered outside, and because no one seemed to be near the barn, he went in to see Benjie Callahan. Benjie was replacing a bullet-riddled aileron, and at sight of Lennox his wizened face split into a red-cheeked grin.
“Well, now, and how be ye this foine mornin’?” he greeted.
Lennox attempted a smile. “Foine,” he answered. For a moment his loneliness impelled him to tell Benjie of his plan for redemption, but he thought better of it and instead asked. “See any Gremlins during the night, Benjie?”
“Me?” asked the little Irishman in surprise. “Faith, they wouldn’t be a’showin’ o’ themselves to a groundling like me, Mister Lennox. ’Tis only to pilots that they be seen.”
“My mistake, Benjie. But, see here, haven’t Hangar-Gremlins made their appearance yet?”
“And sure, now, who knows but one day they may?” Benjie’s blue eyes were serious. “Evolution does strange things sometimes. Now I’ve an idea that—” And Benjie went on to tell Lennox of his special theory of evolution as applied to Gremlins.
Lennox listened with only half his attention. The other half was fixed upon the main building. He didn’t have long to wait. Benjie was making the concluding statements of his discourse when the door opened and Carewe’s orderly came briskly toward the barn.
The orderly made it a point to ignore Lennox, addressing Benjie as though he were the only person present. “Major’s compliments. He says to wheel out a plane and check it. Special flight.” With that, he turned and made off for the mess room.
Lennox waited, his body becoming taut with tension. Benjie went to round up his two Cockney assistants, and the trio trotted toward the field, where they pulled aside a camouflaging haystack to reveal the gleaming shape of a Spitfire. They swarmed over it, busy with tools. The orderly came out of the mess room followed by a pilot who was shrugging into a flying jacket, the chin strap of his helmet gripped between his teeth. They went into the main building together.
Lennox wore his own flying jacket, with his helmet stuffed into one of the pockets. Trying to appear casual, he strolled over to the Spitfire which was now in the final stage of its check-over, motors idling.
“Surprise!” Lennox told Benjie. “I’m the one who’s taking her up. You were talking so much that I didn’t get a chance to tell you before.”
“Well, now!” Benjie said, wonderingly.
And Lennox, as though he were on a mission of the utmost urgency, climbed into the cockpit and pulled on his helmet. He signaled for the chocks to be pulled away from the wheels.
Benjie hesitated a moment. Events did not seem quite right to him somehow. But he shrugged and relayed Lennox’s order to his two assistants. The chocks came away and the mechanics moved into the clear. Lennox gunned the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, and the Spitfire taxied down the field, to take off seconds later into the clear, blue morning sky.
Climbing steadily for altitude, Lennox did not once look back. He knew that the roar of his motors had warned Carewe and that by now the squadron commander was signaling frantically for him to land. Carewe, of course, would have to put on a good act so that no suspicion would fall upon him later. He was. The earphones hanging from the instrument panel began to buzz urgently. Carewe was now trying to signal him by radio, but Lennox had not donned the earphones in anticipation of this and now he ignored them completely.
Lennox leveled off and pointed the nose of his Spitfire toward the Channel. The direction he was taking would lead him straight toward the sector patrolled by von Thelm. His lips tightened
as he thought of the Nazi ace. He knew that his chances of coming out of the duel alive were so slim as to amount almost to nothing at all. Von Thelm already had more than a score of British ships to his credit, and these included not only the ones he had shot down while accompanied by his own squadron but also those he had bested in single combat. In the latter case he had triumphed over many veteran British aces. Lennox had no delusions as to his own fighting abilities, for he knew that most of the men who had gone down under von Thelm’s guns had been as good, if not better, than himself.
Lennox squinted ahead. In the distance he could now make out a thin, blue strip, swiftly widening, which marked the water of the Channel. It wouldn’t be long, now. He tried to relax against the strain which was building up within him.
As a matter of habit, he glanced at his instruments. There was a sudden, strange flickering before his eyes. He thought it must be from the strain to which he was subjecting them and blinked rapidly several times. When he looked at the instruments again, he gasped in abrupt amazement, almost losing control of the ship.
Standing on the rim of the speed indicator was a bizarre, fantastic little figure. No more than six inches high, it wore a little, red jacket and brown corduroy pants, the bottoms of which were stuffed into tiny, black patent-leather boots with rubber suction soles. Tiny horns jutted from either side of its head, and between these, pushed back rakishly, was a green derby hat. It had a large, red nose and a wrinkled, brown face, which, at another time, might have worn an expression of grinning impishness, but which right now looked very sheepish and contrite.
Abrupt memory of the stories he had heard from Benjie and others came back to Lennox. He knew on the instant just what it was he saw.
“A Gremlin!” he husked. “Heaven help me—a Gremlin!”
“Uh, huh,” the little figure standing on the speed indicator affirmed timidly, in an astonishingly loud, bass voice.
“But—but you just can’t be!” Lennox croaked. “Gremlins are just a lot of fairy-tale stuff.”
A moment’s trace of sardonic amusement came into the tiny, brown features. “You see me, don’t you? And I could give you a sample of applied Gremlinology on your aircraft which wouldn’t leave another doubt in your head, but there’s no time for that. By way of introduction, I’m Gremlin Bob. We Gremlins have no names, you see, and sort of adopt the first name of the first person to see one of us.”
“Yeah,” said Lennox dazedly. “Yeah, I see.” He licked his lips. “Well, what do you want? What’re you doing here anyway?”
Gremlin Bob’s pixie features became once more hang-dog. “I came to apologize. I—I’m the one who did it.”
Lennox frowned in bewilderment. “Did what?”
“Jammed your guns.”
“What!”
“Uh, huh.”
“Then you’re the one responsible for all the trouble I’ve had to go through!” Lennox snapped wrathfully. He made an abrupt grab for the tiny shape.
Gremlin Bob skipped nimbly to the altimeter dial and spread his hands imploringly. “Now wait a moment,” he pleaded. “I know just how you feel, but let me explain.”
“Explain!” Lennox snorted. “As if that would fix things up now.”
“It was this way,” began Gremlin Bob. “You and the others were all feeling so cocky that day after chasing away the bombers that I just couldn’t resist the temptation to throw a little scare into you. When those Messerschmitts appeared, I jammed the electrical firing connections of your guns.” He gestured placatingly as Lennox made another reach for him.
“Wait until you hear the rest of it, won’t you? The jamming was only meant to be temporary, please believe me. I’d intended to fix things up again, just as soon as you’d been frightened sufficiently. But just then a Fifinella happened along.” Gremlin Bob looked as though his last statement finished the explanation.
But Lennox frowned. “Well?” he demanded.
Gremlin Bob grinned ruefully. “Fifinellas are female Gremlins, you’ll remember, and—well, you know how we Gremlins are about Fifinellas. You pilots made us that way. This one was a peach, and as usual I forgot everything and went after her. By the time I remembered about you and the guns, the battle was over. I just managed to get them fixed up again before that pilot tried them at the drome.”
“And now you’re too late as usual,” Lennox growled. “You know where I’m going now don’t you?”
“Uh, huh. To fight von Thelm.”
“Yes—and it’s all your fault! Do you realize that my chances of coming out of the fight alive are almost none at all?”
Gremlin Bob hung his head. “Uh, huh. But if there’s anything I can do—”
“Do! Now?” Lennox grimaced in disgust. And then his eyes lighted. “Say—there is something you can do! Look here. Could you get into von Thelm’s ship?”
Gremlin Bob brightened. “Easiest thing there is!”
“All right, then, here’s what you can do. Get into von Thelm’s ship and sort of complicate things for him. Don’t jam his guns or anything like that, however, because I merely want the fight to be placed upon a more equal basis. Understand?”
“Uh huh,” Gremlin Bob answered. “What you want me to do is to handicap him, like in games or sports, where a skillful player handicaps himself so as to give an equal chance to another not as good.”
Lennox nodded. “That’s it. Only this handicap will be forced on von Thelm whether he wants the fight on an equal basis or not. And, if I know the Nazis in general and von Thelm in particular, he wouldn’t.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Gremlin Bob promised. Suddenly he darted up to the view plate. “Oh, oh, here comes von Thelm now! So long.”
There was a bright, blue flash, and when Lennox blinked the lights out of his eyes, Gremlin Bob was gone. Lennox compressed his lips into a thin, tense line, falling by force of long habit into his fighter’s crouch. Down below glistened the waters of the Channel. And, diving out of the clouds with his guns flaming, came von Thelm.
Lennox side-slipped hastily and came around in a half-circle. Von Thelm’s Messerschmitt, with the vulture insignia on the fuselage, roared by, its guns spitting into empty space. But the Nazi had only been eluded for a moment. The nose of his Messerschmitt tilted abruptly skyward in an aerial somersault, and when he leveled out of it, he was diving down directly behind Lennox.
Lennox looped frantically, and none too soon, for the Nazi’s bullets had already chewed several holes through the Spitfire’s tail assembly. From then on, Lennox drew the fight into a chase, weaving, dodging, spinning, using every trick at his command to keep out of the line of the Nazi’s guns. He wondered desperately how long it would take Gremlin Bob to handicap von Thelm, for minutes had passed already and as far as he could see, there was no lessening in the Nazi’s skillful attacks.
And then there was the now familiar flickering before Lennox’s eyes. When it had gone, there was Gremlin Bob, clinging to his perch on the rim of the speed indicator.
Lennox stared in growing horror. Something was wrong—terribly, radically wrong. Gremlin Bob looked as if a tornado had struck him. His little immaculate clothes were disarranged and torn. His green derby was gone, and his left eye was black and swollen shut.
“Run for it!” Gremlin Bob gasped. “All hell’s broken loose!”
“But what’s the matter?” Lennox demanded. “Why didn’t you handicap von Thelm as you were supposed to?”
Gremlin Bob took what seemed to be a deep breath. “We both overlooked something. The Nazis have Gremlins, too, you see. The one in von Thelm’s aircraft is the nastiest customer I’ve ever run across. We English Gremlins feed on used postage stamps, but Nazi Gremlins drink stale beer—and well, it does something to their dispositions, not to mention their physique. The one in von Thelm’s aircraft was a good nine inches tall, and he gave me to understand in no uncertai
n terms that he wouldn’t have me practicing in his territory.”
“Damn!” Lennox whispered in consternation. Without Gremlin Bob to help him, all his newfound hopes went crashing to destruction. He couldn’t just run from von Thelm, for there was no place for him to go. To land now on English soil after what had happened would mean court martial and disgrace. To attempt to fight von Thelm with the Nazi in full possession of his power meant certain doom.
Lennox kicked rudder sharply as a line of flaming tracer cut suddenly across his windshield. In his disappointed dismay, he’d forgotten that the Nazi ace was clinging tenaciously to his tail, and now von Thelm had almost managed to creep up beside him. Lennox rolled aside desperately, and there was a pattering, hail-like sound on his left wing. With a brief glance from the corner of his eye, he saw a neat line of black holes stretching along it. He dived, and then, with power full on, took up a course parallel to the Channel coastline. Scenting the unmistakable sign of a sure kill, von Thelm pursued relentlessly.
“We’ve got to do something!” Lennox gritted.
“Uh huh,” answered Gremlin Bob. “But what?”
Lennox had a sudden idea. “Look,” he said. “Why don’t you round up a gang of your Gremlin friends and then go after that Nazi Gremlin in von Thelm’s plane? It ought to be a snap for a bunch of you to run him out. Then you could do whatever you wanted.”
Gremlin Bob shook his bare head. “Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.”
The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK Page 10