He released the brakes and went fish-tailing along the lane toward the downwind end of the field. Several other SBD’s and a midnight-blue Corsair were ahead of him. The big fighter swung back and forth with ponderous grace as the pilot tried to see ahead, and with every change of direction the stubby SBD wallowed and dipped in the blast from the Corsair’s four paddle blades.
At the end of the taxi strip the planes parked, one after another, in an oblique line and waited. The first SBD trundled ahead, swung around facing the wind, and began to shudder as the pilot tested the magnetos. Soon, in the tower, a green light winked on. The bomber rolled forward, faster and faster, the sunlight sliding along the wings. For a moment or so its pudgy wheels dangled uselessly in the air, then folded inward and flattened against the belly. Already the second bomber was in position.
When the Corsair swung around, Melvin could see the pilot hunched inside the bubble like a captive insect. The tapering wings waved gently against the insistent rhythm of the engine, and a few seconds later the Corsair was past the tower and over the trees and floating toward the clouds.
Melvin taxied into position on the runway. The green light shone straight in his eye. He pressed the throttle ahead, holding the brakes with his toes until the SBD was quivering, lifted his feet and felt himself drawn forward, and could feel the pavement speeding beneath the wheels. When the horizon rose above the cowl he knew the tail of the Dauntless was in the air; the control stick had gradually come to life and now stood erect of its own accord, turgid with strength. A gust of wind tipped the wings; the Dauntless swerved, bounced once, and thundered away from the earth. Two solid thumps as the wheels folded into the belly told him that the hydraulic system was operating.
He was well off the ground before reaching the center of the field, and thought he might have a look at the WAVE who was directing traffic, so, instead of holding the Dauntless low to gain speed, he pulled up steeply and turned his head as he flew by the tower. He saw her there, holding a microphone to her lips as if she were about to speak, a stocky, broad-shouldered woman in a wrinkled seersucker uniform with that peculiar flowing necktie poets wore a hundred years ago. As many times as he had seen those ties he could not get over a suspicion that there had been a preposterous error in the supply department. For a second or two they looked at each other. He was close enough to distinguish the insignia on her sleeve and to note that she did not have a wedding ring. She was watching him without much expression. He nodded pleasantly and looked ahead.
When he left the traffic pattern he discovered another SBD cutting inside the arc; he looked again and saw it was not one but two planes in tight formation and they were obviously intent on joining him. The pilots were McCampbell and Roska. He shook his head and banked away. This was to be his last flight at Pensacola. He wanted the time to himself.
He rolled out of the turn alone, trimmed the plane for climbing, and settled more comfortably into the cockpit. And all at once it seemed incredible that he was the pilot of a dive bomber. It must be a dream, or a hallucination—he had not the faintest idea how to fly an airplane!—and a bemused thrill of terror swept through him. He looked at the parachute on which he was seated, and even this familiar canvas package appeared strange—he wondered how it was meant to be used. So fantastic indeed was the illusion of unreality that, though he knew he could destroy it when he wished, he could not bring himself to do so; and while the dive bomber steadily spiraled higher, pulsing and thundering, growing from the earth with brainless mechanical conviction, he brooded over this curious circumstance, aware that when the time came for him to assume control he would do so with no hesitation, with no doubt.
He asked himself the meaning of this, but was at a loss for an answer. He did not know how he had gotten into such a situation. It had all come about as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, that much he knew. Although, of course, it could be traced farther and farther backward in time to Manchuria, or Commodore Perry, or farther, as each event in human history was antedated by another, and from it developed. Still, for ordinary purposes, the war opened on the island of Oahu that Sunday morning; consequently it was inevitable that he should now be in one military service or another, and as he had chosen the Naval Air Corps there was, most plainly, no mystery.
He could hear, as remote as though she were in another state, the voice of the WAVE in the tower, and peering down he discerned the field and the miniature rectangular building where she was.
He unhooked the microphone and in a muffled voice he said, “Saufley tower. Saufley tower. This is the Green Hornet. Do you read me?”
There was a pause.
A man said, “Green Hornet, this is Saufley tower. We read you loud and clear. What is your number? Over.”
“Saufley tower, this is the Green Hornet,” Melvin said. “My number is Fond du Lac 6-4125. If a man answers, hang up.”
There was another pause.
He waited, peering down in high glee. He knew that by now the squadron tower was swarming with officers armed with binoculars. There were dozens of planes in range of the tower and there was, so to speak, a price on the Green Hornet. The Hornet was a tradition, a symbol of defiance who transferred immortally and anonymously from one battalion to the next, a goading voice from the sky. Every so often he addressed one or another of the Pensacola towers.
“Green Hornet, this is Saufley,” responded an unusually affable voice, a voice that should be considered genial and kindly, or even more—positively eager to be regarded as a good friend. “Hello there, Green Hornet,” said this amiable Christian voice, “Do you read me? Over.”
“I read you,” Melvin answered. “Can you give me the bearing and distance to the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco?”
With suave good humor, in fact with a jovial chuckle, the voice replied, “Operations is plotting that course for you, Green Hornet. Please waggle your wings if you can hear me.”
“Well, thank you, but, no thanks,” said Melvin. “I’m the Green Hornet, however I’m sure not that green.”
He hung up the microphone. But then he reflected that he had nothing to lose by identifying himself. He was through anyway. He was not going to be commissioned, he was going to Great Lakes as an apprentice seaman and could not possibly be broken any lower. It might be nice, somehow, rather gratifying in a way, to remember during the long disagreeable months ahead that he was not apt to be forgotten by the cadets, or, for that matter, by anyone at Pensacola. They might forget his name but as long as Pensacola endured—and as long as it did endure there would be a Green Hornet somewhere overhead, calling down his desperate taunt—they would remember there had once been a Green Hornet who was not afraid to identify himself. So he dipped the wings, and though he was high above the field he knew the movement could be recognized, and that, when he descended, one way or another they would have him bracketed.
The tower was speaking. He could not hear it distinctly. Another station was interfering. He began to hear, with increasing clarity, what must be a Cuban news broadcast—a delirious gabble with the words guerra and muerto recurring constantly, and having had enough contact with the world below he unplugged the radio. The sky had become a deeper blue. From the ground it had looked cerulean and warm as the Gulf water. It was now a thin, chill indigo and the clouds were far below. He gazed around, yawning. Except for the monotonous tremble of the engine he thought he might have been asleep.
Abruptly he shivered from the cold, and glancing at the altimeter he was astounded to find it registering close to twenty thousand feet; only an instant ago when he looked at it the needle indicated fourteen thousand. Immediately he sat up, pinching and slapping himself and whistling, and quickly strapped the oxygen mask across his face, watching the gauges and the little rubber bellows to make sure the apparatus was functioning.
Yet, in a while, despite himself, reminding himself he should pay attention, he had resumed gazing into the cold and gaseous void that varied only when the icy gray cowl of the bo
mber floated slowly by the sun, appearing to bow a little with each revolution, as if in obeisance to some higher deity; he went around and on around and around again, undisturbed and fascinated. And he fell into a dream, then, so absorbed and lulled was he by the whole vessel of the universe; and all through and among those invisible stars whose miraculous opulence was blinding it seemed to him that he was journeying, and he did not doubt that he could see around the earth entirely—far beyond the swamps where De Soto wandered, beyond the Western plains to where the lace-white surf came feeding on the California shore, and to the volcanic islands of Hawaii and rain-drenched valleys of Samoa, and New Guinea, and the lost pyramids of Siam. Beyond the Ganges to the high plateaus of India, and the waters of the Red Sea and Algiers, and Portugal, westward to the Azores and to the jeweled Antilles, and to the Florida keys.
The motion ceased. The Dauntless swung and dipped at anchor. The air was thin. The controls cold as ice, useless. He plunged the pedals to the bottom, one and then the other: the Dauntless barely responded. He unlocked the shoulder harness so that he could twist around in the cockpit and look backward while he kicked the pedals again, and he saw the tall blue rudder swaying to the left and to the right with a sonorous clang that echoed within the hollow fuselage like church bells in a corridor. The plane nosed mildly back and forth. He looked at the instrument panel and found that the altimeter was stationary. He could go no higher. This was the summit.
Lazily the bomber slipped away, gyrating like some heavy indolent bird, while he relaxed with his hands folded in his lap. Far, far beneath him the earth was enveloped in a planetary haze; even so there was an impression of solidity to that harmless tufted ball, and while he was descending he contemplated the broad, soft arc of the idly whirling horizon and felt near to it, yet not altogether a part of it, though it was the one home to which he must return after each absence, and he thought he might lie down on it soon to rest for a little while. Without fear he considered it, with the same benign indifference he used to feel as a child when he studied the whole world from the steep gilded saddle of an undulating stallion on a carousel.
Steadily the earth came nearer.
He accepted the plump stick that stood between his knees and disdainfully pressed it forward until it grew rigid and the wind hissed jealously at the cracks in the canopy. He pulled the stick into his lap and rolled to his left and to his right and rolled over completely in joyless abandon, came up again higher and higher, and the plane somersaulted off the track over the top into loose space and fell clumsily, with no direction or meaning, like a broken kite.
Down he went, on down, but pulled up savagely with the blood half-sucked from his brain. The canopy rattled and the engine shook, the cowl dipping like a porpoise diving through the waves, until at last it stalled and sank aside into a mushy, sickening spin. He pushed the lever that set the flaps to opening, and watched the trailing edge of the bomber’s wing split wider and wider apart with the awesome precision of hydraulic machinery. The harness cut through the coveralls into his shoulders, and the safety belt—he tapped it with one finger—had become as hard as a board on his lap. He pushed the stick forward to the instrument panel, but the speed did not increase very much, nor the degree of inclination: the Dauntless was traveling about as fast as it would go, unless the flaps were closed. He remembered what he had been told about retracting the flaps in a dive; he remembered the partial demonstration, and the fact that a year or so ago some lieutenant from another field had done this, probably by mistake. No one saw him come down, but not far away there was a crew of lumberjacks who felt the ground shake and thought a meteor had struck the earth.
The flaps closed smoothly. The safety belt gradually relaxed and the shoulder straps hung limp. His head rested comfortably on the hard leather cushion while he gazed ahead, lost in meditation.
And the great globe of the earth rushed up to meet him.
Melvin blinked and stretched; he knew he had been dozing again. The wings of the Dauntless were hissing in the wind. He saw that the compass was gyrating senselessly in the amber fluid and he realized that he had neglected to lock it. With dreamy indecision he was speculating on whether the dive would damage the compass when he understood, without quite knowing how he understood, that the plane was about to break apart. He was certain he had heard nothing more than the sibilation of the wind and the shriek of the engine, nor had he observed anything remarkable, except a few extreme instrument readings, or scented smoke or gas or oil, or felt the knowledge through his body, and yet the plane was going to disintegrate. He knew this, and he knew he was not mistaken.
Casually rolling his head across the cushion, he fixed his eyes on the radio mast just outside the greenhouse. At that instant the mast broke off. He scarcely had time to see what direction it went, although he knew it had been left behind, or, since the Dauntless was in a vertical dive, the mast would now be high overhead, perhaps a quarter of a mile overhead already. He thought the mast had struck the fin, although the impact he felt could have been caused by something else snapping off. It was possible that the entire tail section—the rudder, the fin itself, and the elevators—had broken off completely. In that case he was riding to his death—of this there could be no question. He tried to twist around and peer over his shoulder, but he did not have the strength. He could barely lift his arms. He could not even sigh; the pressure on his chest was inexorable. And he could not make up his mind what to do: whether to die or to struggle against this impersonal, relentless, and diabolic power. The day must come when he would die. It might as well be now. This would be a satisfying death, free of thought and pain. There was nothing to do but remain as he was, and muse on what might have been, until the end. Then he would exist no more, although he might be remembered with a certain awe by everyone who had known him, and by those who heard the story. But if he lived and worked for half a century, what could he achieve? Who would care what he said, and who would repeat to strangers the opinions he held? He would live in obscurity until, on a day that would be remarked for some other event, he died.
Melvin had been sitting in the cockpit with his arms crossed, prepared for death—it seemed so reasonable—but then his right hand of its own accord began to grope for the control stick. He could not prevent it; he watched his hand fumbling for a grip and understood that his life or death depended on the success or failure of his hand. He noticed that the fingers had an arthritic look and that some intense power was forcing them to encircle the stick. They went around it and tightened, and he saw the stick begin to move backward, but he could not tell whether the hand and wrist were straining from the effort or whether some convulsion made the tendons appear rigid and the flesh of the hand sunken like the hand of a cadaver. He watched in fascination to see what would happen next. The needles were still traveling around the dials and the wind screamed outside the canopy. He noticed a movement in his left arm; the hand opened deliberately, reached forward, and joined the other. As soon as he saw this he suspected that the tail of the airplane had not broken off; if the elevators had broken away the stick would be attached to nothing but a few cables whipping in the wind and it could be moved easily with one hand. An immense pressure must have caused him to take the stick with both hands. Just then he discovered that a strip of black rubber which protected a seam on the wing where the dihedral commenced had disappeared. He was certain the strip had been in place when he left the field. He glanced at the opposite wing and saw the rubber on that side breaking and snapping out of sight a few inches at a time and he realized the rubber had crystallized. Two little holes, like bullet holes, were suddenly visible in the seam, then another, and another—rivets were popping out. He waited and watched, expecting the rest of the rivets to break, and then the wing to tear away, but nothing else happened.
It occurred to him that during the dive his mind had become separated from his body, and the more he thought about this the more convincing it became. Proof of it lay in the fact that while he had resi
gned himself to death his body had not, and was, even now, attempting to save itself. He considered his hands and his wrists; they were straining to draw the control stick backward and he wondered if he should help. He did not want to assume the burden; it seemed to him that he was entitled to relax. A great deal had happened since he joined the Navy, the experience had been tiring, and he only wanted to use whatever time remained in thinking the matter over; and yet, as some part of him did so earnestly hope to continue living, he thought it would be selfish to ignore that fanatic struggle which was proceeding so silently but with such devout passion only a few inches away.
The altimeter registered eight thousand feet, but the needle lagged—he did not know how much; he might be nearer to seven thousand, which meant that if he intended to do anything he would have to do it in the next few seconds. He surveyed the wings; one of them appeared to be all right. He looked at the altimeter again and was shocked to see the needle dropping below five thousand; stunned by the speed, he followed it around the dial: four thousand. It was as though somebody were setting a clock, turning back the hours, the longer needle overtaking the shorter one again and again, and when the two stood straight up at noon the dive would be over.
He looked through the windshield. Plowed fields and a country road were twirling toward him. The fields were green, umber, henna, purple, variegated and tumbling like crystals in a kaleidoscope.
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