Dixie met a steel executive and, in return for a few minutes’ conversation, received a half ton of alloy.
Lucky wrote glowing letters and received, in return, a special prop, a new type of retractable landing gear and half a dozen instruments.
Flynn got into a crap game and won fifty dollars which was immediately turned into the treasury.
Dixie sold her custom-built roadster for half its value and parted with a mink coat and mortgaged the only thing O’Neal had left clear to her—his sixteen-room, four-bath, three-garage mansion.
Lucky turned up at Miami, borrowed a ship from a millionaire friend and took first prize in an air show, enriching the stake by five thousand.
Although she had very little faith in the project itself, Dixie had much faith in her pilot. Perhaps she could not find it in her heart to see him fail and, again, perhaps she knew that the quicker disaster came, the sooner Lucky Martin would become Pilot Martin on EAT.
Three months after O’Neal’s death found the plant going once more. Clerks added columns of figures, engineers slid their slip sticks, mechanics hammered and swore.
On the platform in the shop, the new dive bomber began to take shape.
Unique in construction, it could carry almost half its own weight in deadly missiles. It had two cockpits, both covered with a glass hood, accommodating pilot, gunner, and a new .50-caliber machine gun aft, and two thirty-thirty machine guns on either wing.
A flying fortress, it was no larger than the pursuit planes of yesterday and a fleet of them could be expected to wipe out the largest flotilla on the seas.
Midway in the hurried construction, with Lucky almost out on his feet from weariness, threatened disaster came from a new quarter.
The blueprints of the plane were assembled in books, making a considerable pile. These were almost always in use and therefore it was impossible to keep their precious pages under lock and key.
One night Lucky was working late. The only man with him was Flynn. Around them and the single globe of yellow light, the shop stretched out in gloomy darkness.
Lucky, puzzling over the retracting gear, sent Flynn to the office for the book covering it.
Ever since Bullard had tried so hard to force them into a deal, Flynn had never neglected to carry a spanner. He had it now, jutting out of his hip pocket, about three times the size of an automatic.
He was whistling because it was dark and because the shop was so lonely and still and the whistle was a tuneless thing which made the dimness more lonesome than ever.
Flynn pushed back the door of the unlighted office. Something rustled just in front of him. Flynn dived to the left, trying to get his silhouette out of the light behind him.
An automatic roared, strewing the bullet’s path with sparks.
Flynn on the floor. The spanner came out and over his head like a grenade. It clinked hard as it hit.
A loud curse of mingled profanity and pain accompanied the clatter of the falling gun. Flynn’s aim had been true.
Lucky sprinted across the littered floor, hurdling parts and crates.
“Look out!” shouted Flynn. “He had a gun!”
Lucky turned at right angles and raced out of the shop. He turned along the outside of the building and came up to the window of the office.
A man, a shadow in the starlight, was half in and half out of the opening.
Lucky seized his collar. The shadow unloaded itself off the sill and, smashing out with terrified fists, knocked Lucky loose.
For a moment they grappled. Lucky tripped and sprawled on the ground. His still-reaching fingers touched leather and he hauled a valise down with him.
Flynn had found the automatic. Leaning out of the window, he fired twice into the air.
The trespasser vanished.
When Lucky had found the lights, and when hangars and field glowed cheerily, he examined his prize and discovered a complete set of blueprint books inside.
“It’s that Bullard,” said Flynn, rubbing a bruised elbow.
“Whoever it is, that was close. After this, these things are going to stay in the safe at night.”
“You bet!”
“And,” said Lucky, “you’d better carry a gun around.”
Flynn caressed his spanner. “No sir, this little baby did all the work that was needed.”
Lucky grinned as he put the books away. “I guess that ought to discourage that free balloon. In three weeks we’ll be finished, and if he can do anything in that time, let him try.”
“Yeah,” said Flynn. “Let him.”
In the turmoil of last-minute checks, Bullard was completely forgotten. The dive bomber spread its wings and gleamed before its proud creators and only one other incident, so trivial that it was completely forgotten until later, occurred to mar the efficiency of the building.
Lucky, on the next to the last day, was up at dawn to find four mechanics, including Flynn, already on the job. As Lucky walked about the ship, giving it a semi-final check, he stepped on a wing bolt, which rolled under his boot, almost throwing him. He leaned over to toss it away.
“Say, Flynn,” said Lucky, “I thought we had an exact number of these pins.”
“That’s right. Gee, you got one of ’em in your hand. You suppose any were left out?”
A quiet, but often surly, mechanic named Evans had been in charge of these pins.
“Evans,” said Lucky, “you sure you got all these things in right? If one was missing this crate would fly apart in a dive.”
“Sure I got them in,” growled Evans. “Check them if you don’t believe it.”
Lucky checked and found every bolt in place. Relieved, deciding the one he held had been the result of a miscount, he forgot about it.
He was far more interested in the conversation he had the next day with Commander Lawson.
“Hold everything,” said Lucky. “We’ve finished the new dive bomber.”
“Martin, I told you—” began Lawson.
“You will at least watch the test, won’t you?”
The officer muttered about it for a while, finishing with, “To be frank with you, Martin, I don’t believe you can make the cruise you said you could with it, even if it doesn’t fly apart in the air. I’m not interested in seeing you killed, old man.”
“Then supposing I put it this way,” said Lucky. “I’ll make a cross-country trip first. Then if, under full load of guns and bombs, I fall down on you, we’ll forget about it.”
“As long as you’ve built it, name your date.”
“Three weeks from today, weather permitting.”
“All right,” said Lawson. “It will at least prevent you from killing yourself. Three weeks from today.”
CHAPTER FOUR
A First Test—
and Bullets
THIS is easy,” said Lucky Martin when he landed at the Naval Air Station.
“Prove it,” said Lawson. “I’ve talked myself hoarse to the powers and they’ve finally consented to give you an official trial. It’s eight o’clock. An observer is ready at Charleston, South Carolina, which is, I believe, the required midway point.”
“Right. I take off for Charleston at nine. At twelve-thirty sharp I will be back here in Washington. Three and a half hours, and no refueling in between.”
“That’s a big brag,” smiled Lawson.
“Where’s the armament, the bombs and whatever? Load, my jolly tars!”
Flynn, who had been a half-winger in the long-forgotten days along the Western Front, when Lucky Martin had been building models, proudly took his position in the gunner’s cockpit and lorded over the mounting of the weapons.
Evans, who had come down from the factory with a truck, disappeared for a few minutes, but Lucky did not give it a second thought.
“All set?” said Lawson.<
br />
“On the line. See you at twelve-thirty.”
“I hope so.”
Lucky gunned the sleek, gleaming ship into the wind. A sailor clicked a stopwatch and dropped his hand. The dive bomber leaped, quivering, down the field like mercury squirted from a tube.
Lucky gave himself over to the joy of speed and flight. Skimming the treetops, with the mighty engine thundering, he shot along the bank of the Anacostia River, down the Potomac, so low that his slipstream rippled the blurred water below.
He came up a little. White and green Mount Vernon, beaten by the engine’s roar, was briefly under the stubby wings. Land again, flat plains, rickety houses.
The quicksilver javelin, fast as light, rolled back the screen of earth, devouring miles, throwing creeks and fields contemptuously behind.
Lucky knew what this plane would do. He knew what he could do. At twelve-thirty he would again be in Washington, DC.
The chronometer on the panel said ten-thirty when Charleston, white, lazy and blue, slid up over the curve of the world and fanned out under the streaking wings.
Flashing down the Battery, banking over Fort Sumter, he sliced a wide circle of blue, flirted his flippers at palms, bridges and mud flats, settled his black, spinning compass and roared north again.
A few miles north of Raleigh, North Carolina, just as they brushed the Roanoke River by, as one sweeps away a silver strand of spider web, Flynn’s voice rang in the tube.
“A gray ship straight up!”
“As long as he keeps away—”
“He’s got the height. He can dive.”
Lucky squinted up through the glass dome of his shield. The gray ship, almost invisible against the dazzling sun, was starting down. Lucky knew he had the faster plane and he could not understand why anyone should want to intercept him. But the menace of the other plane, from a purely navigational point of view, was unmistakable.
“She’s commercial,” yelled Flynn.
“She’s pursuit, but not service,” corrected Lucky. “We’ll show her our heels.”
“She’s got the speed out of that dive. For God's sake, zigzag!”
Lucky glanced up again and then down. The deserted hills of southern Virginia were under them. No witnesses down there.
“She’s armed!” cried Flynn. “She’s got two bow guns!”
“Are you loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Remove your braces and set your sights. We’ll rake this baby!”
Lucky touched rudder and eased back a little on the stick. The dive bomber needed no urging. It leaped skyward in a wingover, engine changing pitch like a siren.
For an instant, the two ships were head-on, and then Lucky dived out.
The .50-caliber machine gun quivered and flamed in Flynn’s hands. He was warning the other plane off, shooting high.
The gray ship veered, spraying lead through its prop. All shots went wide.
Coming out of a loop, the gray ship, rolling, came out on the dive bomber’s tail, guns stuttering above the cowl.
Lucky, facing his first aerial encounter, did the natural thing. He zoomed, for an instant almost motionless in the other’s sights. Tracer drew a pattern of line just below the metal plane’s tail.
Flynn was standing in the plunging pit, firing straight back, feeding bullets as big as his thumb through his racketing weapon.
The gray plane strove to dive out of range. The line of escape and the blue fingers of Flynn’s tracer intersected. The blurred prop of the strange craft exploded into a fleeing squadron of splinters.
“Let me finish him off!” yowled Flynn into the tube.
“Haven’t time!”
“Hell!”
The dive bomber verticaled back into its course.
Motorless, the gray ship was stabbing down at the flats below, a place of refuge in these rolling hills.
“Cold meat,” mourned Flynn.
Lucky, mopping at his beaded brow, caught up on his breathing and settled his compass in the groove.
He had been ten minutes ahead of his time. The ten minutes were eaten up.
But before either of them had any time to brood on the matter, there was the Potomac again, the Anacostia and the Naval Air Station.
“Don’t yip about that other ship,” said Lucky.
“But gee whiz—”
“They’d think we were lying. We’re on time and that’s enough.”
“Okay,” sighed Flynn. “I go through the war without a score, and then when I get one, you won’t let me talk about it. Hell of a life.”
“There isn’t any war, and we don’t want to get into trouble.”
Flynn’s answer was drowned in the thump of the landing gear against the ground.
“Twelve-thirty,” crowed Lucky, standing up in his pit.
Lawson grudgingly admitted that it was. The Charleston observer had radioed in the check.
“Now will you believe me?” said Lucky. “I tell you you can’t get along without this sky devil. Tomorrow we give her the dives and sign the papers for a hundred.”
“If she holds together,” said Lawson.
“Oh,” said Lucky, tempting his jinx beyond all endurance, “she’ll hold together. Won’t she, Dixie?”
“I…I hope so,” said the girl who stood beside Lawson.
“If she don’t,” said Lucky, grinning, “you won’t have enough left to bury me with. But then the Navy can do that. How about it, Lawson?”
Lawson shuddered. Strange people, these test pilots!
CHAPTER FIVE
Falling Wings
and a Lost Ship
AS calm as though about to take a ride in a sightseeing bus, instead of a man-killing dive bomber, Lucky Martin hauled his helmet over his tousled brown hair and buckled the straps under his big chin.
“All through in a couple of hours,” said Lucky, “and happy days are here again.”
“You’ve got a tested chute?” said Dixie.
“Sure, but I won’t need it.”
“Don’t tempt fate,” pleaded Dixie, shivering although the day was warm. “You…you’re all I’ve got now.”
“You’ll have a fortune to boot very shortly,” grinned Lucky. “Did I ever let anybody down?”
“No.”
“Then I never will. That little ship out there is as tough as a mustang, rarin’ to go. Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“I never—” said Dixie, feebly trying to cheer herself up by uttering an ancient aviation joke, “I never saw the Rock of Gibraltar in a power dive, so I don’t know.”
“Atta girl. Put on your earmuffs and keep the liniment handy for your neck. When I start down, you’re going to see something!”
“I hope not. Lucky—”
“What?”
“Can’t you ease her off at seven Gs? Can’t you pull her punches a little?”
“The smoke meter in that crate won’t lie and if she can’t take it, we’ll want to know before we start production.”
“Then you’ll try to pull her apart?”
“Sure I will, but she won’t. Honey, that’s my job. If they won’t pull with me in the pit, they won’t pull at all. Rough Rider, that’s me. But if she does—”
“Then you think it might go to pieces…?”
“No. It can’t! There’s the commander and the observers. Flynn! Rev her up, and let’s have a listen at her.”
Flynn, in the office, heeled the brakes and jabbed the throttle. The engine bellowed sweetly and then died off to a clicking murmur.
“Okay,” said Flynn, surrendering his place and climbing down. “Give it hell, Lucky.”
“All set,” said Lawson.
Lucky reached out of the pit and gave Dixie’s shoulder a reassuring shake. She managed a smile and he grinned
back. Pulling the hood down over him, Lucky taxied into the wind, saluted the crowd, shoved upon throttle and stick and lanced down the runway and away from earth.
Evans, the mechanic, tried to look uninterested.
The dive bomber climbed as fast as a sixteen-inch shell—and fully as loud.
Anacostia tumbled away so quickly that it appeared in need of a chute. The Capitol and parks dwindled in size as though sprinkled with alum. The Washington Monument receded until it was nothing more than a toothpick stuck in a green carpet.
Bridges were black lines across the silver Potomac and the cars upon them were something less than moving periods.
To the south, Alexandria was enveloped in a haze. To the northeast, Baltimore was a black smudge. The rolling green of Maryland was laid out like a quilt, tacked to brown Virginia with blue tape.
Ten thousand, fifteen thousand, eighteen thousand.
Lucky went around three times, admiring the view through the glass of the hood, incidentally noting that the air was clear of ships under him.
He examined his neat cockpit, to make certain that everything was lashed down. That was necessary, because loose objects would float in front of his face when he started the dive.
For an instant he had an odd feeling in the region of his heart. A premonition reared black and ugly within him. He mopped at his face, although it was cold so high in the air.
What was the matter with him? He’d done this half a hundred times before. Wasn’t he Lucky Martin? Other men might die, but hadn’t he always pulled through? He knew his ship and he knew himself. Nothing could possibly happen. He knew exactly when to pull out. Even when the gravity gauge slid up to nine, even when the blood was driven down out of his head and everything went black, he knew what to do.
There was Bolling, there was the Naval Air Station. That was the target, he was the bullet.
“Fire, Gridley,” muttered Lucky, trying to grin.
Back on the stick and throttle. Let her stall and whip out of it. He’d show them. Up came the nose. The ground was straight down at his back.
The dive bomber faltered, hung motionless for an instant, standing on its tail like a flying fish.
The bottom dropped out.
The nose swooped down with whip-crack speed. The earth tipped. The throttle shot up the trident.