CHAPTER XII

QUICK ACTION

Against fluffy white clouds below a bright blue sky, an airplane spread its graceful shape.

Down on the Rand-Elwin field a host of students and visitors watched that ship of the air. Its pilot was Hal Dane. For a space he cradled along, a mere speck gently floating up there in the immensity of the ether. Then like a mad thing his ship began to fall, rolling and twisting and turning. At impossible angles it came to life, righted itself to spring upward--only to fall into worse dilemmas. Now he was diving, only two hundred feet above earth, and flying upside down. On the verge of crash, and in an agonizing slow roll, the ship slid back into normal flying position. High again--then a dangerous glide over the dragging tops of trees, and only the climbing reversal of the Chandelle saving him from wreck. Young Dane began to fall into the most deadly spin of them all, the whirling stall. He verged on that spin, yet never quite permitted it to become a spin. Instead, he slipped and stalled and trod the air until he fought his plane back into safety.

It might seem that young Dane was a daredevil fool risking both his neck and his plane in a useless show-off. But the group watching from the Rand-Elwin field knew there was a purpose and a real reason behind every one of these stunts. Hal Dane had been sent up to demonstrate that the Rand-Elwin School prepared its flyers to face practically every known emergency. Deliberately Hal Dane had forced his ship into spins and stalls that many a pilot would have come out of--in a casket and with a lily in his hand. Instead, with the stored-up skill bought of splendid teaching and relentless practice, the boy rolled or whipped or glided out of every danger.

Dropping out of freak flying into a series of long, swooping curves, Hal descended toward the field and made a landing so gently that he would hardly have jarred a glass of water on a dinner table.

Other flyers went up. There were planes all over the sky, outdoing themselves in loops and spins and whirls.

This was a big day at the Rand-Elwin field. Colonel Bob Wiljohn, a man of immense wealth and interested in the future of aviation, was a guest of the school. As part owner in the Wiljohn Airplane factories, at Axion, he was acting as representative of his firm in a search for young pilots of sufficient training and capability to handle their makes of planes as demonstrators. It was a compliment to an air school to have a man like Colonel Wiljohn inspect its student ranks in search of men for his aviation program.

After lunch and an inspection of equipment, rooms and hangars, the Colonel and his constant companion, his grandson Jacky Wiljohn, were out on the field again.

Colonel Wiljohn was a tall, muscular man, with a look of youth in his keen gray eyes despite the lines on his tanned face and his white hair. The type of man that kept young by his intense interest in big things and the future trend of affairs. Jacky, his grandson, was getting aviation in the blood at an early age. The little fellow with his close-clipped hair and wide-open black eyes, must have been only five or thereabouts, yet he could speak familiarly of water-cooled engine, and struts, and spar, and other lingo of aircraft.

The Colonel was not only a builder of planes, but also a flyer of some note. It was natural that he should want to view the Rand-Elwin field from the air as well as from the ground.

Hal could see one of the big, new trimotors being trundled out for his use. A pilot in helmet and flying clothes warmed her up and slid under the controls. Hal's eyes widened. It was Fuz--Fuz McGinnis that was to take her up. Some honor for the old boy! He'd liked to have been in Fuz's boots himself. But Fuz deserved it; he was a crack airman, that boy.

Colonel Wiljohn and Jacky, the youngster grinning happily over his miniature aviation togs, were already aboard.

Down the runway came the plane, maneuvered some slight obstruction, then gathered speed and soared into the air like a great bird of the skies.

McGinnis must be on his mettle; he had achieved the rise full two hundred yards within the end of the runway. A brisk shout of admiration followed his take-off--then the shout died into a composite gasp of dismay.

"The wheel--look!"

Just at the rise of the plane, the wheel on the left side had crumpled and now swung a useless, dangerous mass beneath the ship.

"Mercy on him," moaned Hal, "half his landing gear ruined! He's in for a smash!"

"Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred are against him," half-whispered Rex Raynor who was standing near, eyes glued on the beautiful plane circling so gracefully in the sky above.

Both he and Hal knew well enough what was likely to happen when the aviator came down to a landing with only one wheel to make the ground contact. A crash, an overturn, a complete capsizing that would spell the end for the occupants. And that boy Jacky in there too, a young life to be so horribly snuffed out.

None of the occupants of the ship were aware of what had happened. They circled serenely, while all unknown to them a death trap swung beneath their speeding plane. That slight obstruction on the runway must have cracked the gear, but the actual buckling of the wheel must not have occurred till the very moment of the take-off, and so had passed unnoticed.

For the throng of sightseers crowding the field, the dangle of broken gear had slight significance as to the terrible danger it presaged. But every student, pilot and mechanic knew what must eventually happen--unless the aviator in the damaged ship could be warned!

On the ground, men rushed about, shouting, pointing to gear of other machines, hoping to attract the attention of those in the air.

But for the flyers in the roaring ship, the shouts from far-away human pin-points on the earth below must have been as mere whispers, as nothing at all. There was no sign that any of this ground commotion ever reached the ship.

Other pilots began to rush out machines and warm them up, preparatory to rising in the air to carry their warning shouts and pantomime within closer range of the damaged sky ship.

Raynor was one of the first of these. Even as he raced his engine for the take-off, Hal Dane shouted after him, "Wait--I'll be with you--give me one second!"

With strength that he had hardly known was in him, the boy wrenched off the whole metal-spoked wheel of a bicycle that leaned against a hangar wall. The next instant he had leaped to the cockpit, carrying the wrenched, wracked piece of machinery with him. With that broken wheel he hoped to pantomime, to talk in dumb show, and reach the doomed flyers where shouting failed.

To overtake them was the problem of the next moment.

The great trimotor had risen high in the air, and instead of circling over the various sections of the Rand-Elwin field had zoomed off into a sudden flight at a speed that would soon make it a diminishing speck on the horizon.

Other planes darted after it, striving desperately to hang on to its tail, to keep some glimpse of it in eye. Once lost from view, the plane would be doomed--none to warn it--a crash in some landing field!

But the trimotor had speed, and the start. The diminishing speck became an atom, became nothing--the vast universe of the sky swallowed it up.

Pursuit ships began to turn back. It looked too hopeless. None knew where the big ship was headed. With no track or clew to follow, even a slight deviation now at the beginning of the flight would lead them into a diverging angle miles and miles away from the true course of the damaged plane.

Raynor was among the few that held doggedly on. Because his boat was a fast one, he was leaving the others. He plunged straight ahead in a course he seemed to have set for himself from the beginning.

Once he called through the tube, "Clanton--commercial field--Wiljohn left packet of papers there--must be going back for them--"

It was a desperate chance. Wiljohn might be going to any of a hundred places. Even if they sighted a ship and tailed it into Clanton, it might prove to be any of the thousands of sky craft that filled the air these days.

Still it was the only clew they had. They could follow it blindly--that was all.

Twenty-three miles from the Rand-Elwin Field to Clanton! With its newer speed and power, the big ship could make it in say nine-tenths of their own flying time. A mere fraction of time, a few moments out of all eternity! Yet those few moments could spell death to three unwarned passengers.

On the fringes of Clanton, Raynor overhauled a few leisurely flying ships from the commercial field. On ahead, and drifting back through their hum, was another and more powerful sound of motors. That could be the trimotor. If it were not, then their whole desperate race had been in vain.

They were now pressing up towards that larger ship, whatever it was, that was leading them into Clanton. Its motors seemed to reduce ever so slightly--cutting in for the landing field, it must be.

Raynor was making it in with every ounce of speed, pushing forward, overhauling the big boat by faint degrees. He must make it now, catch her before the ground swoop, circle her to give the warning signals.

Hal, with a hurried call to the pilot, slipped the hearing tube from under his helmet, and began a swift clambering out on the plane wing. The thrill of the old circus stunt days was upon him. He felt the old surges of power and balance shoot through him as he wing-walked, went to the very tip, carrying with him his signal of the broken bicycle wheel.

He must catch Fuz's attention. Colonel Wiljohn's, little Jacky's even--make one of the three see him, sense the danger message he would pantomime. If necessary, he would climb aloft to upper wing space, circus-stunt there silhouetted against the sky,--anything to catch the eye!

Fuz his friend, this gray-haired grandfather, this child--any risk to save them!

But as Hal prepared to climb struts to the plane top, he saw it was too late. Time had passed for catching any eye by acrobatics now.

Like a meteor, the boy shot down the length of the plane wing, dropped back into the pit. In a frenzy, he shouted through the tube, "Risk it with me--one chance--give me the control!"

It was a risk, in more ways than one. With an instructor from his flying school beside him, Hal Dane began to disobey orders, began a stunt that must mean the end of his flying certificate.

Already the trimotor was circling for the glide to landing--and to death!

There was no time left to ride abreast, to wave, to make any signal for the eye. But there was the ear, the hearing, still a last chance left to try. Even though Raynor's ship rode behind, it could send sound traveling forward through the air. Would Fuz McGinnis catch that sound?

In an agony, Hal Dane cut the motor, speeded it. Cut, speed! Cut, speed! "T-t-t-tat t-tat t-tat!" The old code, the call!

Through the air, Hal sent wave after wave of sputtering sound, a staccato call, "S. O. S.--danger--keep flying!"

But McGinnis in the plane ahead seemed deaf to any sound save the roar of his own motor.

He was swooping low--and lower!