The dive bomber had gone over the hump. Nose pointing straight at the earth, eighteen thousand feet down, engine on full, building up to terminal velocity when the resistance of the wind equaled the downward drive of the wide-open throttle.
From a dot against the blue, the ship swiftly became a silver cross inverted. Larger and larger, doubling in size with each passing second, the plane was hurling itself toward the checkerboard of earth, to seemingly certain destruction.
But this was not dangerous. The buildings shook with the flood of sound, ears deafened and closed. But this was not the worst. In a moment O’Neal would pull out and then the danger would come.
To jerk a ship level from a downward speed of seven miles a minute or more would put a strain of nine times the plane’s weight on the wings. From two hundred pounds, the pilot’s weight would be instantaneously stepped to eighteen hundred pounds, every ounce of which would be bent on crushing him into his pit. Men’s brains came loose in their skulls when the pullout was too sharp. Wings came off when the gravity increased to eleven. Over that men became a senseless, bleeding mass, smashed into their cockpit.
“He knows what he’s doing,” prayed Lucky into the din.
“The ship can take it,” whispered Dixie.
Three thousand feet up, still howling straight at the earth, the dive bomber was due to level out.
Lucky would have given ten years of his life to have been in that plane instead of O’Neal. Up there it was too loud and hectic to think. Down here it was terrible.
The plane’s nose pulled up slightly, fighting the inertia which strove to dash the silver wings to fragments against the dusty earth.
Abruptly the ship snapped level.
For an instant it sped straight out toward the horizon and then, as though a bomb had exploded between the struts, it flew into countless bits of wreckage which sailed in a scattering cloud about the fuselage.
“Her wings!” yelled Lawson. “Bail out! Good God, he’s trapped!”
They could see O’Neal’s head. He raised one hand. He strove to pry himself out of the plunging coffin which, with renewed speed was darting straight down again.
He might have made it if he had had another thousand feet.
Belt unbuckled, blasted back against the seat, O’Neal stayed where he was, half out of his pit, until the gleaming fuselage vanished into the earth, leaving a spreading cloud of twisted metal fragments to mingle with the hovering dust.
The silence which ensued was cut only by the soft patter of wreckage settling on the field.
People broke free from the paralysis of horror and began to run toward the plane. The crash siren screamed and an ambulance leaped toward the spot where no ambulance was needed.
Dixie tried to follow but could not. A mechanic’s wife gently put her arm across the girl’s shoulders and turned her face away from the lazy, curling dust.
Lucky was standing on the edge of the pit, looking down through the smoke. The banks had caved, quenching any fire, burying O’Neal.
Lucky wiped his hands across his face and slid over the shifting clay, searching for the cockpit.
CHAPTER TWO
But to Sell
to Another Country
A week after the funeral, Commander Lawson called at the silent O’Neal Aircraft plant.
He found Lucky Martin thumbing through cluttered files in the main office. Dixie O’Neal was sitting on the window seat, looking out across the field. Her dark eyes were sad and her face, in startling contrast to her jet hair, was as pale as ivory. Her small hands twisted nervously at a scrap of paper.
Lawson shook Lucky’s hand and greeted Dixie and, although he was friendly enough, Lucky could sense a certain reserve, the inflexibility of an officer who has a duty to perform.
“We’ll go ahead on another diver as soon as I get financial affairs straight,” said Lucky, running harried fingers through his curly and unruly brown hair. “I’m a lot handier with a stick than I am with an adding machine.”
“Aren’t your clerks…?”
“There are no clerks,” said Lucky, waving his hand at the empty outer room.
“But certainly O’Neal’s engineers—”
“I’m the engineers,” said Lucky.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“We’re strapped for cash, and I couldn’t sales-talk the bankers. I guess I’m better behind a panel than behind a desk.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Lawson, squirming slightly, but still trying not to look gray and severe.
“But I think we can swing it,” said Lucky with a hopeful grin. “You know doggone well your Navy couldn’t get along without our dive bomber. The whole new fighting technique is built around this ship. While I don’t expect you to advance anything, your support and okay would certainly help me smooth things over with the bankers. O’Neal left a couple of thousand, but that’s all.”
“But good heavens, Martin, you can’t mean your other contracts failed to bring you in money. There’s that Army pursuit job you built and—”
“Money all gone to satisfy old accounts. Money expended on the development of a new metal. The steel companies wouldn’t help, you know. They need volume before they can develop anything. We’ve got enough spare parts we used for testing and enough experience on this job to make another one like it. Dixie—”
“After all, Miss O’Neal, you’re the boss around here now,” said Lawson. “What do you think of this idea to build another one?”
Dixie faced the commander for an instant and then, gradually, the vitality faded out of her again. “What’s the use? Dad would have wanted Lucky to carry on. This dive bomber was a ten-year dream and three years of labor…but…Lucky could get a job with Eastern Air if he wanted. He could…I’m sorry. Of course we’ll go on.”
Lawson shifted uncomfortably again. He cleared his throat two or three times. “As a matter of fact…er…Martin, there’s no need of your wasting further time on the dive bomber.”
Lucky came out of his swivel chair and braced himself with flat hands against the blotter and papers. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Damn it all,” said Lawson, wishing he was back on a bridge and in uniform, “I hate to have to tell you this. We saw the dive bomber. You claim it to have pursuit ship qualities. You claim it has a long-range cruising radius. You claim speed. You claim it will hold together in a twelve-thousand-foot power dive better than any ship ever before built.”
“Certainly we claim it, and we’ll prove it. Something went wrong, Commander. Something’s haywire about that ship, but we’ll straighten it out.”
“Martin, that thing is a killer, and will always be a killer. It’s an engine with ears tacked to it, horsepower without wings. The Navy will have nothing further to do with it. Your next ship might hold, but what about the production ships? Our men are valuable. We can’t risk—”
“See here,” begged Lucky. “One try doesn’t mean failure. Other ships—”
“There are other ships on the market which will hold together in a power dive. Take Miss O’Neal’s advice and quit before you’re killed, Martin.”
Lucky sat down suddenly. But he was by no means beaten. Calmly he said, “Commander, I’m going to build this ship if I have to rob a bank, and I’m going to sell it to the Navy and you’re going to buy a round hundred of them on the first order.”
“I tell you—”
“Lucky,” said Dixie quietly, “why can’t you ever see when you’re beaten? It’s folly to go ahead and—” She stopped, studying his face. She turned slowly to Lawson. “It’s no use talking to him, Commander. And Dad would have wanted it this way.”
Lawson had delivered himself of his orders and he was glad to withdraw. Lucky stared long at the door which had let the officer through.
“I guess I’m kind of yellow, Lucky
. But I don’t think I can stand any more of it. The first one you tested broke up before you had it all the way through its common flight tests. The next one killed…Dad. Aren’t you being stubborn? Can’t you see that everything is set against you? No clerks, no engineers, only one mechanic left, no money. Someday I hoped you’d beat the game by quitting before it got you. I hoped you’d get an airline job and we could get a place in Washington—a little place and a flivver.”
“You’ll have your little place,” said Lucky, smiling. “Sure you will…Dixie. And once I get the Navy convinced…”
Lefty Flynn, the last remaining mechanic, who now functioned as both janitor and office boy, stuck his thick head through the door.
“There’s a couple gents hanging around outside,” said Lefty. “One looks like he needs a mooring mast, and the other is stinky with perfume. Do I let ’em in or knock ’em out?” He showed, as he rubbed his smudged pug nose, that he infinitely preferred the latter course.
“Let them in,” said Lucky.
“Aw…all right. Hey, you birds, this way!”
Mr. Bullard squeezed through the door and stood beaming before the desk. A man almost as thick as Mr. Bullard’s right arm stood hidden behind the column of Mr. Bullard’s leg.
“Well, well, well!” said Mr. Bullard, heartily overlooking the tension of Lucky’s evident dislike. “Mr. Martin, meet Mr. Smith.”
The man whose name was not Smith offered Lucky a limp hand.
Bullard was evidently to be spokesman. He declined a chair which had not been offered and, clearing his throat like an elephant blows out its trunk, said, “Well, well, well, a touching picture. Well, can I understand the hopelessness with which you are faced, Lucky.”
“Mr. Martin,” corrected Lucky.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Martin. But it is darkest before the dawn, calmest before the tempest, sunniest after the storm—”
“And all is not gold that glitters,” said Lucky. “What do you want?”
“Why, to help you, of course. I…I mean, Mr. Martin, in me you see the Good Samaritan, the solver of all problems, the balm to all ills. In short, Mr. Martin, in me you will have salvation.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. Mr. Martin, how would you like to have me finance the building of one hundred dive bombers?”
“Where’s the catch?”
“No catch. I turn over the money up to and including five million dollars, and you build the ships. That’s all.”
“Can you do card tricks, too?” said Lucky.
“No, but I sing a winning song, Mr. Martin. Five million dollars would buy a place in Paradise, so it would. And all you have to do is—”
“Turn it down.”
Bullard blinked on that one. He had caught it in the teeth and it winded him a trifle. But he swelled again to his usual size, and smiled good-naturedly. “Of course you’ll have your joke.”
“Listen,” said Lucky. “I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you, but before we turn this down, let me put it up to the person with the real authority here. How about it, Dixie? Do we bite or what?”
Dixie’s study of Bullard and the man called Smith had already formed her answer. She shook her head.
“What would you do with a hundred dive bombers?” said Lucky.
“Why…use them, of course. My boy…I mean, Mr. Martin, when a man’s country lets him down.…”
“I get it,” said Lucky. “You’re hoping I’ll forget the new Neutrality Laws. Bullard, the government of the United States of America recently enacted a measure which says, in effect, that no pursuit or other plane of any kind shall be exported from the United States until it is two years old. Otherwise, in the event of a war, the United States would have to compete, most likely, against its own ingenuity. I happen to be an American, Bullard, or hadn’t you heard?”
“But they’ve let you down!” cried Bullard, shaking fleshily with amazement. “Three years’ work—”
The shadow named Smith reared up level with the top of the desk and piped shrilly, “Give him the other barrel, Joe.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll give him the other barrel. Look here, Martin. If you will come to a certain country and build in their aircraft plants three hundred of these dive bombers, you will be handed one million dollars to the penny, every kopek of it US cash dough, in return for your services.”
“That is a good bargain,” said Lucky. “But it has just occurred to me why these dive bombers are such good planes, Bullard. You know, a couple squadrons of them, flying at twenty thousand feet, out of sight of the sea, could sight the enemy ships before those ships can get the range.”
“Of course,” said Bullard, eagerly. “You bet.”
“And then,” continued Lucky, “these two squadrons or so go over the hump and start their dive straight down, at a speed of seven miles a minute, too fast to be hit.”
“Sure. That’s right.”
“About two thousand feet above the water, or even less, the bombers prepare to level out. They trip their toggles and down go their bombs, to blow the battleships to smithereens. At that altitude there can be few misses, and the bomber is gone before many shots can be fired. You get it, Bullard?”
“Sure I do.”
“No you don’t,” said Lucky. “O’Neal dive bombers will never be used to sink the battleships of the United States Navy. Now you can get out.”
Bullard shed the mask, if such it was. Bitter and crafty, he leaned forward. “Okay, Lucky Martin. Okay. But don’t forget that someday you are going to manufacture those planes, and don’t forget that, when the time comes, you’ll crawl to us on your knees. You can’t get away from us, Lucky Martin.”
“Okay. But don’t forget that someday you are going to manufacture those planes, and don’t forget that, when the time comes, you’ll crawl to us on your knees.”
“I said to get out.”
Bullard made no move. “The other day you slapped me. Now today—”
“Joe!” yelled Smith, in alarm.
The cry served warning to Lucky. He ducked back and Bullard’s palm met only empty air.
Lucky went over the desk like a high jumper. He snatched Bullard and booted him through the door.
Blue steel flashed in Smith’s hand. A monkey wrench sailed through the door and knocked down the gun. Flynn, following up his wrench, swooped down upon Smith and sent him soaring in the wake of Bullard.
The unsavory pair scrambled into their car. Safe behind the wheel, clutch ready to let out, Bullard shouted, “You’ll be sorry for this, you fool! You don’t know what I can do. I’ve got influence and, plenty of it! You think you’ve seen the last of me, do you?” With an angry snort, Bullard rocketed the car out of sight.
“We licked ’em, boss,” said the happy Flynn.
“Yeah,” said Lucky with a weary sigh. “For how long?”
Dixie turned puzzled eyes upon Lucky. “The man must be insane to make such an offer. Even if we did make the ships for him he could never get them out of the United States without the government knowing about it.”
“The only way he could do that,” said Lucky, sinking into a chair, “would be to have the rating changed on the type.”
“But he couldn’t do that!”
“If I fail to show the government what a fine ship this is, he could. And unless I do build this bomber and make a success of it, or if I build it and crash it in the tests—”
“He might be able to export it?” said Dixie. “Export a fighting plane?”
“Not as a fighting plane,” said Lucky with a worried scowl.
“You mean there’s a chance that it could be exported in spite of the laws?” said Dixie.
“Yes. The law only applies to fighting planes. The government’s rejection of a ship as unfit for war work removes it from the class of mili
tary airplanes. The only way a military airplane can be exported is after it has been used for two years.”
“You wouldn’t think the government would run a chance like that,” said Dixie.
“You mean having someday to fight equipment built in the United States? They can’t accept everything,” said Lucky. “And they pull a lot of boners from time to time. I guess they can’t help it. You know what happened in the case of the Thompson submachine gun. Thompson, an American, offered it to the United States government, but it was turned down. Thompson was then forced to sell his blueprints and rights to the British government, who accepted it and made it a standard weapon for British forces. Someday there’s a chance American troops will be killed with that very weapon.”
“But if the Navy turns us down, what’s wrong with selling elsewhere?” persisted Dixie.
“I’m funny. First, I’m a Yank and then I’m a test pilot. There’s a nice point of ethics here, but I wouldn’t be able to look at the flag again if I placed a potent fighting machine in the hands of another nation, where it will someday be used against the warships of the United States.”
“Never mind,” said Dixie, “it won’t ever come to that. We’ll sell it to the United States. We’ll make it better than the last one we built. The Navy will take it. We won’t let Bullard in on this.” Some of the old zest was with her again.
CHAPTER THREE
A Great Plane,
Ready for the Test
WITH no visible assets but his own ability, Lucky Martin stubbornly set out to finance the construction of another dive bomber.
Dixie, a more earthbound being and therefore infinitely more sane than the pilot, helped him all she could, once she understood that nothing could stop him.
Lucky Martin snapped at a job in Cincinnati, worked six days, took a scheduled pursuit job through its paces without taking it apart and returned East with fifteen hundred dollars cash and an aching pair of ears. The earache disappeared, so did the fifteen hundred, but a down payment had been made on an engine.