AN AERIAL MESSAGE
Raynor seemed to have drawn as near as he could to the burning plane; he
hovered a little above it.
The next instant a coil of rope shot down, fell across the wing below.
In a flash the victim of the fire-trap had it in a noose under his arms
and swung himself clear of the already crackling wing.
As Raynor gently eased upward to take up any slack in the rope, the
flying death below him burst into flame and began to collapse. Some of
the struts burned through and pieces flew into the radius of the
propeller, which instantly smashed to pieces. Three seconds later the
machine began to fall. It staggered, wheeled sideways and dived. Like a
stone it hurled groundward on the edge of the aviation field.
The crowd scattered in all directions, fleeing from sparks, charred wing
pieces, explosion of fuel tank. A hangar roof caught fire and the
chemical guns had to be turned on to put out the blaze.
Raynor was coming down now, with his dangling burden swinging beneath
the plane.
The crowd massed again, followed his progress with anxious eyes. How was
he going to make it? Would his helpless, half-fainting burden swing
against building or tree tops, would he be ground-dragged? There was the
lake. Would he risk a water landing?
Fuz and Hal, eyes strained upward, shoulder to shoulder in the crowd,
seemed to feel their hearts beat as one.
"If only he could drop us word what he wants us to do," moaned Fuz.
"Needs his radio, or something in the sky--"
"He could telegraph us," said Hal, "if--"
"If he had that old dot-and-dash system we used to hammer to each other
on water pipes--only he's got nothing to hammer--Jumping Jerusalem!"
shrieked Fuz. "He's downing come--I mean, come downing--oh-h-h!" and
excitement mixed Fuz's words for him in the old childish manner.
And down Raynor came. With no system of ground communication on his
boat, he had to come as best he could and trust to luck.
Nearer down swung the roped burden. Folks could see now why the boy had
never jumped from the death-trap of the burning plane--his parachute
pack hung in scorched shreds. Sparks must have done for him there first
of all.
Sensing a ground-drag, Raynor rose a bit, then lowered, and with
masterly hand held the ship to steady placement in air, while men
reached upward to receive the boy. Someone had had presence of mind to
stand by with opened knife--a slash at the rope and the boy was free.
They laid him out, insensible, but with life still in him--a marvel,
after the danger he had incurred.
Raynor landed farther out, taxied in. He crawled from his ship with
knees trembling beneath him. The strain on him had been terrific.
Now that it was all over, Hal found his own limbs quivering. This thing
had unnerved him--and others too. All about him he saw men with lips
still white from the strain, bodies relaxed, huddling against some
support.
He had thought that in the face of such near-tragedy, school schedule
would be broken, the remaining flights for the day be put off. But
no--already an instructor had swung round in quick reproof on a boy who
had developed nerves and was begging off.
"Planes out for the next flight up!" barked the pilot. "Danger is the
aviator's schoolmaster--we must learn from everything."
On his way to the hangar, Hal passed Fuz, already climbing in a cockpit,
and whispered, "I've thought of something--am going to send you a
message in the sky--listen for it."
For the flyers in the sky, the rest of the afternoon was a busy time.
With each student in his plane went a data board and on it he was to do
map-work, but not the usual maps that land folks know.
This was the class in meteorology, or the study of the air itself. Hal
Dane was finding that flying was a complex vocation. Acquiring aircraft
knowledge required study in such varied directions--study of iron and
steel and linen and silk, the compass and oils and combustion, and now
today, the study of what effect the sun has on the earth.
The sun, Hal decided, was the cause of a great deal of trouble. As he
studied, he found that the sun by shining brightly in the morning heated
up the earth and the air above it. Then the warm air expanded and took
up moisture. In the afternoon, when the sun began to go down, the air
cooled and descended towards earth. And that was where troubles
generated. In the cooling, particles of air moisture condensed, then
electricity accumulated--then next, like as not, a thunderstorm burst.
An aviator had to know these and a million other things, so as to gauge
oncoming air disturbances, and dodge twisters and storm winds by
dropping to a calmer level, or rising above storm.
In the days of his old glider experiments, Hal had found for himself
that winds are generally prevalent over waters, and that hills make
rising currents one can soar upon.
Now this deeper study of winds and fogs, of up and down currents, of the
startlingly strange effects that water, forests and deserts have upon
air currents--all this fascinated him.
As he read the air-speed indication and the altitude on his instruments,
his busy hand drew waves and spiral lines on his data board--his map,
showing currents and lay-out of the air stratum he had been assigned to.
He loved the work, could have kept at it hours longer, but dusk was
coming on, the other planes were already dropping down.
Old Fuz was still up. Hal suddenly remembered the ridiculous whispered
promise he had made to Fuz. He began to circle the other plane, sending
his own engine into a sharp staccato sputtering: "T-t-t-tat t-tat tat!"
Hal swept closer. "T-tat t-tat!" roared his engine.
Fuz must be working his brain overtime on wavy line maps, must be asleep
at the stick or something. It was exasperating. And he had told Fuz to
be on the lookout.
Hal zoomed high, then circled low again, sending his engine into such a
sputter that it began to miss and he had to shoot the juice to it and
fly straight for a stretch.
Fuz was a dumb-head, he was a--
Of a sudden Hal broke out into a laugh and whirled his plane back into
his circling above the landing field.
A staccato t-t-t-tat from the other plane had answered him. Good old
Fuz, he hadn't forgotten after all!
For half an hour longer the two boys circled high and low in the air,
making their engines "talk" in a sputter of aerial telegraphy based on
the old dot-and-dash code they had worked out long ago in their tappings
on land things, on stones, on water pipe.
With practice, they found they could speed and cut the engine to series
of staccato barks that simulated fair enough the tap of a telegraph
instrument. They felt foolishly exuberant and tapped each other all
kinds of messages.
They landed in the dusk with planes gassy with engine fumes, but with
happy-go-lucky laughter in their own hearts.
It was laughter that soon ceased, for each walked straight into the
grasp of an enraged official, posted to wait for them.
"Your flying days are over," each was informed, and was ordered to
report to the office after the evening meal.
Neither Hal nor Fuz had any hankering for supper that night. As soon as
the seemingly endless meal was over, they hurried, rather white-lipped,
to the office.
There they found awaiting them, assembled like a judge and jury, Mr.
Rand, Colonel Elwin himself, Raynor, Weston and a couple of other
instructors. Raynor and Weston had the drawn, haggard look of men
sitting in at their own execution. There was a hard firmness on the
faces of the other men.
Hal Dane sought with agony in his heart for the clue to this summons to
appear before a judgment seat--this summons and the verdict already
rendered, "Your flying days are over," that had dropped like a ton of
rock on all his hopes, crushed out his whole future. And it was
happening so close to what would have been the first glorious upward
step in his career,--his graduation from an accredited aviation school.
With the Rand-Elwin O. K. on him he could have secured a flying job
anywhere--the flying world would have been open to him.
What would his mother and Uncle Tel do--how would he ever go back to
them, broken under some sort of disgrace--
Hal's misery of trapped thoughts whirling madly in his brain was
interrupted by the firm harshness of Colonel Elwin's voice.
"I have here," his hands turning over several cards and slips of paper,
"reports from various ground officials that you two students stayed in
the air an hour overtime this afternoon, tampering with engines, and
riding with motors missing--when every principle of air flight warns a
flyer to seek a landing when his motor misses. No matter how well a man
flies, we can never make an aviator out of him if he hasn't sense enough
to know that he is in deadly peril if he continues to fly a missing
engine. A knock in a motor presages engine trouble, and engine trouble
presages a forced landing. At the first hint of mechanical defection,
it's a flyer's duty to head down and make as speedy and safe a landing
as possible--"
"I--" Hal Dane opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. No words
seemed to come.
Colonel Elwin went on without pause, as though he had heard no
interruption.
"It is, of course, a disappointment to us to have this serious flaw in
your flying ability revealed. Especially since one of you boys had been
brought to our notice as having rather a genius for mechanics, a talent
for engines and an outlook for the future of motors from an aerial
viewpoint. That's what makes it so heinous, so foolish for one who knows
engines to be willing to tamper with them dangerously in mid-air, to
risk valuable life and valuable machinery.
"What, may I ask, was your idea in generating peril for yourselves up in
the air?"
"We--I mean--I was testing out a sort of aerial telegraphy," Hal finally
got the words out, "and--"
"Aerial telegraphy--what?" both Mr. Rand and Colonel Elwin seemed to
ejaculate simultaneously.
"It was my fault, not McGinnis's," said Hal, stiffening his back a
little, and trying to keep his voice firm. "I thought it up and got him
to try it out with me--"
"I was in it as much as Hal Dane," Fuz seemed to have found his voice.
"I'm plumb due to get washed out if he is."
"Aerial telegraphy--what was your idea--how were you managing it?" Mr.
Rand leaned forward.
"You see Fuz McGinnis and I have known each other always. We used to
have a secret dot-and-dash code when we lived back home, used to tap
each other messages." Hal seemed to forget for the moment that he was up
before the "Benzine Board," was being washed out of flying forever
perhaps. He warmed to his subject. "It just occurred to me that while we
were up in the air, it might come in pretty handy sometime to send the
other fellow a message. You might need to tell him something, or ask for
help quick! The motor running is about all you can hear in the airplane.
So it just came to me to take a try at making the motor do the talking,
to cut it and race it in a sort of code."
"Did it work?" questioned Mr. Rand.
"It sure did!" Fuz answered. "Dane asked me if I was hungry, and I
tapped back to him I could eat a--"
"So it did work," put in Mr. Rand. "Interesting--"
"Quite interesting, and quite dangerous!" Colonel Elwin's dry, hard
voice took up the case again. "You boys risked clogging your motors, and
weakening down the exhaust valves, incandescence from carbon!"
"But don't you think--" Mr. Rand had the floor again--"don't you think
that since it was not mere useless daredeviltry but a real experiment
that these boys were trying out, that we might--"
"Well--er, yes, I might be made to see it that way." A ghost of a smile
tugged at Colonel Elwin's iron mouth. "Shall we let this case drop into
what we call suspended judgment?"
"Ah-h!" A vast sigh of relief burst from both boys.
"But remember," Elwin's jaw settled back into its iron firmness, "the
judgment still hangs over you--it's merely suspended. No more tampering
with engines in the air."