SKY TACTICS
Clearly Don saw, as his helicopter wavered, teetering like a dizzy baby
trying to stand alone, the venomous purpose behind that air disturbing
swoop.
Chick, staring with wide eyes, his heart stopped, felt the sway and
quiver of the cockpit and convulsively snapped the clasp of the safety
belt he had released to operate the projector.
Up, in a zoom, after his furious dive, the mail craft's pilot sent his
ship. On wingtip, he came around.
Garry saw his intention.
So, too, did Chick and Don.
The dive had sent the angry flyer down a steep dive, past the
helicopter and up, again, in a climbing zoom, to a high point on which
he turned to come again past the other aircraft.
Garry realized that the man in that ship of doom was beside himself
with passion, beyond reason. Don's hand pressed the throttle. His own
engine revved up smartly. The upper blades whirled faster.
"Can he climb away in time?" Garry gasped. Mr. McLeod, behind him,
shouting, futile, helpless, gave up waving his arms at the mail flyer
and watched Garry with wondering eyes as the young and inexpert pilot
at the controls of the Dragonfly began also to increase his speed.
Don, opening up his fuel feed, felt the top fan catch in steady air,
saw the needle of his altimeter tremble, begin to move forward. His
tractor, or pulling propeller, also operating, began to show an effect.
But whether he climbed, at the same time moving forward, or not, the
mail flyer could so adjust his next dive that it would sweep the
helicopter's air with that deadly, upsetting propeller wash. Garry,
too, realizing that, came, as best he knew how, to the rescue.
With his flying speed picking up rapidly, he drove straight across the
area between himself and the mail flyer. His eyes, watchful and
narrowed, caught the instant at which the flyer ahead dropped his nose.
His own ship dropped its nose, and, with throttle, open wide, giving
his engine full impulse the intrepid youth darted straight for the area
where he judged that the other man's dive would bring him.
Carefully, so as not to spoil Don's own air too much and thus do what
the mail flyer sought to accomplish, yet making his attack as close as
his inexperience told him was safe, Garry drove for the point where the
other diving ship should come.
That dive of Garry's spelled an instant's respite for Don. With a right
foot slightly pressing rudder bar, Garry swung the Dragonfly in a
gentle arc, as he went down, so that his path of flight went as far to
Don's side as possible: at the same time he would come back, he felt,
into a line that must either bring the mail 'plane and his ship close,
or the other, disturbed and disgruntled by his unexpected tactics, must
side-slip out of danger.
That was not quite the result.
The mail ship, its control man seeing Garry's purpose, drew up his
nose, kicking rudder and banking--he sent the ship into an upward,
sidewise skid.
It accomplished Garry's purpose. Don, climbing and moving forward at
the helicopter's best speed, was out of the danger zone.
The few seconds of advantage he gained meant safety, because he had the
helicopter righted and working under perfect control again.
Garry, cutting the gun, not skilful enough to dare sharp maneuvers,
went on for some hundreds of yards before he thought it safe to bank
and turn. A swift glance sidewise and backward showed him that the mail
ship had come out of its skid, righted and again was executing a
wingtip turn.
"Won't the idiot ever give up?" Garry muttered.
Chick, watching the scene, unable to take part, saw one point of
possible advantage, if he could only communicate with Garry.
In its climbing, forward position, the helicopter was close to the same
altitude that the mail ship then had. Garry, in his last maneuver, had
lost a considerable amount of altitude, and was, thereby, too low for
anything but a climb.
Still, as Chick almost instantaneously thought it out, if Garry drove
forward on a straight line, the imminent dive of the mail pilot would
bring him into danger of a crash with the Dragonfly--if only Chick
could get Garry to fly forward, on a level, at once, to get to that
essential point where he would be in the required position, the mail
pilot must turn.
With wildly waving arms Chick tried to attract Garry's attention.
The young amateur, busy watching his controls, the steadying of his
ship, planning his next course, did not at once see Chick's movement.
Chick reaching forward, caught the detonating mechanism of the Verey
pistol, which he knew Don had told him to load after their last signal.
Chick fired the green Verey light.
That made Garry turn his head.
With the pilots' code, arm movements, Chick beckoned to Garry, as he
saw the youth turn his head that way: quickly, then, Chick held an arm
straight out in front of him. Rapidly he repeated the gestures.
As he began again to beckon, Garry, catching his idea, revved up, his
ship came on, level-keeled and swift, just as the mail ship began to
come forward, itself on a power-glide of an angle to bring it close to
the helicopter.
But Garry, coming fast, saw the value of Chick's signal.
Full-gun, he used every ounce of power, every hope of his earnest young
championship for Don and Chick, to send that craft of his into place in
time.
The mail ship's control man saw that if he continued to come at the
helicopter he must come also into a line of flight that would intersect
that of the Dragonfly.
Unafraid, determined, if need be, to risk all to save Don from the
vicious doom intended by the infuriated, senseless man who had tried to
avenge a mistaken idea of the helicopter's purpose, Garry held on.
The mail ship swerved away long before it came near Garry and the
Dragonfly. Don, its pilot saw, would be above any safe dive he could
make, and he suddenly changed his tactics, swerved and then, kicking
rudder and banking--but in the wrong direction with respect to making a
turn--the mail ship following its controls, skidded upward, straight
for the helicopter.
But its pilot did not want a crash.
He thus got into a position where his sudden restoration of balance put
him just forward of the helicopter.
There, revving up to full speed, he sent back over the tail of his ship
that most terrible of all man-made winds--the straight, hard fury of
his propeller blast.
Don felt the helicopter stagger.
With all his hope gone he felt sickish, as the blast came. Not alone
his own, but Chick's life, too, was about to be the payment for an
impulsive plan.
But that Power above and beyond man's puny hates, sometimes called
Luck, oftener known as a good "break," had caused the mail pilot to
neglect to return his elevators to neutral; slightly raised, the tail
surface caught the full effect of his own deadly slip-stream, sending
the nose sharply upward, and thus making that fury of disturbed air
pass only the tractor propeller of Don's craft--so that its upper
blades at their best speed were able to draw him up beyond the danger
of worse than an instant of horrifying danger.
Stalled, the mail 'plane fell away, and its pilot had his work cut out
to avoid a bad stall. Over the bay, although the clouds concealed it,
the mail 'plane, without pontoons, must quickly get flying speed, or
plunge.
Don, still rising, and Garry, flying toward the swamp, saw another
airplane, with the unmistakable markings of the Government service,
come swooping from a higher altitude.
Two red Verey lights, the imperative order to land at once, flashed out
from the newcomer's signal firing apparatus.
That new craft meant business, was commanded by some one in authority.
Going, on his glide, below the cloud scud, Garry circled out over the
bay, came around to face the light breeze, took the water with his
pontoons and shot toward the landing stages.
As he skittered over the surface he saw crowds rushing about in the
wide area covered by the landing lights; evidently everyone driving
home from late picture shows and dances had heard the bellowing siren;
the airport day force was on hand; feverishly they worked to get the
first mail craft off the runways, as the second came in.
Two handlers caught the Dragonfly's wing as Garry drifted it to the
landing stage. Further out on the bay, Don set down the helicopter, to
Chick's intense relief, without a jar. Shutting off the top blades the
young flyer used the tractor prop to draw him to the place vacated by
Garry.
On the landing wharf Don, as he made sure that Chick was again in
possession of his normal color, saw Garry, in the lowered rays of the
spot and other lights, surrounded by a group.
Doc Morgan was there, he saw. So, he was surprised to see, were the two
Indians, old Ti-O-Ga and his son, John.
Cars were parking everywhere they could find space. Excitement was in
the air.
"We've got a lot of company waiting for us to come home," Chick
whispered, with an uneasy grin.
"I don't like it much," Don responded. "Especially not the man in that
ship that ordered us down. He looks angry, from here."
"Well!" Garry pushed past the crowd assembling around Don and Chick,
"Don, do you hear what they're saying in the crowd?"
"Yes," admitted Don, looking around.
"We're elected," muttered Garry. "They say the Ghost of Mystery Airport
is caught!"
Mr. McLeod, behind him, frowned.
"I wish you boys had shown some sense," he told the trio. "It's all
very fine to discover methods, and to tell others how mysteries are
worked; but it is pretty dangerous to show off when mail is being
brought in. That man in the other 'bus is a postal inspector, by his
looks--or an army man out of uniform."
"I know we were hasty," Don said ruefully, "but--we will have to face
the music."
"I don't think we'll like the tune very much," Garry observed.
"No," agreed Chick, "Garry's pretty sure to lose his flying license, at
the very least."
The curt summons delivered by the man who came to them from the last
land 'plane to set down, shoving his way through the crowd without
ceremony, proved that there was basis for their uneasiness.
"Well, young man," the newcomer snapped, "you and your scapegrace
friends will come with me, unless there is some one here, in authority
who will guarantee your safe arrival before the New York Chief of my
department at nine in the morning. You can't fool with mail, trying
your tricks and stunts to delay the mails--especially air mail!"
While Mr. McLeod conferred, sponsoring Don and his chums, Chick put a
hopeful look on the face he turned to his comrades.
"We'll have the real ghost by morning!" he whispered.