The first of a spirited series of sky-aventure stories
by a writing-man who has himself been a test pilot.
Russ Healy’s dislike for camera-men and cameras dated from those
air-seconds, six months ago, during which he had fumbled for the
rip-cord of his Irving seat-pack ’chute, while tumbling down from the
wreckage of the DeHaviland he had been piloting. That D.H. had been
airworthy until the pilot of the camera-ship had crashed her tail
assembly, five thousand feet above the earth. With all the air in the
sky he had banked into the D.H., just after his camera-man had shot Al
Rodger’s jump from a wing of Healy’s ship. And right then the veteran
had commenced to dislike camera-ship pilots. The fact that all of them
had got down on ’chutes didn’t make any difference. The fact that Russ
hadn’t been flying his pet Jenny, the “Old Lady,” didn’t help much. Russ
was off the shoot stuff.
“No more for me!” he’d say. “The pilots these camera boys get to fly ’em
are crazy. And the crank-boys are crazier. When I see a movie ship in
the air--I nose down and land. Let ’em have the sky--that’s me!”
The outfit just grinned. Russ Healy is a long, lanky veteran. Two
thousand air hours, with a bit of every type of flying thrown in--he
knows his stuff. There had been a time when he’d almost gone
“film-flying” himself. But no more. When a fellow’s ’chute opens only a
hundred feet off the ground--he does some thinking.
Bob Brooks, boss of the Brooks’ Flying Circus, humored Russ. He let him
handle the jump-off ship, and the upper plane in the air-transfer stuff.
But he kept him away when they were cranking something. That is, he did
until we hit Bakersfield. Then things went bad. They go like that in a
flying outfit. Quiet for a few months--and then everything pops the
wrong way.
That was what happened at Bakersfield. Sid Lunn blew a front left tire
in a forced landing, and when we pulled him out of the wreckage he had a
busted leg. Charlie Ryan taxied into a couple of carelessly-deposited
fuel cans and the plane nosed over. He came out with head cuts that
would stop his flying for a week. And to top the three-day session off,
Mel Duncan went up in a Laco Special, and the engine cut out, went dead.
It was a night flight, and Mel was too far from the field to glide in.
He cut loose a flare which didn’t light. So Mel stepped over the side
and let the plane go. The ’chute let him down hard and gave him a nasty
drag. They flivvered him into the Bakersfield hospital with a couple of
broken ribs and a fractured left wrist.
* * * * *
On the fourth day Russ and myself were sitting on a couple of empty oil
cans and smoking pills. We were wondering who’d get it next, but we kept
that guesswork to ourselves. It was a pretty quiet session until I
happened to look up and spot Bob Brooks coming along with something
decidedly nice.
“Hey!” I muttered. “Bob’s wife is gettin’ thin, Russ.”
But it wasn’t Bob’s wife. It was a knickered lady with blonde hair and a
pretty face. We saw that as they got up close; and we saw, also, that
she carried a helmet and goggles in her left hand.
Russ groaned. “Here comes _more_ trouble,” he stated grimly. “Bob’s had
an idea.”
They came up and we got off the oil cans. Brooks introduced the lady.
Her name was Joan West, and she was better looking the closer you got to
her, which isn’t the usual thing. She gave us a smile that was one
hundred per cent perfect. Bob started talking about the weather, about
the latest flight across the Atlantic--about everything but what he
wanted to tell us. Finally he got around to it.
“Miss West,” he said cheerfully, “is going to work with us tomorrow.”