CHAPTER FOUR

Fifty Thousand if—!

THE ZT shivered—not from anticipation, but from motor vibration. The wires made long, blurred slashes leading down to the wings. The small spatted wheels rolled over the uneven ground. Taxiing the ship was a man’s job, and Smoke Burnham was weary when he reached the starting line.

Far down the field a mechanic was swinging the flag—the warning flag. In a moment he would pick up his green banner, and green means takeoff.

The ships would leave the line at ten-second intervals and charge down straight at that mechanic, everything in the fire. But before they reached him, the wings would be lightening, the wheels would be off, and pilots would be chewing up altitude in a scramble to make every horsepower count. Before each pilot’s eyes hovered a vision of stacked bills. Fifty thousand dollars if they qualified and if they won the International Air Derby.

But a pilot is an optimistic soul. He has to be. He’s a smooth-nerved, clear-eyed bit of human machinery. There is no room for the blond-haired lad who stands up on the silver screen, throws back his chair with chattering teeth and screams out that he can’t stand it, he can’t stand it! He dreams he is falling in flames and that his wings are gone!

If a pilot thinks that at all, he never lets on, even to himself. He can’t. Nothing heroic about it. If he doesn’t toe the mark on that, he is no longer a pilot. He goes and keeps books for some paunched business mogul.

The ZT, the classic man-killer, might shake in every rib, might knock in every cylinder, but Smoke Burnham’s right hand was steady on the stick and his left hand was lightly stroking the throttle as he looked about him.

Caldwell, confessed black sheep of the sky tracks, was crouching at Smoke’s right. Smoke waved and Caldwell waved back. However, that wouldn’t keep Caldwell from spilling Smoke if Smoke asked for it.

Raymond, sometimes making news for Girard, was close by Smoke’s left, in a brilliant orange ship that was mostly engine. Raymond pretended that he did not see Smoke’s greeting.

Smoke shrugged and smiled simultaneously. So Raymond wasn’t waving today! Maybe he was afraid the ZT would collapse in the air and scatter pieces into the prop of that orange charger.

Thinking about this, Smoke fastened the straps of his chute around his legs, across his chest. It was a silk exhibition chute, twenty-eight feet in diameter, and it let a man land at nine miles per hour. Alex had borrowed it from somewhere.

Smoke, watching the mechanic select the green flag, remembered that a cup of coffee, hours before, had been his sole diet that day. Maybe, even if he didn’t win, he could have Alex coax the winner to throw a party. Smoke wondered what all these people, all these pilots, would think if they knew Smoke Burnham was broke.

’Twas ever thus!

The mechanic whipped the flag and the first ship yowled out of the line like a projectile and charged the white circle.

Feet on brakes, Smoke opened up his motor and waited, counting. “Five, six, seven, eight, nine—”

The second ship slammed down the runway after the first. Smoke wished Patty could have been there. Bad luck to fly without Patty. She hadn’t liked being shut up in his room. He’d probably—

The third plane bellowed a war cry and lashed air in a two-hundred-mile-an-hour climb toward the sky.

She’d probably have all the curtains ripped up and the stuffing out of the chairs when he got back. Wouldn’t do . . .

The fourth plane, Caldwell, jumped out of position and careened across the earth, almost immediately flashing cloudward.

Wouldn’t do to let the hotel manager know. Bad enough not to pay his bill. “Five, six, seven, eight, nine—”

The ZT’s brakes were off. The tail jumped into flying position, blasted up by the slipstream alone. The ground was a khaki blur under the pounding wheels. The motor shattered the skies with its haroom . . . haroom . . . haroom. . . .

At fifty feet, Smoke leveled out and streaked after Caldwell.

Everything was a great panorama of unidentified color. Green trees, tan fields, white faces, red planes, all merged into a rushing composite which meant one thing—speed!

The man-killers were all in the sky.

Six engines hammered strident sounds into one mighty ear-shattering discord. Six sets of wings flashed between clouds and clods. Six pilots hunched forward as though that would help, and visualized stacks of green money.

Or did they visualize the money? Were they thinking about a few letters on a white sheet of paper? Publicity?

Or was it speed?

Four and a half times faster than a smoothbore cannonball had ever traveled, six men flashed down the sky.

A checkered red-and-white pyramid came up between the two top cylinders of the ZT’s motor. The pyramid was vertical and then suddenly horizontal. Smoke was glued to the chute. Blood left his head, drawn by the centrifugal force. Everything was black for the smallest fraction of a minute.

Another pylon was far ahead, vertical.

Raymond gained ten feet of altitude, leveled off, gained another ten, leveled off. Looking back, Smoke could see goggles flashing through the silvery disc of a slashing prop. When he looked again he could see only the wheels of the orange monoplane. The wheels were growing larger. The striping was distinct.

Raymond was diving in over Smoke’s head.

Smoke’s first impulse was to dive out from under. Instead, he poured on another notch of throttle and nosed slightly up.

Over the side of the orange plane Smoke saw Raymond’s goggles. The orange ship zoomed to avoid the ZT’s upthrust nose. Raymond was behind again.

Khaki ground sliding so close below that Smoke thought he could reach over and pick up a rock. Perhaps, if this came out, the khaki ground would give place to fetid green of jungles. And the green of jungles to the insurmountable Andes—snow-covered peaks, bare rock . . .

The ZT was creeping up on Caldwell. The man-killer of past days was proving that it still could do a thing or two.

Why, Smoke wondered, had they thought a speed race would qualify anyone for the jungles and mountains? Then it would be navigation, blind flight, poor gas, tortured, oxygen-starved engines. And Girard, the worst hurdle of all . . .

Caldwell was finding a split instant to look back. Caldwell’s lean, brown face was ghoulish behind his goggles. The yellow plane which Caldwell flew yawed a few feet. Just a warning not to cut through.

A heat bump from the center of a field came up and rapped the underside of the ZT. Smoke fought the stick for an instant. The area of rapidly rising air was longer than it should have been. The ZT went up twenty feet, still remaining horizontal.

Smoke dived. Caldwell’s upturned face flickered briefly. Smoke shot down over the yellow plane’s prop. The yellow nose was coming up like a javelin. Smoke went on down. Caldwell, razzing his engine, tried to drive Smoke back.

Yellow prop less than five feet from green fuselage, Smoke held on. One of them had to break.

Caldwell’s face was tight in the face of an imminent crash. His hand on the stick was white, his eyes were murderous.

His left hand came back on the throttle. The yellow ship dived away and the green ship hurtled on through.

Smoke grinned into the slipstream. The black sheep had lost his nerve. Smoke did not stop to think that Smoke Burnham would have lost his life and that Caldwell had saved two necks. You don’t think of those things at four and a half times the speed of a cannonball.

Looking back, Smoke saw that Raymond was also over Caldwell. Raymond was pulling on through.

A red-and-white pylon went horizontal, came back vertical. Smoke charged for the last pylon. The ZT shivered under the strain of too much speed.

Smoke was thinking about the maddening part of air races. You never know whether or not you’ve won until the judges get out their slide rules and pencils and figure the seconds, the fifths of seconds—as though anyone can see a fifth of a second, when it takes more than half a second to bat an eye.

The crowd was rushing up toward him as he dived in toward the finish line. He had a hasty impression of open mouths, flailing arms.

Raymond was behind the ZT. And behind Raymond something flashed against the turquoise sky. Caldwell was coming in to capture the lead!

A yellow spear went across Raymond’s prop disc. A yellow cowl was above the ZT’s tail.

Raymond’s orange ship stayed where it was, boring straight at the yellow plane’s belly. Caldwell had broken once. Would he break again?

But Caldwell saw too late. The yellow ship slipped sideways. The three other planes in the race were almost abreast. The air was a kaleidoscope of props and colored wings. Abruptly they were scrambled.

Raymond had not counted upon Caldwell’s ignoring him. He held his place just an instant too long. Then it was up to Caldwell.

Smoke’s eyes were all for the finishing line. The first thing he noticed was a jar which ran through the entire ship.

Caldwell’s wheels were in the ZT’s tail surfaces!

Both man-killers hurtled upward, out of the way of other men.

Caldwell tried to fight free. Spruce, steel tubing and linen exploded together!

Battered by fragments, drowned in noise, Smoke tried to scramble out of the pit. He was upside down, with wings and shattered props between himself and the sky. He saw Caldwell trying to get out.

The judge’s stand was below, seen by looking up. At four times the speed of a cannonball, the maimed ships smashed straight ahead through the sky, over the finish line.

Smoke shook away from the pit. His fingers were already pulling his rip cord. He didn’t know where the ground might be. He expected the chute to foul and carry him on in with the wreckage. But he pulled the ring.

Smoke shook away from the pit. His fingers were already pulling his rip cord. He didn’t know where the ground might be.

Hammers were slammed into his ribs. He swung crazily from horizontal, through vertical and back up again. As he slapped down, the ground was under him.

He threw off his goggles, drew up his legs. Khaki earth smashed into his back.

For a half-minute an hour long he tried to breathe, tried to get air into his collapsed chest. But he wasn’t thinking about air. His agony-dimmed eyes registered nothing of the field about him. Towed by the chute across the rough runway, Smoke was remembering that Melanie King’s eyes were never the same. Sometimes blue, sometimes darker, almost ebony. Sometimes tender, sometimes mocking. There was something vital about knowing it.

Hands were on him, lifting him to his feet. When he could focus his glance, he saw that he had landed within thirty feet of the stand.

The crackle of fire was in the air and he whirled about. White heat was coming from tangled rubbish in the center of the field.

Smoke tried to talk. “Caldwell! Did he—?”

They held him up. Someone said, “He didn’t make it. His chute tangled in the fins and he rode her in. There isn’t any use—”

Mel was there, and Alex was keeping her back. Smoke looked at her and grinned a sick grin. Then he looked down at his hands. A thick oozing trickle of blood was dripping from his palm, running down his fingers, down to the khaki earth. The wound felt hot and wet and deep.

Girard was there, standing with his hands on his hips, smiling at Smoke, his unfinished face flabby and loose.

“Well, it happens to everybody,” Girard said. “You’re lucky to get out of it. I told that fellow Raymond not to cut you too close. There’s publicity coming aplenty, Burnham. You’ll be worth a mint of circulation in this race. I wanted you in. That’s why I told Raymond—”

Smoke looked up with his pain-racked eyes boring into Girard’s unfinished face.

“Publicity? Circulation? What does Caldwell know about a headline—now?” Smoke’s tone was weary, monotonous. He was merely asking a question that he wanted answered. Desperately he wanted it answered.

“Why should you worry, Burnham?” said Girard. “You’re in. If Caldwell had—”

Suddenly Smoke’s open palm lashed out and cracked against Girard’s jowl. The hand fell back, limp. Smoke’s knees caved gradually, gradually. Alex helped carry him to the ambulance.

A streak of thick, black-red blood was on Girard’s jowl. Hot, salty blood, startling against the pallor of his face—like a brand. . . .