CHAPTER SIX
Smoke Gets His Chance
THE president of the Hedstrom plant was very affable, extremely courteous. When he had waved Smoke and Alex to chairs and passed the cigars and cigarettes, he leaned back, placed his thumbs in his broad vest, and said, “Now, gentlemen, what can I do for you? It isn’t every day that we get a chance to serve Smoke Burnham.”
“We,” said Smoke, as evenly as possible, “want to fly your new Super-Comet airliner in the International Air Derby.”
Hedstrom blinked and swung forward. “Why, I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but you see we have only the one experimental ship and all the bugs haven’t been ironed out in it.”
Smoke looked at Alex, and Alex stood up, waving airy hands. “Mr. Hedstrom, I’m surprised that you do not think any more of Burnham’s ability than that! What, may I ask, are a few bugs to Smoke Burnham? And how, may I ask, do you intend to get this plane before the public eye? You had a small, unheaded line in yesterday’s paper about your speed record for transports. That right?”
“Yes,” said Hedstrom. “You see, Mr. Montague, we haven’t been releasing very heavy because we don’t think we’re quite ready to—”
Alex leaned dramatically forward. “Hedstrom, do you want this new liner on every airline in the country? Do you want Super-Comet to be synonymous with reliability and speed? Do you want headlines? Headlines, man! Screaming banners all carrying the name Super-Comet! It would be on every man’s tongue. You’d hear it in the barbershops, in the hotels. Everyone would be standing back gaping in amazement when the name was mentioned.
“The name Hedstrom would go thundering down the hall of time as the greatest in all aviation! You would be able to build plants a hundred times the size of this. And yet, Hedstrom, you sit there and tell me that you are doubtful. Doubtful of what? Are you casting reflection upon your engineers? Upon your ships? Upon your own product? No, Hedstrom, certainly not that!”
Hedstrom swallowed hard. In spite of himself, his eyes were as round and big as dollars, sparkling with their vision of the future as painted by that master painter Alex Montague. He came to himself with a jolt, and something of shrewdness replaced his excitement.
“You’re anxious to get this plane, aren’t you?” he said.
“Oh,” shrugged Alex, “perhaps, and perhaps not. The planes to be had are too numerous to mention. But, like all the rest of my softhearted breed, I looked at that sick little unheaded scrap of nothing in the paper and said to myself, ‘Alex, that man needs publicity. He has something there. And if he isn’t backed up, aviation is doomed to lose one of the greatest developments of the day.’”
The gleam was still there. Small drops of sweat were on Alex’s brow.
“Montague,” said Hedstrom, “you seem very confident of winning this race.”
“No chance of losing in any plane with Smoke Burnham at the controls,” said Alex.
“Then I’ll make you a proposition, Montague. You can buy the Super-Comet from me, and if you win, I’ll refund the price.”
Alex stared at Smoke. They couldn’t have purchased an aileron of the big ship if the whole thing sold for a thousand dollars.
“How much do you want?” said Alex.
Hedstrom shrugged.
“You can have her cheap, Montague, because, after all, Smoke Burnham is Smoke Burnham. Fifty thousand dollars is the price.”
Alex spread out his hands. “Cheap, Hedstrom. Cheap enough. Here, Smoke, sign a note for fifty thousand and give it to the man.”
Smoke reached for paper and pen, but Hedstrom said, “A note?”
“Certainly a note,” cried Alex. “You wouldn’t for a moment try to tell me that Smoke Burnham’s credit is no good.”
“Oh, certainly not, Montague, but—”
“But what?” demanded Alex. “Sign the note, Smoke. We haven’t any time to get this ship ready as it is.”
“But I—” began Hedstrom.
Alex picked up the telephone, pulled up the receiver and handed it to Hedstrom. “Call your plant and tell them to run the Super-Comet out on the runway.”
There is something not to be denied about the way central says “Number please? Number please?” Hedstrom gave her the number, and Smoke completed and signed the contract.
“There,” said Smoke. “Now for your signature, Hedstrom.”
Having completed his call, Hedstrom blinked twice, saw that Alex was about to start talking again, and signed.
Two days later a mammoth sea-sky bird came floating down on the Washington field, four mighty motors idling and muttering, as though anxious to blare out and show these ground-moored people just how powerful a sky engine can be.
The ship was single-winged. Its great hull was as flat as the head of a seal. Its double-rigged tail surfaces swished back and forth as Smoke’s hand decreed a slip to kill speed.
Sailing as lightly as a drifting, settling feather, the sea boat/land plane came to rest on the field, dwarfing everything in sight.
Girard paced restlessly, looking at the mammoth ship each time he turned. His eyes were like glass reflecting fire.
“Smith!” cried Girard. “That Super-Comet! Where in the name of heaven did Smoke Burnham get money enough together to get that?”
Smith started to say yes and then blinked and scratched his head. Claw marks were long, narrow and red on the back of his hand.
“I’ll have to change plans!” exclaimed Girard. “I’ll have to wire South America about this! That thing can make three hundred miles an hour without straining a strut!”
“You got the plane, haven’t you, sir?”
“The plane? Certainly I’ve got the plane. But what’s that got to do with it? If I turned it over to the government, Smoke Burnham could prove ownership! Smith, something will have to be done about it!”
“What’s the matter with what we figured out, sir? You see that they get lost down there in the jungle, and then you send out a rescue party, paying for it. The circulation would jump, sir. I don’t think Burnham will—”
Girard’s eyes snapped. His voice came thin and sharp:
“To hell with what you think! Ah, there come the LeFarges. Good afternoon, Mrs. LeFarge. Look at these brave boys lined up here, ready to do or die for the progress of aviation. Ready to dare the jungles and the seas and the high ranges, so that the torch may be carried on. . . .”
Smoke Burnham walked down the steps from the door of the gigantic ship and stared back up at the hull. “Holy gee!” he said reverently. “She flies like a gull.”
Alex nodded and seated himself on a lowered wheel. “Rides nice. Seems too bad for you to have to be in that office all by yourself, Smoke. You’ll rattle around like dice in a cup.”
Smoke’s deep blue eyes gave Alex a quiet study. “You mean you aren’t going?”
“Who said I was going?”
“You are this time, Alex.”
“But who’ll handle the publicity?”
Smoke shrugged. “The printed page once more! You can fly, Alex, and you’re the copilot of this ship. It will be a nice jaunt for you in spite of those eighteen thousand miles.”
Alex sighed, studied Smoke. After a little, he said, “All right. I’ll be able to handle the publicity through the radio. But I thought maybe you’d need someone to look for you when you disappeared somewhere.”
“Girard will take care of that.”
“Will he? I thought maybe he was just going to get you lost. You look funny, Smoke. Like you’ve got something under your yellow scalp. What is it?”
Smoke turned away and looked over the multitude of waiting wings. They were of every description and nationality. Two-, three-, four-motored ships. Monoplanes and biplanes. Amphibians and land planes. And over in the Potomac seaplanes were floating.
For once, the weather was nice. Neither hot nor cold, too bright nor too dark. The Potomac mirrored a few clouds—great white cotton tufts in the blue.
The pilots were standing about the blocked-off portion of the operations office. The white building seemed small beside these ships. Faces were looking restlessly toward Girard and toward men who wore ribbons on their faultless coats.
The interest in these officials was as sharp as a prop blade. In their hands rested the fate of some thirty ships and some sixty men. These officials were launching wings across the skies—and these officials knew little else than that planes were sometimes dangerous, as though that made any difference. Pilots weren’t human, anyway.
A tight huddle of men in morning coats and spats, ringed round by men in slacks on whose heads rested helmets and goggles.
Beefy, red faces in direct contrast to lean, brown jaws and quick, observant eyes.
A handful of officials, handing out mimeographed orders to palms without looking at the receivers’ faces.
Silk hats versus weather-stained leather. The silk hats were launching sixty men into the unknown and semiknown. And the silk hats would sit in easy chairs, with a printed page to tell them what happened to these sixty. In an easy chair, while men rode high to far horizons.
Beefy red faces would be crammed with ham and eggs and caviar, or whatever beefy red faces eat to make them red, while the brown jaws sucked at lukewarm coffee from a battered thermos and tried to swallow stale, dry sandwiches, eating with one hand on a stick and one eye staring into a black door from which there is no returning.
For a printed page? For a vision of stacked bills? For speed? For adventure? For sport?
The answers were not written on the quiet tan faces. In the light gray eyes. They were quiet, these men, while official voices were loud. They waited, these pilots, to step away from pomp into the clean skyways.
A Pan Am pilot, veteran of the jungles, the seas, the storms, drew Smoke Burnham to one side and looked into Smoke’s still face with something like sympathy. He knew, that Pan Am man.
“Smoke,” he said, smiling, “don’t fly your flippers off. A pair of wings is handy down there.”
“Sure,” said Smoke. “Think the Super-Comet will stand the upcurrents in the Andes?”
“Maybe the ship will,” said the Pan Am veteran. His eyes were seeing great reaches of brown peaks lathered with white driving snow. Altitudes where a man couldn’t breathe. He was feeling his ship lose a thousand feet in a second, gain two thousand before he could jerk her level. He was feeling the howling power of wind glancing off mountainsides. Wind with the velocity of light.
“I guess it will,” he amended.
“How about Colombia?” asked Smoke.
The Pan Am pilot saw hammering rain, silver streaks through a striving prop. He felt the sticky, scorching quality of the swamps.
The older pilot smiled.
“It’s a good country, Smoke. Kind of warm.”
“And Chile?” said Smoke, cracking a smile.
“Nitrate looks like ice,” commented the veteran. And the sun went up to a hundred and thirty and you died before you could crawl across the sun-blasted plains for help.
“Tell me,” said Smoke, “did they ever discover the headwaters of the Amazon?”
The veteran shook his head. “A fellow says he did. Said he navigated a party up to the headwaters. Took them months and months to get upstream. And they traveled fast.” He saw the shimmering streak which was the headwaters. He had seen it once. Had circled over it and had gone on. Charles Burgess was down there, somewhere. Never thought he’d die, Charley. Chance to get out if you had the equipment, the boats, the guns.
The veteran smiled. “You’re wise to all that, Smoke. Why ask me? I can’t tell you a thing about it. They’re calling your name.”
Smoke turned and saw that an official was holding some papers toward him.
“Your clearance papers,” explained Girard. “If you come down anywhere, you’ll need them.”
“Thanks,” Smoke replied. Somewhere near, a shutter clicked and registered Girard’s hail-fellow smile. Smoke went back to the Super-Comet amphibian.
Mel King was standing under the wing, dwarfed by it. She wore a bright blue dress, Russian style, with silver cartridge cases edged in gold braid. A saucy Russian hat was perched on the side of her head. All in all, she looked quite gay, and Smoke was heartened.
But, unfortunately, the color of her mood and dress were identical. She turned to Smoke, her eyes misty, her hand clutching a damp bit of lace.
“You’re really . . . really going, Smoke?”
“Right,” said Smoke, steeling himself for a flood of tears. He loved her too much to watch her cry. It was hard enough just standing there looking at her, wanting to put his arms around her and tell her that it was all right, that the jungles wouldn’t get him.
She stepped back a foot at a time. “Then . . . then, Smoke, this is goodbye.”
“Sure it is, Mel. But only for eight or nine or ten days.”
“It’s goodbye for always, Smoke. I . . . I can’t hold you. You love flying more than you love me. I can’t be with you—in your heart, I mean—unless—”
Smoke was stepping forward. His yellow hair was pulled awry by his helmet. His gloved hands were open, relaxed. His shoulders were very square. A small smile was playing across his face as lightning plays over a field.
He gripped her wrist and jerked her to him. Her face went blank with surprise. The handkerchief fluttered down to the gravel.
Pointing at the door, Smoke said, “Get in!”
“But I’ve seen the ship. Let me go!”
“Get in!” Smoke repeated. “You’re off for South America. Perhaps I can teach you, show you why . . . why I fly. Get in!”
He lifted her bodily up to the cabin floor and thrust her back into an upholstered chair among piles of equipment. Patty raised a sleepy head from the rear of the compartment, looked at Mel, and then went back to sleep.
Smoke slid under the control wheel and gunned the engines. Mel knew that a scream was a whisper beside the bellow of two thousand horses. She sat very still, watching Smoke’s throttle hand. . . .