Part 1

VISIBILITY--ZERO

by John Amid

Was this Airplane Pilot Yellow? Not Hardly. Nor Was He a Wild Fool. Just a Regular Human Being.

“Not a chance!” Bill Melford said, straightening up to his full six feet like a football tackle. “Nothing but mail, tonight.” He glanced at the passenger, a thin, well-dressed man, who was listening anxiously. “Sorry,” he added. Then he dropped the subject like a mail sack. “Any more dope on the weather, Eddie?”

Feldman, the field manager, shook his head. “Another report from Chicago’s all. Same thing, open and shut. Not so good, Bill. I’m not sure I ought to let you go out yourself.”

It was cold in the big hangar. Black night had already shut down, with a twenty-mile wind howling outside. Flying the mail in midwinter is no fair-weather pastime.

“Is this the only plane going through, Mr. Feldman?” the passenger asked.

“No-o,” the field manager answered. “Probably not, if anybody goes. We’re waiting for the Toonerville.” It was the company nickname for a feeder-line plane that came in a paltry two hundred miles. “He’s got about six hundred pounds. We’ll likely send out a double-header. It’s no night for too big a load.”

“Then I can try the other pilots?”

Feldman hesitated. In his pocket he had the usual form letter from Hendricks, division superintendent, issued only when the company wanted to get a passenger through if it could possibly be managed. “Mr. Webber,” it read, “is anxious to get through to Chicago. Please do everything you can to help him complete his journey. He understands the conditions, however, and knows that the company is under no obligations and that passage can be arranged only if load and weather conditions permit.”

“Why--yes, if you want to.” He wondered how much pressure it was fair to put on the flyers to get them to take passengers through, even under exceptional conditions. He hated to subject them to the discomfort of having personally to listen to a passenger’s sob story, before turning him down. Melford--“Wild Bill” until for safety-publicity’s sake the “Wild” had been dropped--was the most daring man on the line, as well as senior pilot. The others would merely follow his lead. “You can speak to Pat Grady, when he comes in. He’ll probably be taking out the second plane. Or Crager.”

It was a company rule that, as far as passengers were concerned, each pilot had to write his own ticket. The field manager could order planes out with the mail, or hold them, but even this authority was sparingly used, and at that usually only after full consultation with the pilots themselves. Carrying passengers was up to the pilots alone. If they were going out, they could, when the load permitted and they were willing, take passengers. Or, if they considered flying conditions too hazardous for passengers, they could refuse.

The little office beside the hangar, with its iron stove in one corner, was a warm refuge. Grady came in after dinner at the lunch counter across the way, spreading his hands above the hot stove. Like Melford and Feldman, he was immaculate, with trousers freshly creased. These neat, healthy-looking commercial pilots bore little resemblance to the hard-bitten birdmen of earlier days, whose every flying minute might be their last. But they had the same questioning eyes, the same silences, the same skill. Surer, more prosperous, and longer-lived, they still were pioneers, blazing the sky trails for tomorrow’s great passenger lines.

“We’ll be missing this little room,” Pat Grady said, “when the station yonder’s finished. It won’t be the same. Who’s going out?”

“Bill’s taking No. 1,” said Feldman. “Mr. Webber, this is Mr. Grady. I told him, Pat”--turning--“he could ask you about his chances of getting through to Chi tonight, if we send out a doubleheader.”

They looked at the door as “Slip” Crager, old as these other still-young airmen in years, but even younger in service with the line, came in, shutting the door quickly behind him against the wind.

“Meet Mr. Crager, Mr. Webber,” said Feldman.

To each other they were all “Bill” and “Pat” and “Eddie” alike, irrespective of rank, but “Mister Grady” and “Mister Crager” and “Mister Feldman” to outsiders.

“Why doesn’t he ask Bill about it?” said Grady.

“I did,” the passenger spoke up. “He wanted to take only mail.”

“Well,” said Grady, “I guess that’s that.”

“You mean that, no matter what the conditions are, you won’t if he won’t?”

“Bill Melford’s about the best pilot we’ve got, Mr. Webber,” the field manager put in, “and what’s more, he’ll take chances if any one will. If he won’t take you, you can hardly expect the others to.”

“Just what,” asked Crager, “are the conditions?”

“I didn’t mean,” the passenger said hastily, “weather conditions. I meant--I meant my own conditions, the family and everything. I--I could make it pretty well worthwhile, as far as money goes, only I don’t suppose that makes any difference.”

“No,” said Crager, “it doesn’t. I meant--why is it so important for you to get through? Business?”

Grady scowled at him. Merely courting trouble, this was. Just putting them all in bad for refusing, when it was the only sensible thing to do.

“It’s--it’s my wife,” said Webber. He stopped abruptly. “Hurt,” he added, without detail.

“There’s an express at eight fifty,” Feldman suggested. “That would get you in by ten thirty tomorrow morning, and no danger. Even if you started with us, you couldn’t be sure of getting through. Better let one of the boys run you over to the station.” He looked at his watch.

“It wouldn’t do your wife any good,” said Grady, “for you to get yourself killed. Be a lot better to get there alive in the morning than come in dead at midnight--especially if it took you longer to get in with us than by train.”

Bill Melford came in. “Toonerville’s just coming in,” he said. They could hear the drone of the motor as the plane banked. “No reason why I shouldn’t get out right away, is there?” he asked.

Slip Crager was at a window, staring out into the night. But instead of the white glare of the flood lights, turned on for the Toonerville, he saw only the array of images flashing through his own mind--a white hospital bed, with a bandaged patient--Stella Fleming, saying good night to him at the door--Bill Melford talking to a couple of other pilots in the hangar, in a side-glance conversation that flattened into an uncomfortable silence as he came within hearing--the neatly typed company memorandum, old J. K.’s pet, issued periodically: “Pilots are urged not to take any unnecessary chances. Crack-ups destroy dividends. Get the mail through if possible, but avoid undue risks. The line takes pride in never having lost a passenger. It will not tolerate reckless flying.”

“Nothing to hold you that I know of,” Feldman answered Melford. “The sooner the better. Those snow flurries around Chi seem to be getting worse all the time.”

The flood lights on the field were switched off, as the Toonerville taxied up to the hangar with its own landing lights, yellow by contrast with the white glare that had greeted them. Melford took his heavy flying suit from a closet and began drawing it on.

“There’s another thing,” said Grady, “we’ll not be seeing much more of. Fur to keep from freezing with. When we’re all flying trimotors, we’ll be sitting in glass, warm like a parlor.”

“You’ve got just about thirty-five minutes to make that train, Mr. Webber,” said Feldman. “That doesn’t give you much extra time. Shall I get one of the boys to run you over?”

Slip Crager turned from the window.

“If you want me to take out No. 2, Eddie,” he said unexpectedly, “I’ll take him.”

They stared at him. The passenger recovered himself first. It was the miracle he had been hoping for.

“I’ll certainly appreciate that,” he assured Feldman, reserving his thanks to Crager for later.

Melford resumed fastening up his flying suit. Then he sat down to pull fleece-lined moccasins over his polished shoes.

“Why--why----” said Feldman, still at a loss for words. “Why--sure it’ll be all right. That is, if you really want to try it.”

A mechanic opened the door and stuck his head into the room, letting in a blast of air straight from North Dakota. “No. 1’s ready,” he said.

“I’ll take a chance,” Slip answered Feldman.

Melford fastened the chin strap of his helmet, drew on thick gloves, and padded out into the night like a giant Eskimo.

“I’ll get my bag,” said the passenger, following him.

“_I_ think,” said Grady, “you’re crazy.” He appealed to Feldman. “You’ll not let him go out! Not Slip Crager, the only man on the line who’s always refused to make himself into a damn fool!”

“Yeah!” answered Slip bitterly. “And gets himself called yellow! You needn’t think I haven’t heard the talk!”

“Oho!” said Grady. “So that’s it, is it? Well, to prove it’s not so, do you have to go and crack up a ship? Eddie, you’ll not let him go out!”

The roar of Melford’s motor came from outside, as he opened her wide in a final test before throttling down for the start. Then they heard him taxi out across the field.

“Don’t be a nut!” said Crager. “What do you think I am--somebody’s little girl? Bill’s gone already, and you weren’t worrying any about going yourself.”

“You’ll notice, though. I wasn’t taking any fool passenger along. Nor Bill, either.”

Webber’s reentry ended the exchanges. Feldman, with one plane already on its way, disregarded Pat Grady entirely, although his silence showed he was troubled. But before the second plane was ready, an automobile door slammed shut outside the office, and Stella Fleming burst in.

“Where’s Slip?” she demanded before she saw him. “Oh, there he is! Slip Crager, you----”

“Not here,” he interrupted shortly. “Come into the hangar.”

They faced each other under the wing of a big monoplane. Beyond it the ground crew were packing the last mail sacks into No. 2.

“Slip, you’re not going to fly to Chicago tonight! With a passenger, too!”

He stood very still.

“Yeah? Look here! Who told you?” She was breathless.

“Never mind who told me! Are you _crazy_?”

“It was Pat Grady, that’s who it was! Pat Grady! He called you up! Say, I’ll----”

“Listen! It doesn’t make any difference whether it was Pat Grady or not. He’s your friend, Slip, and a good friend, too. Slip, you _mustn’t_! It’s too dangerous, and even trying it will spoil your record. And----”

“Yeah? And are you the dame that told me, only last night, you weren’t sure whether it was true or not--what they said about my being yellow?”

She moved her hand helplessly. “Slip--that’s nothing! You mustn’t!”

“Nothing, eh? And I mustn’t go tonight? Yeah? Who says so?”

“I do! And I mean it! Slip, it’s--it’s an ultimatum!”

“Yeah?” His eyes were very bright now and his voice hard. “Listen to her land on the dictionary! Say, let’s both get in on the ultimatum stuff! All right. Whether we get together or not, you’ll keep away from this airport in work time, and out of what’s my own business, which is flying, except as a _guest_! Get me? And that’s _that_!”

Her eyes widened. She let her hands, that had been reaching for the lapels of his coat in frantic appeal, drop to her side. Then without another word she turned and walked out of the hangar, very straight, fumbling for a moment with the knob on the little door in the corner. Through the cry of the wind he heard her automobile starter whir, the motor catch, the door snap shut--and she was gone. Outwardly as stolid as ever, he was still trembling when he got out his flying togs, and had to turn away from the others to conceal his awkwardness.

“Ready with No. 2.”

Followed by his passenger, Slip went out into the cold. The biplane, her motor idling, already stood in front of the hangar, the big sliding doors still open behind her. Slip climbed to his seat like a diver, with all his heavy outfit, climbing up the side of a vessel. Mechanics helped the passenger to the little cabin between the wings, handing his bag in after him, and shutting the door with a snap. For a minute or two after Crager was comfortably in his seat he listened to the motor, opening the throttle wider and wider until the whole machine rocked and vibrated under the strain. Then, throttling down again, he waved his hand and the blocks were pulled from in front of the wheels. Nearly an hour behind Melford, No. 2 was on her way.

Trundling out into the darkness across the frozen field, Slip turned into the wind and gave her the gun. Fifteen seconds and they were off the ground, climbing sharply, flattening out, then climbing again, as if ascending a great imaginary stairway across the sky. Beneath them the level finger of the air beacon swung steadily through its circuit, lighting up as it passed the snow-covered country for miles around. Far ahead, at twelve-second intervals, the next beacon flashed, as its white finger passed. Already they were over the first blinker light marking the course between--winking up at them like a firefly through the darkness. To left and right, ahead and behind, the lights of towns twinkled like clusters of frosty stars.

They were just below the clouds. A low ceiling, barely five hundred feet. The barometer showed an altitude of twelve hundred, but that was to sea level. The needle of the air-speed indicator jumped back and forth, all the way from a hundred and five miles an hour to a hundred and twenty-five, in the uneven gusts of wind they were cutting across. Holding its course along the row of lights, the plane traveled slantwise, like a crab. Slip glanced at the tachometer; his motor was turning up seventeen hundred revolutions a minute. Power to spare.

He gave himself up to the bitter tumult in his mind. Here he was, heading into bad weather with a passenger, after a break with Stella that was probably final. Idiot! Committed to follow Melford under conditions that even Bill himself had refused to take a chance on. If the storm forced him to turn back, the record would show he had offered to take a passenger into weather that could not be faced. If he kept on, he risked a forced landing that might mean a bad crack-up, or even the loss of his passenger’s life. Either way he was bound to lose. Even if he managed to get through he would be charged with utter recklessness, as Stella had told him--going against the judgment of the most experienced as well as the most daring man on the line.

He tried to see how he had managed to get himself into such a mess. The Stella part of it was, of course, the worst; that had come on top of everything else. But the matter of his standing with the company was bad enough. The fact was, he had used his head just so long, and then, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he had broken. Played the fool. That was it, plain fool!

The air was very bumpy. On the edge of the storm the plane was twisted and tilted like a gull in a gust. Good thing the line used the stanchest ships built, and not these cheap doo-dinguses that were liable to have a wing break off, and drop like a dead duck! He went back to the storm inside his own mind.

The trouble had begun with that damned memorandum the company issued every so often. “Pilots are urged not to take any unnecessary chances.” “Avoid undue risks.” Where he had gone wrong was in taking it seriously. Of course it was good sense, and the company meant it. Old J. K. himself, founder of the line and chairman of the board, was responsible for it. Only thing wrong with it was: it couldn’t be done. It was too soon. Enough conservative pilots hadn’t been born yet. They all took chances--and the line stood for it. Wild Bill, the most reckless of them all, was senior pilot!

Crager could understand that. His own training had come at Kelly Field, where the old army traditions of daring still held good. His first forced landing had come when, flying low in formation, his motor, that should never have been allowed off the ground without a complete overhauling, had suddenly quit on him. He had done the best he could on rough ground, but the ship had been washed out, and he had spent two months in a hospital. It had seemed so utterly needless, the waste and the pain, that he had decided to play safe whenever he could. Leaving the service, he had turned mail pilot, and rejoiced in the strong ships, the motors in perfect repair, the avoidance of flying blind in thick weather.

“Avoid undue risks!” Well, he had. For fourteen months he had been “avoiding undue risks,” until he was rated one of the best pilots on the line--and the most conservative. But what had that brought him? The charge, never spoken to his face, of being “yellow”! The old flying days were still too close. Airmen were supposed to take chances--there was something wrong with them if they didn’t. Even the officers of the line, while praising his conservative flying, had begun to wonder if he was really good pilot material! Among the close-knit fraternity of the line, it had made him an outcast, a pariah, a metic. He had stuck to his guns until Stella Fleming had joined the chorus, following a halfway quarrel the night before. That was too much!

So, tonight, brooding over the injustice of his unspoken condemnation, he had suddenly decided to take a chance and get this anxious passenger through if he could. And of course he had messed it. With Stella worst of all. Now he was in bad all around. Pat Grady had called the turn on him. Fear of being called yellow had driven him to do something the line would never forgive him for--risk a passenger’s life--to prove he _wasn’t_ yellow!

He comforted himself with the reflection that at least he could always turn back. The minute the clouds shut down, he could turn back into the clear and come down on the first emergency field. “Intermediate fields,” they were calling them now--more of this soft-pedal stuff for the dear general public!

The plane was trying all the time to get off the course to the right. That meant the wind was increasing in force, or was swinging still farther around. It was almost at right angles to his line of flight already. He was flying so low that the ground roll, the upward twist of gusts from uneven surfaces on the land below, made anything like smooth flying impossible. The plane dropped or rose suddenly as if struck from above or below with great air pillows. Off to the right the light clusters that meant small towns, moving slowly backward as the plane swept along, began to disappear. Fog. Couldn’t be in such a wind. Snow, of course. Off there to the right it was beginning to snow.

Automatically Slip selected his landing field. There it was, straight along the blinker lights at the next revolving beacon less than fifteen miles away. Already he could pick out the little oblong of lights that marked the edge of the field. Nothing to do but come down; even turning back would be useless with the clouds over him likely to begin shedding snow at any minute.

A light so bright that it rivaled the flash of the beacon appeared on the landing field. Another. Flares. They were ordering him down! Well, he was coming down anyway. Just as soon as he could get to that field, instead of taking a chance on nosing up in the snow directly beneath him, or cracking up in a gully or on a barbed-wire fence.

He wondered if they’d been able to catch Melford all right, a hundred miles farther along toward Chicago. Probably. Melford was a pretty wise coot, in spite of the number of chances he took. If they didn’t flag him down, he’d probably made a landing anyway, just before it was too late.

Suddenly the field, the distant beacon beyond, a cluster of town lights to the left of the course, all disappeared. Snow! Instantly Slip banked, veering to the right with the wind, straining his eyes at the dim land beneath him in the effort to pick out a place to sit down quick. But before he could even look back along the course, much less come down, the smother was on him.

In the snug little cabin, Webber, the passenger, felt the plane lurch, and stared out into the night. He had been just dozing off. All the sparkling little lights on the land below had disappeared; he could see only grayness--a halo of fog around the green light on one wing tip, another halo around the red light on the other. So! They had run into a cloud! Dangerous flying, all right. He settled back into a corner comfortably, secure in the confidence of his pilot’s skill. These mail flyers certainly knew their stuff! This bird Crager wouldn’t even be in a cloud unless he knew all about it. He’d get through all right! From his dark cabin he watched the yellow landing lights flash on, boring down into a streaming current of flashing white specks. Snowflakes, of course. Could it be they were going to land right here? He hadn’t seen any field.

The landing lights were switched off again. Crager had merely snapped them on to make sure of his predicament and see if by some miracle they would give him a hint of the ground below. Very neatly caught, he decided. A perfect trap. The snow clouds had driven down on him, broadside on. The entire course had been blotted out for miles at a single swoop. No chance to go on to the next field, no chance to turn back to the last one. And off to the right it had been snowing already, so that in trying to swing out of one cloud he had merely run into the other. A regular blizzard! The devil’s own luck that the line of beacons, with the particular spot his plane happened to be in, was the last to be caught.

It was cold, bitterly cold, but he no longer felt it. Five minutes before, even inside the fur-lined moccasins, his feet had been almost numb. Now he was warm all over. Funny.

He had gasoline enough for several hours. Probably about four. Meanwhile there was nothing to do but fly by the bubble and hunt for a hole.

For the first time since his days at Kelly Field he wished for a parachute--for that passenger down there, Webber, or whatever his name was, who wanted to get through to his wife before midnight.

It occurred to Slip that perhaps by now the wife was dead anyway. This Webber had certainly been in an awful hurry to get through. If things didn’t work out right, now, that might not be such a bad idea.