Part 1

When an Airman Grows Too Old to Fly

THE KINK

By Thomson Burtis

Finley strode to the desk of the operations clerk in the flying office and inquired with a sunny Irish smile--

“Well, what old hulk do I haul around the field for flying time today?”

The grizzled old sergeant’s eyes dropped, and he seemed to mumble his words in embarrassment as he pawed for a slip.

“The Larkin, sir!”

“What?” exploded Finley. “That superannuated old wreck? What the ----, sergeant, what the ----? For the last month I’ve been trying to get my paws on a good ship and all I get are crates that should be in a museum! ----, I’m sick of--”

“Oh, well, it isn’t your fault.”

A loud laugh resounded from the ceiling as young “Kink” Forell came out of the locker-room, helmet and coveralls on, goggles swinging in his hand, his parachute under his arm.

“Lieutenant James Finley, official scavenger of ships for McCook Field!” he gibed, his boldly handsome face twisted into a mirthless grin. “Gosh, you’ll save the survey officer more trouble before this year is out, Finley, than any flyer in the army.”

He stopped at the door to get in the last words. Radiant vitality oozed from every pore of the tall young flyer, and his greenish-gray eyes were sparkling.

Hot words rose to Finley’s lips, which was unusual. If they did come there was an undercurrent of humor in them, as there had been when he had raved querulously at the sergeant. But Kink Forell could rub him the wrong way every time.

However, his habitual repression saved him, and he said mildly--

“Beat it, King, and do your stuff instead of talking it.”

He went into the locker-room and got his flying clothes, coming out on the outside platform with a determined grin on his square, snub-nosed face. The freckles stood out prominently, as if he were slightly pale.

The foremost airplane laboratory in the world was spread before him as he descended the stairs as if walking in his sleep. Drawn up in front of the row of hangars was a collection of ships, some of which might have been the fruit of a designer’s nightmare. Motors upside down, monoplanes, triplanes, ships with both pontoons and wheels on them; single seaters, two seaters, ships that could carry eight men; the little Sperry, a gnat of the air with a tiny three cylinder motor, was ranged alongside the mighty Barling bomber.

For once Finley’s mind did not indulge itself in a comparison of some of those shining ships with the craft of his own early days in the air. King Forell was taking off, he noticed, in one of the new pursuit jobs.

As the stalwart flyer walked up the line, seat-pack parachute under his arm, he was searching for the ship he was to fly. There it was, its dope cracked and discolored with age, looking the veteran it was. In fact, a fit ship for a has-been to fly.

He forced his mind away from that subject. His eyes rested on the Barling triplane. There was a ship! Weighing fourteen tons and capable of carrying six tons more; six Liberty motors to fly it and a crew of six men necessary to handle it properly, it was truly the leviathan of the air. What it portended for the future of aviation was something which the mind of a Finley could speculate upon forever.

“Jim! Jim Finley!”

It was the C.O.’s voice, and it cut through the drone of King Forell’s twelve cylinder motor, now three thousand feet overhead. Finley turned and saw the major standing with a group of men alongside some expensive motor cars.

“Those Congressmen from Washington,” he remembered, and walked toward them.

“This is Jim Finley, gentlemen,” the major said jovially, and went on to introduce him.

“These gentlemen were discussing the first test flight of the Barling, Jim,” he went on, “and I was telling them that you were the man who hopped it off, just as you came along.

“At that time,” he pursued, turning to the interested Congressmen, “Finley was chief test pilot of the Air Service. He flew the Barling when it had never been off the ground before, and did a great job.”

One stout, jovial legislator shook his head smilingly.

“That must take a unique and extraordinary brand of nerve,” he stated. “In fact, having your job must mean a continuous succession of--”

“We took him off a few months ago,” the major interrupted with a quick look at Finley, “to give him a rest.”

“And a ---- of a rest, too,” Finley said with his slow grin. “Hauling the oldest hulks on the field around.”

“A contrast to flying the newest, eh?” laughed one of the Washington men. “Well, I congratulate you on being the first man to fly that--that monster there. And doing it successfully.”

“No credit to me,” Finley explained. “I flew a lot before the war, was an instructor a week after it broke out and shortly after that was sent to the Caproni school in Italy. They’re three-motored babies, you know, so big ships have been my dish.”

“Well, I guess Forell is about ready,” the major said, somewhat awkwardly.

He seemed ill at ease, Finley noticed, when the past was mentioned.

“Glad to have met you all.”

Finley smiled, and started for his ship. Forell was evidently going to give the visitors an exhibition. Well, no one could do a better job.

Despite himself, his mind roved back to that day when he had tested the Barling, and particularly to the banquet which the manufacturers had given that night in a Dayton hotel. The chief himself had been there, and as toastmaster he had introduced--

“Undoubtedly the best big-ship pilot in America--Jim Finley!”

All in all, that had been the high point of his flying career, Finley admitted, as his eyes caressed the great ship which lorded it over the line.

Suddenly the roar above grew louder, and he stopped to watch. Three lounging pilots looked upward, and the swarm of mechanics on the line quit work entirely. When King Forell was flying there wasn’t a great deal accomplished on McCook Field.

The little scout shot downward, motor wide open, in a terrific dive. Two, three, four thousand feet it dropped like a bullet. As it swooped out, barely five hundred feet above the ground, Forell fairly stood it on its tail. It bored its way upward a full half mile in a few seconds. At the very top of the climb it arched over, as if to loop, but as it got upside down it turned slowly on its horizontal axis. It ended up on an even keel, without jerkiness or hesitation, and instantly went into another one of those breath-taking dives.

“Boy, what ships!” Finley was thinking, as he saw the single-seater flashing earthward at a speed of more than three hundred miles an hour.

Duralumin construction, even to the aileron controls, all-metal prop, capable of a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour on the level. What King was doing would not have been possible two short years before.

For this time King scraped the ground as he came out of that bullet-like dive, and again the ship was darting almost straight upward. But this time it was turning in a two-turn-upward tailspin.

“There,” reflected Finley, “is the best acrobatic pilot I ever looked at. By the same token, he’s a bird that’s so far from being wise to himself that he’ll ruin his chances if he don’t look out. He could be a great guy in the service, if he doesn’t spoil his own chances!”

He moved slowly toward his ship as the “Kink” went into a continuous series of stunts. Barrel-rolls, half-rolls, loops, spins, falling leaves, upside down spirals--the whole gamut of aerial maneuvers was accomplished without loss of altitude or a second of rest between stunts.

And young Forell, less than two years out of West Point, was more of a flyer than showed up there right then, Finley admitted to himself. There wasn’t a test pilot on the field who could come down after flying a new job and analyze its performance as well as the Kink. Finley’s own ability to recommend changes in big ships’ construction which would improve them, was Forell’s on the scouts, and there was no reason why, with further experience, he shouldn’t be a whiz on any old plane at all. Every wire and strut and spar, every eighth of an inch of span or chord, every degree of incidence or dihedral--all had their message for the brilliant youngster, and his recommendations on new jobs had been uniformly accurate. They were thinking, Finley had heard, of sending him to Tech for a four year course in aero-dynamics and design. Well, they couldn’t pick a better man.

“If only he wasn’t such a pup. Shame, too,” Finley thought to himself.

* * * * *

Forell’s exhibition was done as Finley reached his ship and started strapping his parachute around the back of his thighs. As he snapped the shoulder and crotch straps together at his waist, his placid blue eyes swept the mechanic.

“If anybody’s got any insurance they want to collect, come on and take a ride,” he said with a grin. “Draw a chute, and hop in.”

The men glanced at each other beneath bent heads.

“I got to fix up Sixty-nine right away, sir,” the chief said awkwardly, and the crew men had excuses.

Finley nodded. He was not surprized. Nevertheless, the lines were a bit deeper, from nostrils to mouth, and his mouth a little thinner, as he climbed up on the trailing edge of the left wing, and worked himself ahead to the pilot’s cockpit.

The Larkin was a two-motored bomber, one motor set on each lower wing, just far enough from the pilot’s cockpit to allow the propellers to rotate. As it was, the tips of the big six-foot sticks almost grazed the cowling of the compartment, which jutted forth in front of the wings. It was a four-ton ship, with a wingspread of more than eighty feet. Two years before it had been king of its kind; now it was obsolete.

Finley’s hand dropped to the two throttles alongside his seat, and in a second the left-hand Liberty was turning up fifteen hundred as his eyes swept the instruments. Then the-right hand motor went into full cry, and his eyes read the tale of the needles before him.

He nodded to the crew men, and after they had pulled the wheelblocks he turned the ship on a dime by giving the right motor full gun. The aged Larkin swept around to the left and, as it faced the field, Finley cut the throttle.

Kink Forell was about to land, but he was coming down toward the northern edge of the field in a nose dive. Fifty feet above the trees the scout swept upward, and on its back. As it came swooping out of the loop its under-carriage seemed to graze the trees. It zoomed upward, banking as it rose, until it hung in the sky with idling motor, left wing pointed at the ground. It dropped almost straight downward in a vertical side-slip, straightening just above the ground.

It skidded wildly from side to side as Forell fishtailed it, and landed lightly on three points.

“Landing out of a loop,” thought Finley. “He’ll get bawled out for that, but he won’t mind.”

He could see the Kink now as he came up to the group of distinguished guests to receive congratulations. Tall and slim and smiling, the sun glinting from his red hair, he’d laughingly deprecate the compliments which he loved so well.

Finley taxied out, turned his ship and shoved both throttles ahead. He leaned against the wheel, and got the nose down as the Larkin bumped massively along the ground. As he eased it off the ground, however, it suddenly became easy to fly-- the controls answered the mere hint of pressure on the wheel.

Finley’s square face was set and his eyes abstracted, as he circled the field for altitude. There was no doubt that most of the men on the field suddenly lost their wild desire to take a flight when it was Finley who invited them. Perhaps it was accidental, but--

Of course, he had had a streak of bad luck lately. Four wrecks, as a matter of fact, in a little more than a month. It was just a run of accidents, of course. On that forced landing the wheels had hit a log and the ship turned over. Another time, one of those ---- reversible pitch propellers had suddenly gone into its negative position ten feet above the ground and snapped the nose down. The other crashes had been right on the field--bad air currents. When a man got into a run of luck of that kind he’d crash into an oasis with the whole Sahara desert to land on.

Perhaps that was the reason for his flying assignments, too. Like this Larkin, for instance. When the Larkin was a brand-new wonder he had been chief test pilot. In fact, he had been responsible for setting those motors on the wings themselves. They had been trussed up between upper and lower wings then. Five miles an hour more speed and greater ease of handling had been the results of that suggestion. That was the sort of stuff Kink Forell could do. He’d be even better with more experience.

Suddenly Finley’s mouth widened in a wintry grin. When he and this Larkin had taken their first flight they had been kings, with a thousand people watching admiringly. Now they were limping through the sky--a couple of has-beens.

It was starting to darken a little. The sun was down, and it was time to land. He eased the great ship down over the trees and leveled off with both motors cut to idling. It was slowing, now. Time to pull back on the wheel.

As he pulled the wheel back the ship settled. But, as it dropped, there was no contact with the earth. Finley, suddenly tense, felt the sickening rush downward. It was a full ten feet before the wheels found the earth, and there was a crash as the huge plane staggered back into the air. His hand found the throttles in a split second, and the Libertys were roaring. The ship settled again, and he fought it off the ground for a taut ten seconds. Gradually it picked up flying speed, and then he dared to look back.

A crumpled wheel marked the spot where he had hit. Doubtlessly the rest of the under-carriage was an ugly mess of splintered struts and a crushed wheel.

There was wild excitement on the line as the Larkin thundered low across the field. They were pointing, jumping up and down, pointing to the under-carriages of other ships. The Larkin was vibrating so that Finley himself was bounced from his seat, at times, against his loose belt. The wreck of the under-carriage had weakened the basic spar-structure of the entire ship.

“Do they think I’m a ---- fool?” Finley raged suddenly, and the fingernails of his free hand dug into the flesh.

“Steady, now,” he advised himself, and throttled the wild uprising within him.

There was but one thing to do. He couldn’t land four tons at fifty miles an hour, without wheels. And the Larkin wasn’t worth saving, anyhow.

It was so left-wing heavy now that it took all the strength in Finley’s powerful shoulders to keep it on an level keel, and the vibration was so terrific that he could see the wing tips oscillate. The thousand-pound motors seemed to be striving to tear themselves loose, and each landing and flying wire gave an illusion of being a dozen.

If only the old hulk would hang together for five minutes! That would get him over the vast expanse of Wilbur Wright Field, seven miles north. He circled houses and avoided traveled roads as he fought desperately to keep his stricken ship in the air. It was weakening fast. At any moment it was liable to tear itself apart. He must not let it fall in a thickly settled section.

As he reached the edge of the vast airdrome, seven miles outside of Dayton, it was impossible to keep the left wing up at all. The Larkin was like a bird with a broken wing, falling sidewise.

He unstrapped his belt, holding to the wheel as he tried to keep the nose up. Facing the rear of the ship, one hand on the wheel behind him, he gathered himself.

To slip would be fatal now. Those two propellers were like buzz-saws and should he be thrown into either of them he would be carved up as butter by a knife.

One foot was on the seat. Directly ahead of him was the bomb compartment, its top three feet below the upper wing, even with the back of his seat. Eight long feet away was the observer’s cockpit, a round hole in the wide fuselage.

Using one leg as propelling force, he loosed his grasp on the wheel and hurled himself forward, sliding on his stomach across the bomb compartment. Instantly the great bomber fell into a whirling spin. He was being hurled off his perch as his hands found the cowling around the cockpit, and he hung there desperately, dragging himself forward.

The spin was terrific now, due to the wingheaviness, and four tons were screwing earthward in a hell of shrieking wires. He fought to one knee, then got one foot on the fuselage.

Just as one hand found the ripcord ring he was hurled from his ship like a drop of water flung from a speeding wheel. An uncontrollable, strangled cry of fear escaped him as he found himself in space with a pack which was supposed to open on his back.

He fell end over end as he forced himself to count a full, slow five. His brain was numb, but the one idea which gripped him was that he must avoid that ship.

He jerked the ripcord, and with a sob of relief felt the little pilot chute snap out. The next second it had pulled the folds of glistening silk from the bag, and his body was jerked double as the shoulder springs rose.

His waist was sore as a boil as he swung in sickening arcs below the chute. Sometimes he was even with it. As the pendulum-like rushes through the air slackened, a great ball of fire burst from the ground.

The Larkin had made its last flight.

He was nearing the ground now, and it seemed to be coming up to meet him with ever-increasing speed. Fifteen feet a second, that was the speed of the drop, but now, less than a hundred feet high, it seemed terrific. He was close to the hangars, too, but he’d hit the ground before he was blown against them.

His hands grasped the shroudlines which ran from the harness to the edges of the big silk umbrella, and he loosened his muscles. As he hit the ground he pulled his body upward, and bent his knees like a man who lands from a jump.

He snapped off his harness before the breeze could drag him, and had the billowing silk in hand as Captain Adams puffed up to him.

“What happened?” gurgled the captain. “Or do you always come down that way?”

Finley wet his lips with his tongue. Seemed as if he did always come down that way, at that.

“Wiped the under-carriage off at McCook,” he drawled equably. “There’s a ship landing to bring me home right now, I guess. Will you have the boys clean up the fire?”

“Sure. Want a drink?”

He did, but he shook his head. Somehow he wanted to escape before the other officers at Wilbur Wright gathered around to ask questions.

“That’s Dick Redding, I think, after me.”

He walked out to meet the McCook ship, and Redding, who had succeeded Finley as chief test pilot, motioned to the rear cockpit. As Finley got in, Redding threw a “Glad you got out all right!” over his shoulder, and took off without delay.

* * * * *

As they walked side by side, back at McCook, from the line to the flying office Finley could barely restrain himself from bursting into wild self-condemnation. Why was wiry, weatherbeaten little Redding so quiet? Finley wondered as he threw cheerful answers to the questions which bombarded him from mechanics.

“Well,” Redding said finally, “The Larkin’s not much loss, at that. She was due.”

“Uh-huh. But I ought to be given twenty kicks in the pants and the booby prize! Thinking about everything else but flying! When that pocket hit me I was in dreamland.”

They were going up the steps, and as they approached the door of the office some one was talking as if he were laying down the law.

“--kill himself, I tell you! There’s something the matter with him! Why, how in ---- could--”

Redding fairly threw himself in front of Finley, and pushed the door open. Sudden silence fell over the four flyers who were lounging around on the desks.

“Got out without a scratch, eh?” queried fat, blond “Brad” Sparks. “Well, you can’t kick!”

Kink Forell’s loud laugh rang out.

“Let’s see, Finley, this makes you a German ace, doesn’t it? You’ve brought down five American ships within a month.”

“That’s nothing,” Redding slid in. “I once--”

“---- if you haven’t got the world’s record for short landings!” The vibrant youngster went on loudly. “When you land a ship, it doesn’t roll a foot!”

Finley despised himself for the inclination he had to answer the cocky Forell in blazing words. It was hard to control himself.

“Sort of hard on wheels, though, my method is,” he said slowly, a set smile on his face.

“Prettiest landing I ever saw!” gibed Forell, hard mockery in his eyes. “Perfect dive, great leveling off, tail skid down just as she was losing speed--ten feet in the air! Boy! What a darb that one was! I never--”

“Shut up, Kink!” snapped Redding. “Come on Jim, let’s get the report out of the way and shoot it over!”

“Why don’t you issue muzzles along with helmets around here?” snapped Forell, his eyes flashing his resentment at the curt command. “I suppose I hurt the poor old boy’s feelings, eh? I’m sorry, papa, if I caused any tears.”

“Are you going to talk all day, for ----’s sake?” exploded Redding. “For the love of Mike get out of here until this report’s fixed up, will you?”

“No. I’m not ready yet. Listen, Finley, though, on the level. You ought to get out of this flying game. You get old young in this racket, and you’ll kill yourself before you know it. I’ll bet the flight surgeon’d find more things wrong with your eyes than--”

“Oh, ----,” breathed big Franklin wearily. He darted a look at Finley, who was seated at the desk. “Say, Kink, I need a little advice, too. Have you any suggestions to make as to how I can improve my cross-country?”

“---- if you don’t need some, at that!” the youngster shot back nastily. “You get lost enough. Well, so long. I’m going to town. Better take my tip, papa, on the doc.”

He slammed the door after him. Brad Sparks’ round, good-natured face wore a frown as he remarked--

“In just about six months the Kink’s going to know so much that he won’t be worth a single, solitary ----!”