Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday Read online

  Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday

  George L. Eaton

  Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday

  A Complete Air Novel By George L. Eaton

  From the June 1938 Air Trails Magazine

  From across the bleak reaches of the Atlantic came an S.O.S.—In a crisis demanding the most of man and machine. Bill frustrates a ruthless plot

  BILL BARNES slowly pushed back the chair in which he was sitting in the living-room of his bungalow on Barnes Field, Long Island, got to his feet and moved over to a window overlooking the myriad concrete and tarvia runways that crisscrossed the field. The transverse bands of yellow-and-black pigment painted across the runways, to aid in night or fog landings, gleamed in the glare of the morning sun.

  He gazed across the field with eyes that were red and swollen. He did not even see the electrified wire fence that contained burglar alarms in the strategically placed guard posts, or the armed guards patrolling their beats. He didn't see anything because he was close to complete exhaustion.

  He stared, almost stupidly, as one of his yellow-and-black-and-scarlet Snorters came plummeting down out of nowhere to fishtail in for a landing. He saw I. Kinter Hassfurther, better known as Shorty, slide over the side of the forward cockpit to the concrete.

  That is, he saw him, but it didn't register. He was too tired even to think. Wearily, he turned back to his desk and the pile of papers on it. He had been going at top speed for months past—now he was working on nervous energy alone. He was nearing the breaking point. He had sapped his reserve vitality and his nerves were beginning to scream.

  He started violently as a knock sounded on his door and Shorty Hassfurther, his chief of staff, pushed it open. Bill turned half around, grunted and swung back to his desk.

  Shorty's hard-bitten, blue eyes were narrowed as he dropped into a chair and studied Bill's haggard face. He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “Just plain dumb,” Shorty said quietly.

  “Eh?” Bill snapped. “Who's dumb?”

  “You are! I've always had the idea that you were a reasonably smart boy.

  But I've changed my mind. No one but a half-wit beats his head against a stone wall because it feels so good when he stops.”

  “Listen,” Bill said, “when I want your opinion and advice I'll ask for it. In the meantime, please get the hell out of here. I'm busy.”

  “Yeah,” Shorty said. “And I'll be even busier when I'm not only doing that work you're doing, but spending half my time running out to some sanatorium to try and cheer you up.”

  “Don't worry about me,” Bill growled. “I'll make out.”

  “Somebody's got to worry about you,” Shorty said. “You don't seem to have enough sense to worry about yourself.” His voice suddenly grew sharper. “Listen, Bill, we're all worrying about you. You've got to lay off ; and get a rest or you're going to pieces. .

  “This bird who calls himself the Saver of Souls ran you ragged for months— while your regular work piled up. You're human like all the rest of us. One of these days you'll begin to see little men in pink pants and yellow jackets running around the ceiling. Then it will take you months to get well instead of the two or three weeks' rest you need now.”

  “I've got to get this stuff out of the way first,” Bill said. But his voice didn't carry conviction. It was the voice of a man who knows that he can no longer think straight.

  “You aren't in any shape to get anything out of the way,” Shorty said, his tone soft and soothing now. “I got my lesson at that stuff during the War, Bill. I was only nineteen years old then find thought I was tireless—that nothing could break me. I was with the British and my C.O. tried to make me take a rest. But I was too smart. I wanted to keep on knocking down my German every day instead of taking time out to eat an apple. I finally went to pieces and a Heinie nearly shot my head off. He trimmed my buttons off properly, and I was in the hospital for three months. I didn't have enough sense to take a rest when I needed it most.

  “The same thing will happen to you,” Shorty went on. “Something really important will come along and you won't be in any shape to handle it. You'll get your ears pinned back and spend a few months wondering how it happened.”

  Bill threw a pencil down on his desk and looked at Shorty out of bloodshot eyes. For an instant he seemed to have more than a little trouble controlling himself. “I am tired,” he admitted. “I'm so tired I can't seem to make any decisions. But who is going to take care of this stuff if I don't?”

  “Now you're talking like a sane man,” Shorty said. His round, Pennsylvania-Dutch face broke into an encouraging smile. “We can handle things while you take a holiday Bill. None of this stuff is half as important as it seems to you. You'd realize that if you weren't so tired. It's just run of the mill stuff. A couple of surveys, requisitions and orders. You've lost your perspective as to what is important and what isn't.”

  “Perhaps you're right,” Bill said. “I'm in a daze. If I could only get some sleep. But I can't eat or sleep. I——”

  “Listen, fellah,” Shorty said. “You're going to get some sleep. Red Gleason and Sandy and I decided to take the matter into our own hands. Bev Bates and Scotty MacCloskey are in on it, too.

  Scotty has a half dozen grease monkeys and technicians going over the Lancer right now. He's tuning her up for your trip. Sandy is going with you.”

  “Trip?” Bill said.

  “To England,” Shorty said as though he was speaking about a ride uptown in the subway. “We all know you've been wanting to get over there to check up on some of their new ships for months. Well, now you're going and Sandy will hold down the rear cockpit in case you fall asleep on the way over.”

  “Ridiculous!” Bill exploded.

  “No, it's very logical. And right now you're going to bed. Doc Humphries is coming over here in about ten minutes and give you something that will quiet you down and make you sleep. It the weather is right you and Sandy will hop anytime after sunup in the morning. You're going to have a holiday whether you like it or not. So you might as well get used to the idea. If we see you around here before three weeks are gone we'll throw you out on your nose.”

  “Now listen. Shorty,” Bill began.

  “Listen, hell! Get out of those clothes!”

  The two triple-bladed, automatic-pitch props of the Lancer were ticking over slowly when Bill Barnes came out on the apron early the next morning. The rays of the rising sun played across the alloy steel and shining dural of the big ship and made it appear like a thing alive.

  His bronzed face was lined and haggard, but his eyes lit up with pride as they flashed over the Lancer from the tip of her spinner to the trimming tabs on her rudder.

  Gathered on the apron were the remaining members of his famous little squadron of flyers: Shorty Hassfurther, his chief of staff; the carrot-topped Eric (“The Red") Gleason; the brown-eyed Bostonian with the Harvard accent, Beverly Bates; and the last and youngest, the irrepressible Sandy Sanders, who drove them all halt mad with his thousand and one hobbies.

  With them was that lugubrious old Scotsman, Scotty MacCloskey, who was Bill's head technician and had been a British ace before wounds and accidents-incapacitated him for flying. He was fluttering around the Lancer like a mother dressing her only child for its first party.

  He inspected the 37mm. automatic engine cannon that was built integrally with the motor in the Vee of the cylinders and fired through the hollow prop shafts. It could pour explosive, incendiary or armor-piercing shells at the rate of three hundred shots a minute.

  From troughs along each side of the engine peeped the noses of two .50-caliber guns. The guns were set on either side of the pilot's seat in the forward co
ckpit, within easy reach in case of jams. They were equipped with automatic ammunition counters and engine-driven synchronizing gear. A dull, burnished-metal, telescopic sight was directly before the pilot's eyes.

  At the ends of the silver, all-metal cantilever wings gleamed navigation lights, and underneath the belly, protruding slightly, were the slots containing emergency landing flares.

  The pilot's cockpit, just back of the rear-wing spar, contained a complete set of blind-flying instruments, including the Kreusi short-wave direction finder, along with all the other instruments to be seen in Bill's ships.

  The rear cockpit was equipped with a complete set of duplicate controls and navigating instruments and a flexible .30-caliber Browning mounted on a track in the rear of the pit. A sliding inclosure of shatterproof glass covered both cockpits completely, with an arrangement that permitted the rear section to be telescoped forward out of the gunner's way when in action.

  In the fuselage, immediately behind the rear cockpit, in a locker, was the usual Barnes emergency equipment including a small outboard motor, a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, one Springfield rifle with a telescopic sight, and a repeating shotgun. There was also a mattock, a hatchet, a keg of water and emergency rations.

  The radio installation was easily accessible between the cockpits, with duplicate controls on each instrument panel. The headsets were adaptable for use as intercockpit phones.

  The whole world seemed to be alive with thunder as old Scotty gunned the twin Barnes-Diesels in the nose of the big ship. Then, after checking the infrared ray telescope that permitted Bill to see through rain, fog and the dark of night, he cut the throttles and climbed out, his gray head nodding with satisfaction. He was as proud of the Lancer as Bill.

  “She's sweet, boy,” he said. “She sings a lullaby when you open the throttles.”

  “See if she can sing Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Scotty,” Bed Gleason suggested.

  Some of the acute tenseness seemed to leave Bill Barnes' face as he joined the others laughing at Scotty's dignified discomfiture.

  “All right, fellah,” Shorty Hassfurther said as he saw Bill's glance sweep anxiously about, taking in the, hangars, airplane factory, administration building, hospital and even the fire house. “Let's see you shove. And don't stick your homely mug around here again for three weeks.”

  “That's right, boy,” Scotty said. “We'll take care of things. You'll keep in contact by radio and cable?”

  “By radio and cable,” Bill said. “I gave Tony Lamport instructions this morning.” Tony Lamport, a black-eyed, Italian-American, was chief radio operator and superintendent of communications on Barnes Field.

  Climbing into the forward cockpit, Bill suddenly asked, “Where is that brat. Sandy?”

  Sandy had completely disappeared. But a moment later he came tearing around a comer of the administration building, his white helmet and overall napping. “I forgot my autograph book,” he panted as he scrambled into the after cockpit. “I'll probably have a chance to get some swell signatures in England.”

  “Do you want my autograph before you go, Nimrod?” Shorty yelled.

  “Sure, mister.” Sandy opened the little black book and thrust it over the side.

  Shorty looked at him suspiciously, then wrote his name on the page Sandy had designated.

  Sandy took the book back, tore out the page, folded it and threw it at Shorty. “See if they'll let you in the zoo with it!” he shouted. “Let her ride, Bill.”

  Bill's hand came above his head in farewell salute as Tony Lamport gave the all clear signal. He released his brakes and the gleaming, silver ship rolled down the runway. At the center of the field, where the runways con verged, he tapped the rudder to kick it around into the wind and whipped it off the ground with his characteristic touch. The landing-gear light on the instrument panel gleamed as the amphibian gear folded completely into the fuselage and wings, and what had been a sesquiplane became ft silver bullet that was a monoplane.

  II—S.O.S.

  A LITTLE over three hours later Bill shot a “sun sight” as the tip of Cape Race flashed under the wings of the Lancer. He eased back his engines to about sixty-five per cent throttle, as a twenty-mile tail wind came out of the west.

  Every half-hour he had been talking to Tony Lamport on Barnes Field giving him his position and the weather so that Tony could check it against the forecast. At the same time Tony took a radio bearing to crosscheck the position Bill gave him.

  “You're going to run into a couple of high fronts pretty quick,” Tony told him as St. Johns faded away behind them.

  “Okay, Tony,” Bill said. “I'm going to throw the controls to Sandy if he isn't asleep. Hell check with you.”

  “BBX signing off,” Tony said.

  “Want me to take her, Bill?” Sandy asked.

  “Just a minute.” Bill checked their fuel consumption, climbed to fifteen thousand feet and increased their speed forty miles an hour to get maximum efficiency. “You'll get a wind shift before you strike that first cloud wall,” he then said. “If it gets bad wake me up. I'm going to sleep.”

  “I've got her, Bill. I'll take radio bearings if it closes in. Sweet dreams.”

  An hour later Sandy stuck the nose of the Lancer into a front, or cloud wall, that rose to twenty thousand feet from the surface of the Atlantic. Blade rain that was half hail beat down on the overhead hatches, and a sudden gale snatched them, buffeting the Lancer around like a cork on an angry sea.

  For a moment Sandy debated about waking Bill; decided against it. From the dials on the instrument panel came a ghostly phosphorescent glow. He could barely see his navigation lights far out on the wing tips. A wrench and a twist dropped the big ship three hundred feet. Then it glided up an ascending current of air—and down again, as though its belly were attached to the rails of a roller coaster.

  Sandy flipped his radio switch and began to chant Tony Lamport's call letters into the microphone. The wail that came back to him was like the eerie screams in a melodramatic movie. He closed the key with eyes roving over his instrument panel and coming to rest on his artificial horizon. His arms ached from trying to keep the big ship steady on her course. He was fighting a cross-wind that made him take his bearings every few minutes.

  The storm had swallowed them up completely, locking them tight in a world that was a mass of ominous fog and wind and driving rain. The wind was slashing in against the windshield so hard he could not see two feet in front of him. He was flying entirely blind and fighting his controls every instant.

  In the forward cockpit Bill Barnes was sleeping the sleep of a man who has left his worries and nervous tension behind him. Not even the fearful buffeting the. Lancer was taking could „ disturb him.

  Almost without notice the Lancer popped out on the other side of the front, and Sandy found that the wind had shifted two hundred and forty degrees. But now there were dear, sunlit skies ahead with an almost unlimited visibility. He nosed the Lancer down in a long power glide, hoping to pick up a more favorable, wind at a lower altitude. Flipping his radio key, he made contact with Tony Lamport and checked his dead reckoning navigation against the Barnes Field radio station. He was glad that he had not awakened Bill. .

  But after two hundred and eighty miles of sunshine another front loomed up ahead. Sandy raised the nose again, trying to get above it, but the ominous mass seemed insurmountable. Leveling off at twelve thousand feet he began that same desperate fight all over. This time a light snow began to collect on his windshield.

  Once again his radio screamed with static as Sandy threw the key and tried to make contact with Tony. Then, after adjusting his volume and wave length, he spun the master tuning control and sought to get the Irish radio terminal at Foynes. More angry static was the only answer.

  Suddenly he leaned forward, tense and eager, as the faint, far-away sound of a high-pitched, desperate voice came to his ears. Feathering the control, he strained to hear what the voice was saying. One time it s
ounded like a general S. 0. S., but he wasn't sure. Then the words, “Transatlantic Airliner Memphis calling . . . . Transatlantic Airliner Memphis calling.... we are falling.... they are pouring in. . . .” Then the voice rose and faded away into an eerie scream as static intervened.

  The palms of Sandy's hands were wet with perspiration. He shouted Bill's name into the intercockpit phone, and reached over the instrument panel to awaken him with a push on the head.

  “What's the matter, kid?” Bill said as he sat up, his eyes only half open.

  “I think it's the Transatlantic's big ocean airliner Memphis calling for help,” Sandy said into the phone. “You'd better tune in and see if you can pick her up. There's so much static I couldn't hear what her radio man was saying. But she sounded as though she was in distress.”

  “She was scheduled to leave Foynes: this morning,” Bill said. “It's her first passenger-carrying trip after all those test hops. What wave length did you have?”

  “I'm not sure Bill. Some place around 1480. You'll have to tune to get her.”

  For the next fifteen minutes Bill worked with the radio while Sandy fought the Lancer and the weather.

  “I can't seem to get her,” Bill finally admitted. Then, “Wait a sec! He's coming in but I can't hear what he says.” Quickly he chanted into the microphone: “BB answering Airliner Memphis. . . . BB answering Airliner Memphis. Are you getting me? Are you getting me? Go ahead .... go ahead. BB answering Airliner Memphis.”

  The scramble of words that followed was unintelligible to Sandy, because he was using all his powers of concentration to keep the Lancer on an even keel, but Bill's expression showed that some of the meaning had come through to him.

  “Quick, kid!” he snapped at Sandy after motioning him to throw his radio switch and use the intercockpit telephone. “Give me the controls. She's in trouble, but I can't make out what. Something has happened to them. They can't make contact with any ships or land stations. He was sending out their position. I think I got it. Check our position and check theirs against it.” He handed Sandy a piece of paper with the position of the Memphis written on it. “Work fast, kid! It sounds as though we are the only ones who picked up their S. O. S.”