Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday Read online

  Bill poured soup into the mighty power plants in the nose of the Lancer and hung her on her props to take her above the storm and head winds she was fighting.

  He tried again to pick up the enormous airliner that was on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic with passengers. But only the screech of static and complete silence came back to him.

  III—TRIPLE ATTACK

  THE GREAT AIRPORT at Bundorick Head in the mouth of the Shannon on the east coast of the Irish Free State was a place of indescribable activity on that morning. Everywhere men were in action: engine mechanics, machinists, traffic men, dispatchers, radio inspectors, porters, pilots, engineers, navigators and officials.

  A loudspeaker blared from the administration building of the Transatlantic Transport Airways to add to the excitement.

  “The Airliner Memphis will leave on her first passenger-carrying trip for New York City, U. S. A., in fifteen minutes. Have all passengers had their luggage weighed and put aboard? Have all passengers had their luggage weighed and put aboard?”

  There was intense excitement in the air. It crept under people's skins and brought a flush to their cheeks and sometimes a ripple of aimless, senseless laughter to their lips. The official passengers and their friends and families stood gazing through the gates at the enormous monster in the water beside the quay. Tears and laughter intermingled as the sun crept higher and higher into the heavens.

  The four twin-row, radial, air-cooled Meredith Vulcan motors increased their crescendo as Flight-Engineer Hawkins spoke over the telephone to the first pilot and to the four men stationed in the engine nacelles.

  The captain, Arnold Morton, a veteran flyer with twenty-five years of experience behind him, licked his lips nervously as he went down the gangway from the bridge to the anchor and gear room in the nose of the great forty-five-ton ship for a last inspection. He glanced at the mooring post through the open hatch and over the neatly arranged gear that was ready for any emergency, then returned to the bridge. Nodding grimly to the first and second pilots at their posts at the controls, he went through the sound-proofed room to the navigation and radio room behind it. There the radio officer, flight-navigator and flight-engineer sat at their desks with earphones clamped to their heads.

  Giving only a few moments to the cargo hold, crew's quarters and baggage compartment, Captain Morton proceeded to the galley and dining lounge and the seven passengers' compartments stretching along the length of the ship.

  The furniture was made entirely of duralumin to keep down its weight, and the windowpanes were of a plastic lighter than glass. The walls were covered with porous fabrics so that the sound waves would pass through them instead of being deflected. The fabrics were colored light green, beige and light blue, and had the effect of making the compartments spacious and airy without being too bright in the sunlight above the clouds.

  In the de luxe compartment in the tail of the ship was a cocktail table and a bookcase beside a long, low couch. The ladies' and men's washrooms were equipped with leather-covered stools and bright duralumin fixtures.

  From the passenger compartments Captain Morton went down into the hull, where a gasoline pump drove gas from the sponsons up into the wing tanks and engines, and where auxiliary cargo was stored. A hasty inspection here, and he returned to his office. Sitting in the chair behind his desk, he closed his eyes, his lips moving silently.

  He was back out on the bridge as the big silvered-hull monster cast off and taxied across the mouth of the Shannon for a takeoff, great geysers of water cascading upward on each side of the hull as it cut down into the wind.

  At precisely the measured time for the hull to leave the water, the enormous high-wing monoplane zoomed upward and took to the air with its engines bellowing at ninety percent throttle.

  “Wind ten miles, thirty degrees,” the navigator advised the skipper from his post in the celestial observation turret.

  “Best altitude twelve—thousand feet,” he said a moment later.

  A half-hundred monoplanes and biplanes fell into position beside the giant transport to escort it out to sea as the first pilot cut his throttles to cruising speed.

  The flight-engineer began a check of the engines from his swivel chair in front of the control board, as the gasoline consumption at take-off was tallied. All compasses were checked and compared as the flight-navigator took a “sun sight” to be sure they were true. The flight-engineer reported the amount of fuel aboard to the captain, and the captain checked their progress against the gasoline consumption.

  Every half-hour the radio operator tapped out a position report to land stations, while the navigator checked the ground speed by celestial observation.

  At the same time the radio operator got a radio bearing from the nearest land station, to cross-check the work on board the Memphis. In the meantime the shore station had apprised itself of the positions of all surface ships within two hundred miles of the plane's position and route, and had transmitted it to the skipper and navigator so the Memphis could obtain radio “fixes” from them.

  Every thirty minutes the skipper and the first pilot relieved each other at the controls. And the flight-engineer and his assistant relieved each other, too, in the regulating of the pumping of fuel from the hull to the wing tanks and making up a log by repeated checks on their one hundred and forty-one instruments.

  From the skipper down to the galley stewards, the ship was being manned with a precise efficiency that left nothing to chance. The men worked silently with a crisp confidence that conveyed itself to the passengers. On this maiden trip those passengers were all officials of the Transatlantic Transport Airways and a sprinkling of reporters and scientists, and the twenty-five aboard represented only half of the ship's capacity.

  Three hours out, cruising at twelve thousand feet, the Memphis ran into the first fronts dotting the air above the Atlantic that morning. The big ship flew through the fog and rain with scarcely a tremor to indicate that it had gone from fair weather into foul. The passengers were more interested than frightened by the fog curling along the sides and the rain slashing against the windows. They were air-minded and they had perfect confidence in Captain Arnold Morton and his crew.

  Captain Morton was munching a sandwich in his little office, when the first of those three dun-colored, low-wing, tear-drop biplanes came diving out of the fog above the giant transport. The roar of their motors came to the captain's ears faintly and he was just getting out of his chair to investigate the sound when the pilot of that first ship damped down on the trip of the two machine guns synchronized through his propeller.

  He had aimed at the back of the neck of the flight-navigator in his navigation turret on the roof of the fuselage. The bullets chopped into the duralumin skin of the big ship and crept forward as the flight navigator lifted his head at the sound of the diving motors. He never saw what was behind and above him because a hail of lead nearly tore his head from his shoulders. He slumped off his little platform and his sextant clattered to the deck, while the bullet line continued forward and tore into the body of the radio operator and the first pilot, who was at the controls.

  As that first dun-colored biplane raced above the nose of the big ship at terrific speed, the second biplane came out of the fog with its guns yammering.

  Its bullets tore into the top of the Memphis a little to the left of the trajectory of the first ship. Captain Morton had opened his mouth to bellow an order when those bullets tore into his back. They slammed him against a bulkhead where he slumped to the floor, his arms and legs grotesquely spread.

  The assistant radio operator leaped to the blood-spattered microphone as he saw the chief operator slide out of his chair. He tried desperately to make contact with the nearest land stations and ships, but the radio apparatus seemed to be smashed beyond control. He began to chant incoherently into his mouthpiece, sending out a general call ' for help. No specific station answered him, but he kept giving the position of the Memphis and trying to tell what wa
s happening, although he did not know.

  A steward had been carrying a tray of food from the galley to the dining saloon when that first long burst of fire drove into the body of the first pilot.

  Before the second pilot had grabbed the controls, the big ship lurched and the steward landed in the lap of one of the vice-presidents of Transatlantic Transport Airways.

  The next instant the passengers went mad. The third dun biplane had dived in below the tip of the port wing and was spraying the middle deck that contained the passenger compartments with a withering fire of lead. One moment the guests were chatting gayly, the next a quarter of them were dead. The faces of the rest were twisted into weird masks, and in their eyes was the fear of death. They bellowed and screamed like caged, angry animals, while the second pilot fought the controls and tried to right the ship.

  After a bit the Memphis plunged out of the wall of fog that had encompassed it. The three dun biplanes climbed above it and drove incendiary bullets into the wing tanks. A tank exploded and the whole ship was engulfed in a great mass of smoke, out of which a giant tongue of flame leaped upward.

  Then one of the biplanes was diving underneath the Memphis, firing round after round of incendiary bullets at the sponsons containing the main gasoline supply. For some reason this attack failed to bring about the intended holocaust, and the pilot, circled and returned for another try.

  Suddenly, rivers of flame seemed to pour out of the big airliner from wing tip to wing tip and down the length of the entire hull. It became a fiery furnace of exploding tanks and twisted, white-hot metal struts as it plummeted to its death in the calm Atlantic.

  IV—TELLTALE MANEUVER

  BILL BARNES watched the instruments on his flight panel as he held the Lancer hard into the rain and fog and tried to climb above them.

  He could not tell from the garbled message from the Memphis' radio operator exactly what was happening, but he knew the ship was in imminent danger.

  He eased his throttles open until the Lancer was racing through the storm at nearly four hundred miles an hour.

  And it took all the strength in his powerful arms and shoulders to hold her on her course.

  “Fasten your safety belt and adjust your parachute, kid,” he said into the telephone to Sandy.

  But Sandy had already done that.

  He gasped, “Wonder how bad it is, Bill?”

  “No telling,” Bill said. “We ought to be coming up alongside them pronto if that position was correct.”

  Then the Lancer sped out of that dense fog, and they were out in the open with the sun shining brightly in the blue sky above them and the Atlantic like a mill pond far below.

  Twenty miles away and far below they spotted the Memphis just as the main supply tanks exploded. A string of curses leaped to Bill's lips as he saw bursts of fire coming from the three dun biplanes darting in and out around the airliner. He opened the throttles of the Lancer wide, saw the airspeed indicator climb to four hundred, and fifty miles an hour. Nursing his machine-gun trip, he fired a short burst to be sure his guns were ready.

  “What's happening. Bill?” Sandy panted into his microphone, as they saw the Memphis become a great ball of smoke and flame and start her plunge toward the sea.

  “Break out that swivel gun!” Bill said.

  “Those three biplanes have murdered the Memphis and all her crew and passengers. They'll come after us now because we saw them.”

  He nosed the Lancer down, pointing it at the flaming mass ahead, hoping against hope that there might be some survivors, though realizing in his heart that no one could survive that flaming hell. He eased out of his dive as what remained of the Memphis struck the surface of the water. One final explosion occurred, followed by a half dozen minor ones, and then the skeleton of the giant ship plunged to-its last resting place.

  Bill circled low above the great oil spots spreading over the surface, trying to locate a possible survivor. But there was none. He was placing his binoculars back in a pocket when the sound of screaming props struck terror through his whole being. For an instant he was motionless. Then his eyes swept the sky above him as Sandy shouted,

  “They're diving on us. Bill!”

  The three fast, tear-drop biplanes were converging on them from three sides! They were only three hundred yards above him and traveling at terrific speed. He yanked the control column of the Lancer back into his stomach and hung it on its props. The three diving ships were easing out of their dive to come up underneath him as he poured juice into the engines of the Lancer and took it upstairs.

  “Give 'em hell, kid!” Bill said into his microphone, hearing Sandy's swivel gun chattering behind him.

  He leveled off a thousand feet above the three biplanes and came around in a vertical bank as they nosed up to form a Vee. His finger hovered over the electric trip of the 37mm. cannon. Suddenly, he opened up the throttles of the Lancer for a moment and went up and back in a flashing Immelmann turn as the three biplanes leveled off. They were coming at him head-on now. When they were four hundred yards away they opened fire with their six machine guns. The concentrated fire was terrific.

  Bill skidded the Lancer out of range and eased back on the stick as the three ships passed by him. As he saw their rudders bite into the air to return to the attack, he yanked the stick back and came up and over on his back just as they began their turn. At the top of his loop he neutralized his controls for a moment, then eased the nose down in a steep inverted dive.

  He got the first of the three ships under his hair sights for one brief instant. His finger came down on the trip of his 37mm. cannon. The rapid-firer threw five high-explosive shells within the space of a second, but Bill's speed was too great and his dive too steep for accurate shooting. Between the time he had the ship under his sights and when he tripped his trigger the little fighter had passed out of his range of fire.

  Bill cursed, leveled off and half-rolled the Lancer upright. The single seaters were coming around on one wing tip as he lifted the nose for altitude. He knew he could get away from them if he wanted to, but the thought of the whole-sale murder he had seen them perpetrate had enraged him almost beyond reason.

  He knew he should broadcast what he had witnessed, but something held him back, something he did not understand.

  “Why,” he asked himself as he spiraled upward; “did they do it? What is behind it?”

  His hand started forward toward his radio switch, to open it and tell the radio station at Foynes what had happened and ask them to send him aid. But something stopped him. Suppose, he thought, I lure these three ships in toward shore to meet planes that are sent out to help me, and in the mixup that follows they escape; then they will never get what is coming to them. They may escape entirely.

  He was trying to justify his desire to give battle when he became aware of a screaming prop that roared underneath him. He rolled the Lancer completely over and whipped it up and around to reverse his direction. He dropped the nose and poured a burst of ten shells at the little dun-colored ship arrowing up at him. But again his aim was bad and the little ship kicked its tail in the air and dived out of danger.

  “You don't have to make any decision,” he said to himself. “If they want trouble give it to 'em!”

  He gunned his engine and dived on the tail of the single-seater. His line of tracer smoke curled above the head of the pilot. He eased his stick forward a little and his bullets crashed into the tail assembly and climbed forward along the fuselage to the engine block. A half-dozen of those powerful .50-caliber bullets nearly tore off the pilot's head. He slumped forward over the stick, while the ship kept straight on toward the waters pf the Atlantic.

  And then the air seemed to be choked with slashing, roaring dun-colored biplanes as the other two fighters came back into the battle. Bill realized instantly that these fellows knew their jobs as combat pilots. They were like darting hawks as they converged their fire to get Bill between them. They were everywhere, charging in from all angle
s, their guns screaming lead.

  Bill's mind and muscles had to coordinate with the speed of light if he were to survive that terrific onslaught. He eased the throttles of the Lancer open another notch and took it through the air with the speed and fury of a flaming meteor. He saw his bullets tracing designs on the sides of the dun biplanes, but his own speed was too great for accurate shooting.

  He felt the Lancer buck and shiver as bullets drove into it from that never-ceasing hail of lead. But he fought on while he gasped for breath, his face tense and terrible in its absolute concentration on the horrible job before him. He whipped the Lancer up and down, skidded and side-slipped, zoomed and dived and rolled to avoid the fire of those two fast fighters. He knew, only too well, that one single error in judgment would be his last.

  He could hear Sandy's gun chattering at intervals as he drove them off his tail and he could hear Sandy complaining in his ear that he, Bill, never gave him a chance to get in a telling shot.

  “Can't you level off and give me a straight shot at 'em once!” Sandy pleaded.

  “I can't, kid,” Bill gasped. “They are almost as fast as we are and they have as much maneuverability. I can't give 'em a chance to get set or they'll get us. They'll smash you into bits if I do.”

  Then the two ships got him inside a tight circle that he could not break. Each time he tried to break out a terrific burst of fire would cut across his path, forcing him to deviate from his course, and then they would be on him again, forcing him back so that one of them could get him under his sights.

  Bullets drummed all around them, and Bill's breath was coming in quick, agonized gasps. His right hand seemed to be frozen to the control column, so tight was his grasp. He was using all his inherent genius as a flyer, getting the utmost from the Lancer's great speed and maneuverability, while Sandy desperately tried to keep the enemy off their tail.