Collected short fiction, p.361
Collected Short Fiction, page 361
Boyd caught his breath. A flaming eagerness stilled that voice of reason. He forgot all her strangeness, and saw only the things that made her woman, the golden breasts and haunting eyes, the alluring contours and the scarlet mouth.
The eerie minors of her piping music called to him. He heard the matingsongs of birds, and felt the throbbing heart of all earth’s spring. The music was challenge and question and promise. He wanted to reach out and take her. He thirsted for the feel of her golden body in his arms, and the contact of her lips. He made a groping movement toward her—and a queer cold froze him.
That cold was as uncanny, as sourceless, as her music. It came from nowhere, through the cockpit and through his heavy flying suit. It ached in his bones and stiffened his body. And the red full lips, against that golden elfish face, curved into a mocking smile.
Distantly, as if it had been miles from him, Carter Boyd sensed the sputter of his motor. An urgent sense of danger shook him. And that eerie music ended, as abruptly as it had begun.
The cold ebbed away, and Carter Boyd was back in his pursuit plane. His unconsciously tensed muscles had pulled it into a steep climb, and the motor was missing alarmingly. He pushed the stick hastily forward.
He was still shivering. That deadly cold had been actual, and no illusion. The wings and gun and cockpit cowling were gleaming with white frost. The motor was cold; he dived, gunned it.
Questions hammered at Carter Boyd’s brain. Who was that brightwinged golden bird-woman? And where? What was the secret of her uncanny, soundless piping? And whence had come that deadly cold?
Danger thrust away those questions. For the plane had hurtled on, through the vision. The four planes wheeling in that puzzling dog fight were nearer, now. And one of the three gray attackers abruptly left the pursuit, and climbed toward him.
Carter Boyd tipped the pursuit ship into a long dive, to meet the strange machine. He gunned the motor again, and saw a spatter of fine black drops across the windshield. Something wrong with an oil line—
But he forgot that peril, staring at another of the gray machines, that had dived upon the tiny, fleeing plane. For the gray ship turned abruptly white. It failed to come out of the dive, and went plunging down past the little plane, and made a dark little burst of smoke against a sandstone cliff.
Carter Boyd shuddered. It was that same weird cold, he knew, that silvered the gray plane with frost, and stiffened its occupants, and sent them to death against the cliff. He wondered if those unknown men had seen the birdwoman, and heard her eerie piping.
But the approaching stranger was now within range of him. Synchronized guns on its forward cockpit began spitting through the propeller. That was all the invitation that Carter Boyd required.
REGARDLESS of the increasing spray of oil on the windshield, he hammered the throttle of his motor wide open, and plunged to meet the attack. He had been hired to defend China from aerial invasion, and he wasn’t going to shirk the job. Air combat was a deadly game that gripped him with the same utter fascination that some men find in cards or ticker tape or horses or women. It was what made life liveable.
He fired a trial burst, to warm his own twin guns. With a blinding speed, however, the attacker was already upon him. Bullets ripped into his right wing. He slipped off to the left, seeking to avoid that deadly hail. Rolling, he tried to come up under the belly of the other ship.
With a dazzling, incredible speed, the gray machine banked and turned back upon him. Boyd just had time to glimpse the emblem painted on its slender fuselage—the representation of a rough black rock, spreading black wings beneath a yellow crown.
That ensign was neither Japanese nor Chinese nor Russian. But Boyd didn’t have long to wonder about it. For the man in the rear cockpit swung his swivel mounted guns over the side, and tracer bullets made white streaks.
Bullets smashed into Boyd’s wings. This was a better fighting ship, he knew, than he had ever met before. And its crew, whoever they were, knew their stuff.
It was a reckless Immelman turn, executed with every inch of that added speed for which the Russian designers of his plane had traded safety, that brought him up under the gray plane’s belly at last.
The other pilot side-slipped, rolled. Boyd clung to his position, desperately. His hammering guns whipped fragments from the gray machine.
Suddenly, in the middle of an attempted loop, the gray ship fell off on one wing. A black plume of smoke trailed out behind it. Boyd saw the limp form of the gunner, hanging half out of his cockpit.
Boyd leveled his own plane. The increasing smear of oil on the windshield blinded him. He lifted himself into the windstream, to clean it with a piece of waste, and his nostrils caught the reek of raw gasoline. He saw white drops trailing back from one of the wing tanks—and knew that now he would never get back to the depot.
And still the battle wasn’t done. He saw that tiny, bright-winged ship forced down upon a tiny, ragged scrap of mesa. His breath caught with pity for the unknown pilot. But the little ship checked itself, landed safely. Its strange wings seemed somehow to fold. And the other gray attacker lifted toward Boyd.
He gunned his motor, banked to meet it. Its forward guns hammered lead at him. He waved swiftly back and forth, firing. He meant to dive at the last instant, to seek that same blind spot that had doomed the other plane.
But smoking oil covered the windshield. When he peered above, it sprayed his goggles and burned his face. The other plane was lost in a blur of gray.
The indicator showed falling oil pressure, and Boyd’s motor was developing a bad heat-knock. Its power was failing. At the crucial instant of the loop, when he was hanging on the prop, it failed to deliver the vital thrust.
In that lost instant, the gray plane banked above him. Its rear guns spat merciless lead. A cold shock struck Boyd’s shoulder. In the first instant, he hardly felt it. But a dull ache increased, and he felt the hot stickiness of blood.
Boyd had been hit before. He knew that this was just about the finish. But he opened the throttle all the way, climbing. Thundering in that last ef-
[missing text]
alertly quizzical. The mocking hint of a smile on her full scarlet lips seemed to challenge: I dare you!
Then her wolfish escort seized her slim white arm possessively, and swept her away from him. But already the damage was done. As Jimmy Hall gunned the big silver transport into a stiff lake breeze, for the Chicago-Kansas City run, he found it very difficult to get that mop of red hair out of his mind.
It was the sort of mahogany-and-flame hair that made him long to tangle his fingers in it. Something in the girl’s level gray eyes had warned him to expect difficulties about that. But jimmy Hall thought it would be worth a good deal of trouble.
He found out Linda’s name from the stewardess. Presently, while his copilot took the controls, he walked back down the aisle. He even stopped at Linda’s seat, to point out the broad silver curves of the Mississippi, beneath.
She smiled back at him, with a dazzle that caught his breath. A few freckles showed that she was used to wind and sun. Her cheeks dimpled unexpectedly. Perhaps, he hoped, the level look in her gray eyes wasn’t going to be an insurmountable barrier, after all.
He noticed that the other passengers were turning to watch him—and decided that he didn’t care a bit.
But the man beside Linda did.
Her companion, sitting next to the window, had an arrogant military erectness. His. lean, pale, supercilious face had the hungry bitterness of exile. His oil-sleeked hair was very black. He looked—well, wolfish.
His book closed with a bang. His narrowed eyes looked angrily up at Hall. They had, he noticed, a greenish color that he didn’t like. The man’s sharp, impatient voice had a hissing accent:
“What ees it?”
Jimmy Hall said, flatly, “The Mississippi.”
The pale man showed no interest in the Father of waters. He waited, visibly, for Hall to add sir—which the big flier neglected to do. The green eyes glanced possessively at Linda Gaylord’s loveliness, then lifted again, hard with annoyance.
“We are occupied,” he said sharply. “Can’t you see?”
Jimmy Hall felt a sudden and almost overpowering desire to poke the pale man’s thinly arrogant nose. Beneath Hall’s yellow thatch, there were six feet and nearly two hundred pounds of him. His blue eyes blazed a warning, and the stranger drew back uneasily.
But Linda Gaylord smiled her dimpled, dazzling smile again. The mellow soft huskiness of her voice soothed Hall’s feelings:
“Sorry, pilot.”
Jimmy Hall believed her. He went back forward, and called the stewardess. The tall military man, she told him, was down on the passenger list as Mr. Smithson Jones.
“That’s a phony!” he muttered. “Jones! He looks like something they kicked out of the middle of Europe, because they didn’t like his manners.”
A few minutes later, the radio warned him of a line squall developing unexpectedly ahead. For half an hour, in boiling clouds that blazed with lightning, he fought wind and hail. At last, when the big plane drummed into calm sunlight beyond:
“A nice piece of airmanship, Jim,” the co-pilot approved.
And the stewardess came with a message:
“Your red-haired lady wants to speak to you, Jimmy.”
WITH his heart skipping eagerly, “Hall went back. Mr. Smithson Jones was reading a book on air-combat. He didn’t look up. Linda Gaylord greeted Hall with the same heart-stopping smile.
“Thanks, pilot.” Her voice was a husky caress. “A pretty bit of flying. I wanted to ask you to have dinner with us tonight.” Hall’s smile faded a little when she added, “To discuss a matter of business.”
Jimmy Hall had a standing date, on Wednesday nights, to play poker with the gang. But he never thought of that. He agreed instantly, and the girl gave him the address of a Chinese restaurant in Kansas City.
“At nine, Mr. Hall.”
At ten o’clock, when he entered Wong Foo’s, the red glare of neon gave Smithson Jones a sickly pallor, and his green eyes glittered unpleasantly. But Linda Gaylord, her hair a ruddy flame above clinging silver lame, was excitingly beautiful.
“So sorry we’re late.”
Jimmy Hall forgave her. He took the cold lax hand of Mr. Jones, who scowled at him, sniffed disgustedly at the smell of cooking in the air, and frowned at a spot on the tablecloth.
Hall had been eager for the meeting. Now he found himself just as eager to end it, for there was something about Mr. Jones that he simply couldn’t endure. With one word of soft Cantonese, he sent the fat waiter scurrying, and said:
“Well?”
With a pleasing, candid smile, Linda said immediately:
“Mr. Jones is an agent of Chiang Kai-shek’s government. He needs American pilots and instructors. Since you already speak Chinese, Mr. Hall, we can offer you a thousand American dollars a month, to go to China. Will you sign a contract?”
Mr. Jones himself looked distressed at that abrupt statement.
“Secrecy ees essential.” His lowered, hissing voice sounded almost fearful. “Speak no word of this, pilot. Here ees the contract.”
His pale, claw-like fingers produced the document. Hall scanned it, drumming on the tablecloth. The green feral eyes of Mr. Jones shot a sharp, questioning look at the girl. They both waited, silently. After half a minute, Hall looked up.
“Generous enough,” he said. “And I’ve thought for a long time that the Chinese weren’t getting a square deal. I’ll sign it.”
In the rear of a Chinese curio shop, they found a notary who witnessed the contract. On the street outside, Linda Gaylord handed Jimmy Hall a railroad ticket to a small village in the Rockies, and told him to ask for Lee Carmody.
A sharp disappointment stabbed Hall. Half his reason for signing up had been the desire to see more of Linda. “I hope—” he gulped, “hope we’ll be meeting again.”
The green eyes of Mr. Jones glittered unpleasantly. The pale claws of his fingers seized the girl’s bare white arm, and drew her away.
Lee Carmody was an immense dark man, sitting in his truck beside a freight siding near the mountain village. He waited for sweating men to load the truck with heavy wooden boxes from a car on the siding. Then, with Hall in the cab, the truck rumbled up a narrow road through the pines. Carmody refused to answer any questions.
At last, in the gray chill of an overcast mountain dusk, the truck came out upon a level mountain meadow. Hangars, shops, and barracks nestled against the forest. Gray-clad men stood guard with rifles.
“Guess ye can look around, stranger,” Carmody muttered. “Don’t try to leave camp. The Boss will be back in the morning.”
Hall looked around. What he saw alarmed him. He knew that smuggling war materials out of the United States was a grave offense. And it looked as if his new employer was involved in that.
He saw men in gray unloading the truck. Some of the boxes contained machine guns, rifles, and ammunition, but most of them, he saw, held airplane parts. He glimpsed a huge gray bombing plane, standing in the hangar.
An amazing plane! Hall’s trained eyes picked out a dozen new wrinkles in design. Here was a ship, he knew, with the speed and range to carry a load of bombs half around the world. From the jigs and tools in sight, he knew it had been assembled here. Hall hunted up Carmody, and demanded:
“Do you people expect me to fly that job to China?”
“Mister,” the big man drawled, “there are three rules you have got to follow, if you want to work for the Trust. Don’t ask questions. Don’t answer questions. Just obey orders.”
Hall slept in the barracks. At dawn, Carmody woke him. Outside, a small monoplane taxied in across the silver-frosted meadow. A slim figure in tan sport skirt and form-fitting crimson sweater leapt out of it. Hall’s heart skipped a beat when he saw that it was Linda Gaylord.
HALL followed Carmody to meet her. Her red hair was pushed out of sight under a leather helmet. The close-fitting sweater betrayed the sweet curves of her, the proud up-tilted cups of her breasts.
Hall caught his breath and looked away, to hide the quick pain of his desire. She handed Carmody a gray envelope, and told him briskly:
“The Boss is taking the ship from Base Two. Mr. Hall, here, is going to take off at dusk. I will fly with him. These are your orders.”
With her dimpled, dazzling smile, she turned to Hall.
“Breakfast?” she said. “We’ve got a few things to discuss.”
“Okay,” Hall said. “I’ve got several questions, myself.”
“Forget them.” Her voice was crisply impersonal. “It is your business, Mr. Hall, to obey the instructions that are given you—and forget everything else.”
The curt toss of her head infuriated Hall. He was filled with a secret desire to get his hands on her white lovely body, and shake a little of the icy efficiency out of her. A sound spanking, he felt, would put their relations on a much better footing.
He couldn’t, however, help feeling a little sorry for her. She looked too pretty and innocent to be mixed up with anything so rotten as this business was beginning to appear. Her quick smile warmed him to the heart.
At breakfast, she told him that they were to take off at dusk for a Chinese airport in Shensi province, beyond Sian. The State Department, she assured Hall, unofficially approved the activities of Mr. Jones. The secrecy was because of Japanese spies.
A bright shaft of the sunrise caught her hair, as she talked, and turned it into red glory. Her beauty caught Hall’s breath—and burned away his doubts.
“This still looks fishy, somehow,” he thought. “But, darling, I’d fly with you to hell!”
Hall watched the fueling of the big gray bomber, and tested it on a taxi run up and down the long meadow. Working with the girl, he plotted a great-circle course across the Pacific. At dusk they climbed into the plane, but Linda told him to wait.
She watched the starry sky, until the lights of another plane wheeled above. With phones on her ears, she talked into a microphone, and at last signalled Hall to take off.
“Forget the course we plotted,” she said when they were in the air. “Just follow the other ship.”
Jimmy Hall wasn’t much surprised, but his lean jaw set stubbornly.
“I was hired to fly this ship to China,” he said. “I’m going to do it.” His blue eyes blazed. “I’ll tell you right now, Miss Gaylord, if you wanted a stooge to use in some sort of piratical monkey-business—well, you’ve got the wrong man!”
“Better obey!” Above the muffled drum of four great motors, the girl’s voice was brisk and cold. “Mr. Jones is aboard the other plane. He has a full gun crew, and plenty of ammunition. And this plane isn’t armed. He will shoot you down.”
“Oh yeah?” Hall grinned at her. “We’ll see!”
“Follow the plane!” Her voice had an icy rap. Her blue eyes flashed, and Hall saw the gleam of a little automatic in her hands. “You’re in too far to go back now.”
Jimmy Hall laughed, happily.
“Linda, darling,” he said softly, “I see that I’m going to have to give you a lesson. I’m going to take that little toy away from you. And then I’m going to put you across my lap and. turn up your skirt and spank you where it will do the most good.”
And he reached out toward her tense, trembling body.
“No you won’t!” She turned in the seat, shouting back into the dark cabin space that had been fitted for the use of navigator and commanding officer. “Will he, Krošeć?”
“Nein!” boomed a great rusty voice, behind Hall. “Yankee Schweinhund, you had better obey. In der name of der Alexander, Ja!”
A GUN’S hard muzzle jabbed against Hall’s spine. He drew back his reaching hand, and looked at Linda Gaylord. She lowered the little automatic to her lap. Her provocative lips smiled at him, mockingly. Her white hand caressed the full curve of her breasts, with a triumphant, preening gesture.
“Oh yeah, Mr. Hall?” her soft voice jeered. “Now you’re working for the Trust,” she said more gravely. “Forget the Chinese. Forget everything but your orders. And follow Mr. Jones.”
