THE LAST CRASH
By Kenneth Latour
Author of “The Sky Call,” “The Vindication of Smith,” Etc.
Most aviation stories are just good stories with aviation in them. We have no objection to yarns of that sort. Those that we have published have been decidedly good reading. This aviation story is different—just how different you will realize as you read it. “The Last Crash” is something new in fiction—a real air story. Its author is a man who knows not only the technique of the airman’s trade but also its spirit. —The Editor
John Norris, whom you will remember as the man who flew the first straightaway from Langstrom Field to Cristobal, had a touch of the mystic in him, for all he was the sort of a man that good men favor. And in this, it may interest you to know, Norris wasn’t different from most men of his calling. He was different, however, in this respect, that he was outspoken with his ideas about unearthly matters whereas most airmen keep their mysticism to themselves.
If Norris knew you and liked you he would tell you stories—stories to prove his conviction that “things do not happen; they are arranged.” He was a fatalist, you see.
Being a fatalist is one of the characteristic peculiarities of the flyer which he shares, perforce, in common with other men whose professions keep their spiritual elbows raw with constant rubbing against the harsh specter of sudden and violent death.
“There must be an explanation for the things that happen in the air,” Norris once affirmed. “The papers call them ‘accidents’ but don’t you believe it. They aren’t accidents. They are consummations.
“I think this: A man is given a course to run; he runs it; and then he is wiped out. The manner, the time and the place of each man’s last crash is already marked up on somebody’s office tickler at Cosmic headquarters.