The air splasher

by Richard Howells Watkins

As he climbed away from the ground that had so closely menaced his wings and wheels, his face smoothed out, becoming less the face of a hard-pressed, nervy fencer and more the face of a pilot. He relaxed, sat back in his seat and loosened slightly his grip upon the stick. His eyes swept the horizon automatically, then dropped to the fields round about the one he had risen from. He did not bother to look at the crowd he was thrilling. Thousands of men and women, millions of kids—the crowd was always the same. Tennant’s circus was by no means the only outfit operating on that warm June Saturday afternoon. There were ships in front of a score of hangars near and far, and more ships in the air. His eyes roved among them.

Abruptly, with a jerk of his head, he dismissed other ships and devoted himself to his own. It was time to thrill the spectators again. He flung the plane into a quick medley of contortion—loops, rolls, Immelmans, a whipstall, spirals and dives. And steadily throughout the maze of air splashes he let the ship drift earthward, so that what had been mere routine stunting at a reasonable altitude began again a grim, breath-taking challenge to gravity and death. Again a wingtip flicked over the grass; again the wheels seemed about to plow into the hard surface of the field.

At last, after long, hazardous seconds, King Horn climbed for his final stunt. At less than a thousand feet he pulled the ship’s nose higher and higher, until it stalled. Then he kicked over the rudder. The ship reeled downward in a tail spin. When it seemed certain that nothing could save the gyrating ship from plunging into the ground, King Horn got it out. That was his business, getting ships out of impossible positions, he reflected, with a grin, as he felt the diving ship responding to his insistent, steady hand on the stick.

Out of the spin, with the earth a few feet below, he ruddered the ship around into the wind, throttled and leveled off. The work was over. His wheels had already bumped once when, dead ahead, a small boy with a camera apparently rose out of the ground.

King Horn could have dodged the youngster easily enough, but out from the edge of the field there raced half a dozen would-be rescuers. They strung out in a human barrier ahead of the ship that had virtually lost its flying speed.

With an imprecation King Horn gunned his ship. It hung sluggishly in the air, wheels still reaching for the ground. King flung it over in a quick bank to avoid the men ahead. The ship reeled sidewise. Then the thing that King Horn had risked several times that day happened. The wingtip scored the ground.

King’s leaping hand snapped off the ignition switch. The ship, swirling like a curving knife over the heads of the people below, hit the ground. The wingspars went to pieces first; then the landing gear and prop in a volley of splintering sounds. The heavy motor in the nose of the fuselage ended the tune of the cracking wood with its ponderous thud. The pilot felt his safety belt cut into his middle as he was flung about. Then came sudden stillness.

King Horn jerked the fire extinguisher out of the bracket below the instrument board. Then he climbed out of a thoroughly wrecked ship. He was somewhat groggy from the jolt and something had got him in the left arm, for the sleeve of his gray shirt was ripped from wrist to shoulder, revealing bloody flesh.

Training the extinguisher, he sent spurt after spurt of fire-killing liquid on the hot exhaust pipe. He was still at this when Franklin Cross, pale of face, big Walt Tennant, the boss of the circus, and a wave of pilots and mechanics reached him.

“That was a quick one,” Walt Tennant commented. The circus boss inspected his pilot and his plane with the same equanimity. The wreckage did not distress him, for he knew that the story which Franklin Cross and other newspaper men would write would bring greater crowds to his field in the days to come.