Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 146 No. 4 — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

looked over his passengers’ safety belts and then clambered into one of the two seats in the rear cockpit. Flip Devans came to the propeller and waited for the “ Switch off!” of the pilot. “ Wait a minute,” said Royce suddenly, and clambered out of the cockpit. His two passengers looked after him, the girl curi- ously and Bill suspiciously. Royce trotted to the hangar, slung his own clear glass goggles on a shelf, and picked up a pair with lenses tinted amber. He put them on and looked at his eyes in a broken mirror. Then he half closed his lids and looked again. After this cryptic performance he chuckled, venting a noise like a rusty saw biting into a box. “This is altruism,” he assured the broken mirror solemnly, ‘‘ but she wants him.” He hurried back to the plane, wearing the tinted goggles, and vaulted into his place without comment. “Don’t stunt, Royce,” Bill said again. “Huh,” said Royce. “Switch off! Contact!” The Flamingo waddled forward like a duck—a duck who was masticating dyna- mite—quickened its pace and leaped across the field like a grayhound, and rose into the air like an eagle. The motor, biting sav- agely into its hearty meal of high-test gaso- line, and purring like a contented dinosaur, swung them ten thousand feet into the air in twenty minutes. In the front cockpit Bill pointed and shouted in unmannerly fashion as he showed Millicent the Sound, the ocean, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, outlined against a leaden horizon, and the other sights of the great bowl in which they were suspended. Occasionally one or the other would glance back at the pilot, but all they could see was a resolute chin, slit- ted mouth, and a lean nose which attended | strictly to the business of supporting the fae ~ Royce was flying in great circles, of the irregular patch of green aéro- ic ee ‘the ange Royce continued og batgpgere t which ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. shaking his head violently and words with his mouth; but the pilot 1 no answering sign. Only once during the long upward Seid | did Royce’s tightly closed mouth relax into a grin. That was after a final inspection of the altimeter and a glance over the side. ‘“‘ Wants her to think he’s a coward, does he?” Royce confided to the eighty-mile air current that was buffeting his head. “Tl show him, and her, too!” His left hand suddenly snapped out to the instrument board and switched off the motor while his right hand pushed the control stick forward. Instantly the plane headed earthward in a dangerously steep glide. At the moment the Flamingo nosed downward, Royce collapsed, with his head and shoulders over the side of the cockpit. His left hand dangled outside the body, while his right, equally motionless, remained inside the cockpit. Hidden from Bill and the girl in front, his right hand firmly gripped the stick; and his feet, also in- visible, remained as firmly planted on the rudder bar. As the roar of the motor suddenly ceased, and the hum of the taut wires between the wings rose to take its place, Bill and the girl turned backward. They saw the pilot limp and half out of the plane. And even as their horrified eyes saw, the hum of the wires became a low whistle which ran steadily up the scale as the speed of the rush toward earth increased. Through half-closed eyes, screened from view by the amber lenses, Royce saw the fright on the two faces peering backward — and upward at him. Then he saw Bill’s mouth snap shut and his shoulders heave as he undid his safety belt. Bill shouted a word of encouragement to the girl. Then. he pulled himself to his feet and paused for a moment, looking, with a very white face, upward at the other cockpit wherein was the inert pilot and the controls which alone Coe Save 98 ree es tag: It was a scant four feet ¢