Читать книгу Bill Barnes Takes a Holiday - George L. Eaton - Страница 4

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A LITTLE over three hours later Bill shot a "sun sight" as the tip of Cape Race flashed under the wings of the Lancer. He eased back his engines to about sixty-five per cent throttle, as a twenty-mile tail wind came out of the west.

Every half-hour he had been talking to Tony Lamport on Barnes Field giving him his position and the weather so that Tony could check it against the forecast. At the same time Tony took a radio bearing to crosscheck the position Bill gave him.

"You're going to run into a couple of high fronts pretty quick," Tony told him as St. Johns faded away behind them.

"Okay, Tony," Bill said. "I'm going to throw the controls to Sandy if he isn't asleep. Hell check with you."

"BBX signing off," Tony said.

"Want me to take her, Bill?" Sandy asked.

"Just a minute." Bill checked their fuel consumption, climbed to fifteen thousand feet and increased their speed forty miles an hour to get maximum efficiency. "You'll get a wind shift before you strike that first cloud wall," he then said. "If it gets bad wake me up. I'm going to sleep."

"I've got her, Bill. I'll take radio bearings if it closes in. Sweet dreams."

An hour later Sandy stuck the nose of the Lancer into a front, or cloud wall, that rose to twenty thousand feet from the surface of the Atlantic. Blade rain that was half hail beat down on the overhead hatches, and a sudden gale snatched them, buffeting the Lancer around like a cork on an angry sea.

For a moment Sandy debated about waking Bill; decided against it. From the dials on the instrument panel came a ghostly phosphorescent glow. He could barely see his navigation lights far out on the wing tips. A wrench and a twist dropped the big ship three hundred feet. Then it glided up an ascending current of air--and down again, as though its belly were attached to the rails of a roller coaster.

Sandy flipped his radio switch and began to chant Tony Lamport's call letters into the microphone. The wail that came back to him was like the eerie screams in a melodramatic movie. He closed the key with eyes roving over his instrument panel and coming to rest on his artificial horizon. His arms ached from trying to keep the big ship steady on her course. He was fighting a cross-wind that made him take his bearings every few minutes.

The storm had swallowed them up completely, locking them tight in a world that was a mass of ominous fog and wind and driving rain. The wind was slashing in against the windshield so hard he could not see two feet in front of him. He was flying entirely blind and fighting his controls every instant.

In the forward cockpit Bill Barnes was sleeping the sleep of a man who has left his worries and nervous tension behind him. Not even the fearful buffeting the Lancer was taking could disturb him.

Almost without notice the Lancer popped out on the other side of the front, and Sandy found that the wind had shifted two hundred and forty degrees. But now there were dear, sunlit skies ahead with an almost unlimited visibility. He nosed the Lancer down in a long power glide, hoping to pick up a more favorable, wind at a lower altitude. Flipping his radio key, he made contact with Tony Lamport and checked his dead reckoning navigation against the Barnes Field radio station. He was glad that he had not awakened Bill. .

But after two hundred and eighty miles of sunshine another front loomed up ahead. Sandy raised the nose again, trying to get above it, but the ominous mass seemed insurmountable. Leveling off at twelve thousand feet he began that same desperate fight all over. This time a light snow began to collect on his windshield.

Once again his radio screamed with static as Sandy threw the key and tried to make contact with Tony. Then, after adjusting his volume and wave length, he spun the master tuning control and sought to get the Irish radio terminal at Foynes. More angry static was the only answer.

Suddenly he leaned forward, tense and eager, as the faint, far-away sound of a high-pitched, desperate voice came to his ears. Feathering the control, he strained to hear what the voice was saying. One time it sounded like a general S. O. S., but he wasn't sure. Then the words, "Transatlantic Airliner Memphis calling . . . . Transatlantic Airliner Memphis calling.... we are falling.... they are pouring in. . . ." Then the voice rose and faded away into an eerie scream as static intervened.

The palms of Sandy's hands were wet with perspiration. He shouted Bill's name into the intercockpit phone, and reached over the instrument panel to awaken him with a push on the head.

"What's the matter, kid?" Bill said as he sat up, his eyes only half open.

"I think it's the Transatlantic's big ocean airliner Memphis calling for help," Sandy said into the phone. "You'd better tune in and see if you can pick her up. There's so much static I couldn't hear what her radio man was saying. But she sounded as though she was in distress."

"She was scheduled to leave Foynes: this morning," Bill said. "It's her first passenger-carrying trip after all those test hops. What wave length did you have?"

"I'm not sure Bill. Some place around 1480. You'll have to tune to get her."

For the next fifteen minutes Bill worked with the radio while Sandy fought the Lancer and the weather.

"I can't seem to get her," Bill finally admitted. Then, "Wait a sec! He's coming in but I can't hear what he says." Quickly he chanted into the microphone: "BB answering Airliner Memphis. . . . BB answering Airliner Memphis. Are you getting me? Are you getting me? Go ahead .... go ahead. BB answering Airliner Memphis."

The scramble of words that followed was unintelligible to Sandy, because he was using all his powers of concentration to keep the Lancer on an even keel, but Bill's expression showed that some of the meaning had come through to him.

"Quick, kid!" he snapped at Sandy after motioning him to throw his radio switch and use the intercockpit telephone. "Give me the controls. She's in trouble, but I can't make out what. Something has happened to them. They can't make contact with any ships or land stations. He was sending out their position. I think I got it. Check our position and check theirs against it." He handed Sandy a piece of paper with the position of the Memphis written on it. "Work fast, kid! It sounds as though we are the only ones who picked up their S. O. S."

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.