“Holy smokes,” she laughed.
“I can’t take this,” Renwick said over the radio.
An elated Coleman flew across the landing field where her mechanic Shorty Duggan waved his arm at her. She banked around the squat two-story control tower, climbed the Skathi back into the air, then circled around to bring the craft in on the runway. Her intent wasn’t a traditional landing.
“That lass sure is something, ain’t she?” Duggan said, as Renwick fell in step beside him as the two headed toward the descending aircraft. The seasoned mechanic was pot-bellied, perpetually whiskered, in his fifties and bow-legged. The forty-six year old Renwick was rangy, high cheekboned with combed back black hair and round, rimless glasses.
“Careful, Shorty, Bessie would eat you up and spit you out for breakfast.”
Duggan smiled yellowed teeth. “Ah, what a time it would be. But you rest easy, Mister Tycoon, I think of ‘er as the daughter I never had, don’t you know?”
“Yes, I do,” Renwick said solemnly.
Duggan took out a well-worn pipe from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth on the side of his mouth. He made no effort to light it as he and the man financing this operation watched Coleman bring the craft the ground, for it was unlike any other plane currently in existence.
The wings of the craft tilted upward. Coleman was thankful those switches weren’t malfunctioning. The rear rotor simultaneously turned in sync with the twin modified Pratt & Whitneys which were now pointing straight up. In this way, the plane hovered in midair much like an autogyro, but not requiring a massive overhead propeller suspended over the cockpit. The craft touched down vertically on the runway and she cut the engines. The gearing in the wings whined as they lowered in place horizontally for takeoff.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Renwick said as she came out of the cockpit onto the built-in rungs.
“What happened?” Duggan said, concerned for her, but also anxious his work had been inferior and the reason for the engines quitting.
She repeated what she’d told Renwick.
“Ah, well,” a relieved Duggan said, “damn engineers.” He took his pipe out and pointed the much-chewed stem at the two of them. “Didn’t I say fiddlin’ with those louvres to gain more speed in the lift would have consequences?”
“You did, Shorty,” Renwick admitted. “But we’re pushing the boundaries.”
“Physics is still physics, Mr. Renwick, and it’s fair Bessie’s gorgeous hide on the line when you push them there boundaries.”
“I know what I’ve signed on for,” Coleman said, carrying her leather helmet and goggles in her hands, radio wire dangling from it. “And, anyway, the engines would have started right up again if not for the ignition switch.”
Duggan stopped. “It failed?”
She shrugged. “These things happen.”
“I put that switch in the Scotty meself last week, Bessie.” Biting down hard on his pipe he marched back toward the experimental craft and inside the cockpit.
Standing several feet back from the craft, an observer might mistake it for a Ford Tri-Motor, though its body was more of a tapered design. The plane had a motor mounted under each side of its hinged wing but instead of a propeller in the center there was an oval. Set inside of that was a row of circular louvers that fronted an axial-flow turbojet based on a design by the French engineer Maxime Guillaume. The Frenchman had been paid for use of his patent, which existed as drawings only, no prototype. He hadn’t yet solved the problem of making compressors that didn’t fail due to fluctuations in air pressure. Renwick’s brain trust had made progress in that regard, at least to the extent that the turbojet bestowed greater speed to the plane. But most importantly, when the plane was switched over to land vertically, the center turbine helped keep the craft aloft in a temporary stationary position.
Inside the hanger, they walked past various internal and external pieces of aircraft as well as a DC and gas-powered electrical generators. On a workbench Duggan took the switch apart and stared at it. He pointed the tip of his screwdriver at the insides. “The contact points have been removed. When I put the switch in last week, I tested it, and it worked fine.”
“None of us doubt you, Shorty,” Renwick said.
Bessie Coleman folded her arms. “Sabotage. But subtle-like. Done by someone who counted on us always tinkering with the Skathi.”
“Easy enough to observe us from the woods around here,” Duggan noted. The private airfield was in a bulldozer cleared area in the wetlands.
“You don’t exactly lack for enemies, Hugo,” Coleman observed.
“Cutthroat usually has other meanings from the boardroom types,” Renwick said. “They use their lawyers to entangle you through legal maneuvers.”
“Maybe they don’t have time for that. Or maybe they simply like the more direct method,” Coleman said.
“And let’s not forget there are plenty of flyboys who feel a woman—especially a colored gal—ain’t got no business in the air,” Duggan wryly noted.
She’d received her pilot’s license two years before Emilia Earhart. Though Earhart had gained additional notoriety as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, it was as a passenger and not lead or co-pilot. A French speaker, Coleman was the one who knew about Guillaume’s pioneering theories.
Renwick said, tapping the switch, “There’s plenty of my rivals would love to derail this effort. Aviation is a field with vast potential and to be the first with this kind of airship, well, one’s reputation would be made.”
“Aye, like Cook versus Peary?” Duggan said, looking at Renwick. “Who gets their first or can make his claims stick, is all that counts.”
The man gave him a wan smile. “Still, I assumed our isolated location would
