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.
III—TRIPLE ATTACK
THE GREAT AIRPORT at Bundorick Head in the mouth of the Shannon on the east coast of the Irish Free State was a place of indescribable activity on that morning. Everywhere men were in action: engine mechanics, machinists, traffic men, dispatchers, radio inspectors, porters, pilots, engineers, navigators and officials.
A loudspeaker blared from the administration building of the Transatlantic Transport Airways to add to the excitement.
“The Airliner Memphis will leave on her first passenger-carrying trip for New York City, U. S. A., in fifteen minutes. Have all passengers had their luggage weighed and put aboard? Have all passengers had their luggage weighed and put aboard?”
There was intense excitement in the air. It crept under people's skins and brought a flush to their cheeks and sometimes a ripple of aimless, senseless laughter to their lips. The official passengers and their friends and families stood gazing through the gates at the enormous monster in the water beside the quay. Tears and laughter intermingled as the sun crept higher and higher into the heavens.
The four twin-row, radial, air-cooled Meredith Vulcan motors increased their crescendo as Flight-Engineer Hawkins spoke over the telephone to the first pilot and to the four men stationed in the engine nacelles.
The captain, Arnold Morton, a veteran flyer with twenty-five years of experience behind him, licked his lips nervously as he went down the gangway from the bridge to the anchor and gear room in the nose of the great forty-five-ton ship for a last inspection. He glanced at the mooring post through the open hatch and over the neatly arranged gear that was ready for any emergency, then returned to the bridge. Nodding grimly to the first and second pilots at their posts at the controls, he went through the sound-proofed room to the navigation and radio room behind it. There the radio officer, flight-navigator and flight-engineer sat at their desks with earphones clamped to their heads.
Giving only a few moments to the cargo hold, crew's quarters and baggage compartment, Captain Morton proceeded to the galley and dining lounge and the seven passengers' compartments stretching along the length of the ship.
The furniture was made entirely of duralumin to keep down its weight, and the windowpanes were of a plastic lighter than glass. The walls were covered with porous fabrics so that the sound waves would pass through them instead of being deflected. The fabrics were colored light green, beige and light blue, and had the effect of making the compartments spacious and airy without being too bright in the sunlight above the clouds.
In the de luxe compartment in the tail of the ship was a cocktail table and a bookcase beside a long, low couch. The ladies' and men's washrooms were equipped with leather-covered stools and bright duralumin fixtures.
From the passenger compartments Captain Morton went down into the hull, where a gasoline pump drove gas from the sponsons up into the wing tanks and engines, and where auxiliary cargo was stored. A hasty inspection here, and he returned to his office. Sitting in the chair behind his desk, he closed his eyes, his lips moving silently.
He was back out on the bridge as the big silvered-hull monster cast off and taxied across the mouth of the Shannon for a takeoff, great geysers of water cascading upward on each side of the hull as it cut down into the wind.
At precisely the measured time for the hull to leave the water, the enormous high-wing monoplane zoomed upward and took to the air with its engines bellowing at ninety percent throttle.
“Wind ten miles, thirty degrees,” the navigator advised the skipper from his post in the celestial observation turret.
“Best altitude twelve—thousand feet,” he said a moment later.
A half-hundred monoplanes and biplanes fell into position beside the giant transport to escort it out to sea as the first pilot cut his throttles to cruising speed.
The flight-engineer began a check of the engines from his swivel chair in front of the control board, as the gasoline consumption at take-off was tallied. All compasses were checked and compared as the flight-navigator took a “sun sight” to be sure they were true. The flight-engineer reported the amount of fuel aboard to the captain, and the captain checked their progress against the gasoline consumption.
Every half-hour the radio operator tapped out a position report to land stations, while the navigator checked the ground speed by celestial observation.
At the same time the radio operator got a radio bearing from the nearest land station, to cross-check the work on board the Memphis. In the meantime the shore station had apprised itself of the positions of all surface ships within two hundred miles of the plane's position and route, and had transmitted it to the skipper and navigator so the Memphis could obtain radio “fixes” from them.
Every thirty minutes the skipper and the first pilot relieved each other at the controls. And the flight-engineer and his assistant relieved each other, too, in the regulating of the pumping of fuel from the hull to the wing tanks and making up a log by repeated checks on their one hundred and forty-one instruments.
From the skipper down to the galley stewards, the ship was being manned with a precise efficiency that left nothing to chance. The men worked silently with a crisp confidence that conveyed itself to the passengers. On this maiden trip those passengers were all officials of the Transatlantic Transport Airways and a sprinkling of reporters and scientists, and the twenty-five aboard represented only half of the ship's capacity.
Three hours out, cruising at twelve thousand feet, the Memphis ran into the first fronts dotting the air above the Atlantic that morning. The big ship flew through the fog and rain with scarcely a tremor to indicate that it had gone from fair weather into foul. The passengers were more interested than frightened by the fog curling along the sides and the rain slashing against the windows. They were air-minded and they had perfect confidence in Captain Arnold Morton and his crew.
Captain Morton was munching a sandwich in his little office, when the first of those three dun-colored, low- wing, tear-drop biplanes came diving out of the fog above the giant transport. The roar of their motors came to the captain's ears faintly and he was just getting out of his chair to investigate the sound when the pilot of that first ship damped down on the trip of the two machine guns synchronized through his propeller.
He had aimed at the back of the neck of the flight-navigator in his navigation turret on the roof of the fuselage. The bullets chopped into the duralumin skin of the big ship and crept forward as the flight navigator lifted his head at the sound of the diving motors. He never saw what was behind and above him because a hail of lead nearly tore his head from his shoulders. He slumped off his little platform and his sextant clattered to the deck, while the bullet line continued forward and tore into the body of the radio operator and the first pilot, who was at the controls.
As that first dun-colored biplane raced above the nose of the big ship at terrific speed, the second biplane came out of the fog with its guns yammering.
Its bullets tore into the top of the Memphis a little to the left of the trajectory of the first ship. Captain Morton had opened his mouth to bellow an order when those bullets tore into his back. They slammed him against a bulkhead where he slumped to the floor, his arms and legs grotesquely spread.
The assistant radio operator leaped to the blood-spattered microphone as he saw the chief operator slide out of his chair. He tried desperately to make contact with the nearest land stations and ships, but the radio apparatus
