Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

« 1, ae yee mei F 2 > -" = ae - ” — Oe se ’ in? 7 a reat ” LA hee is HEART OF THE STORM 77 carried on the mechanical motions of flying the aircraft through heavy turbulence. “Oh yes, Skipper ...ship. Name’s the Santa Lucinda.” In Draper’s mind, that was that. A ship in her own element should be well able to take care of herself. He would have expected surface vessels to alter course to go to the help of an aircraft in danger of falling out of the sky. An aeroplane, after all, was a butterfly form of travel, the delicate youngest child of transportation. The distance she could go was severely limited. Special Air-Sea-Rescue aircraft certainly might be used for such operations. But an ordinary airliner could only look after herself. Kelston jolted these thoughts clean out of his mind. “‘ You got the position of her? ” ‘““A position? Yes. ..she did send a position.”’ ‘“* Give it to Mr. Bates to plot on his chart. I want to know how far away she is.” 3 ‘“* But a couple of tugs have already left Ponta Delgada, Skipper.” Draper’s voice implied that this was none of their business. *‘ All the same . . . do as I tell you.” ‘There was a muffled interchange between Draper and Bates, the Navigator, who then shouted up, “‘ She’s about 30 miles south of our track, Skipper . . . only 20 miles from the harbour on San Miguel. Still over three hours’ flying away, if this damned head wind keeps up.” “Thanks, Mr. Bates.” The Navigator looked at the Captain anxiously. ‘Till now, Bates had always found him sensible. However, he saw no harm in pointing out, ‘“‘ We’ll be over an hour late, Skipper.”’ “I'd expected something like that.”’ ** And our own position...’ Bates made a helpless shrugging gesture at the cocoon of violent air that now smothered them. “We should get Horta Beacon,” Kelston said. Bates looked doubtful. “ If the static isn’t too bad.” *‘ Static’s terrible, sir,” Draper said promptly. That was another trick Felicity had up its sleeve. The jumbling electrical interference might howl down the signal sent from a beacon, and could pull the needle on the radio compass far away from pointing to the station. Kelston appeared to take no notice of them. ‘‘ Work out a fuel state for me, Mr. Hawkins, please,” he said. Then he added to Shaughnessy, the First Officer, ‘‘ They’ll have a tough job finding her in weather like this.” The First Officer didn’t answer. He was gazing in hypnotized fascination at the way the leading edge of the starboard wing was furring up with a deposit of millions of tiny diamond-coloured crystals. “Ice, Skipper.” He said, trying to keep his voice from sounding excited. comiclooks.comn