Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

64 and they carried off with them great sacks of the foods we raised, of the sheep we herded, of the fruits we gathered. Ay... the weight of the sacks that they bore off . .. twice the weight that even the strongest of us could bear!” “Where did they carry it?” Pedro shrugged his shoulders. “Is it for me, a- lowly peon, to speak of god-things? Does one ask where the Sun dwells? Nay ... I know not, senor. I know only that they will come again .. . and it will be to lead us back... to give us what be- longs to us!” And no further questioning could bring another word from the old fellow. It was enough, though. Not more than a day’s flight away dwelt the flying men. That would mean then that their plantation was in Bolivia instead of Brazil, however, for Are- quipa is parallel to the Bolivian border. It appeared later that I made a mistake, in not realizing that in his hundred odd years old Pedro had not always lived in this locality but in reality he had lived farther to the north. Futile Searching ae returning to Arequipa we spent two days in flying over a portion of Bolivia. How- ever, all of the western part of that country is mountainous, and we began to think that Pedro had led us astray, for not once did we catch so much as a glimpse of a winged creature except a num- ber of condors who made their homes among the mountain peaks, We decided then to fly back to Cuzco and con- tine our search from there, We heard nothing of much interest in the city, but more planes were arriving to take up the search. We, however, were determined to get ahead of them all and headed out over the vast jungle country. Below us lay the montana, the jungles on the eastern slopes of the Andes and which is known as the Upper Amazon Basin, Flying over the wild country that rolled below us, for the first time we felt qualms of doubt. How were we to ever find the settlement of the alated in this wide stretch of unexplored land? No plane had as yet located anything that looked as if it might be inhabited—the jungle presented nothing but miles and miles of tangled masses of tropical vege- tation and massive trees, gentle slopes and occasion- ally a bald spot of leprous white amid the sea of green, Rivers wound through oyer-grown banks appear- ing and disappearing, lakes blinked up at us, swamps and deserts stretched below. We saw a few spirals of smoke that set our hearts beating, only to discover them to be nothing but the cooking fires of a poor sort of Indian village. Once on a low hilltop we saw something we took to be a city which turned out to be merely some Inca ruins. What if after all these winged men had no base, but like the Indians were a wandering people mov- ing day by day. Suppose that Pedro Majes after all merely dreamed that he had been carried off by flying men, that his imagination had been fired by the tales he had heard of the men with wings? Only the fact that they had a great many women, kidnapped women, and a number of children per- | ATR WONDER STORIES haps, made us think that they had some fixed dwelling place. How large their settlement might be, we could not guess. For two days we flew and in that time descried only one of our quarry. He immediately flew straight into the bright ball of the burning sun so we lost sight of him, even though we put on smoked glasses. He faded completely out of our vision, Disappointed we sulked in Cuzco. We decided that we were wasting our time. We must go on foot into the country and search on the ground. We hired a band of Indians to guide us through the jungles and went to sleep determined to start out in the morning on this new venture. We did not start that morning, however, for some of our Indians had decided they did not wish to go. We spent the day in gathering a new band, The Clue BOUT four o’clock that afternoon some fresh news came and again our plans were changed! A radio report had come in from a questing pilot. Flying low through the jungles not more than nine- ty miles from the border of Peru, he had suddenly come upon a great band of flying men! He judged there were perhaps a thousand and they had ap- peared to be going through some aerial drill, flying in formation with a leader at their head. He had come upon them from the rear, but the noise of his engine announced his presence. Im- mediately as if at a signal the large party separated but still keeping a formation they flew upward and outward straight into the sky until a great circle a thousand feet above the plane was spread. “Were they to attack me in a body,” said the broadcaster from his plane, “they could by laying hands upon the machine bear it down to the ground, but it is evident that they wish me to go my way. For some reason I suspicion that I am close to their base. I lay this position to be about seven degrees below the equator and... ” There the voice of the pilot ended and it was believed for the moment that he had been attacked by the flying men, aud, as the aviator had con- jectured, had borne his plane to the earth. However, five minutes later his voice was again heard. “T am losing control of my machine ... TI can no longer guide it .,. for it moves ., . and swings about crazily ...as if. . drawn by some great power ... moving faster than before... Overhead the flying men watch ...God...my hands... they are growing cold .,.my feet ...why... there is frost on the instrument board! My God... the propeller is frozen fast... and yet... yet... the plane continues to move irresistibly toward some goal, The earth is swinging around... It is cold... horribly cold... and dark... the sky is black... decan see nothing ~) 1b. be And there ended the radiogram. The receiving stations waited for hours but no more was heard. The pilot was evidently dead, but he had managed to give the world some tangible news at last, We knew now where to look. D’Arcy, Norton and Wormley and I started out before dawn and this time we headed ninety miles east on the seventh degree of latitude, Others comnlicloooks.com