Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

AIR WONDER STORIES A gong clanged somewhere in the interior of the Eastern Stay. I stepped down the passageway lead- ing into the craft from the platform. Captain Markson followed close behind, He pressed a signal button as he entered the open side of the ship; and I heard some unseen machinery. hum softly. I-glanced back in time to see two heavy steel doors sliding together ; there was a soft snap as they locked tightly. The interior of the ship where I stood beside Captain Markson seemed to be an arched passageway ; the- walls were spotlessly enamelled and the floor thickly car- peted. The captain led me well toward the center and paused beforea row of small elevators, one of which soon whisked us upward to the main deck. I was sur- prised at the luxury manifest in the decorations of the Eastern Star. On every hand stood massive divans, upholstered chairs, thick, oaken tables finished beauti- fully; the walls were adorned with paintings and tapestry. No great hotel was more lavishly decorated than this expansive salon before me. I was elated; for here was comfort indeed. The salon seemed strangely vacant, however; and I presumed that, somewhere in the ship, there must be a deck from which passengers could look down to earth and wave adieu to their loved ones-as the craft moved away from her anchoring pylon. But, before I could inquire of Captain Markson if there were such an eyrie, he addressed me: “Would you like to come: up into the control room to watch the take-off, Mr. Rodman?” he asked. “We cast off in another minute.” “You bet,-Captain!” I said: “I'd like to watch it.” I followed him out of the reception cabin, along a well-lighted and roomy passageway, toward the nose of the ship. We went up a flight of carpeted stairs and entered a large, circular room, over which seemed to be a dome of thick, transparent glass. A dozen uniformed officers stood at various posts in the com- bination bridge and control room. A man wearing a braided visor stepped forward and saluted snappily: “All ready, Captain!” he said. “What orders, sir?” “Signal the ground man to break the magnetic con- tact, Madden,” Captain Markson said, crisply: “Start the electromagnetic power distributors for the usual vertical take-off. Rise to 2,000 feet and set the course indicator at 30-30-2.” “Very good, sir!” Madden turned to a control el I was not disappointed in Madden’s famous visage. Tt is no injustice to.a gallant officer to say that he is indisputably ugly ; though it is only an uncouthness of features. For, to offset it, the pleasant twinkle in his pale eyes seems to compensate whatever natural an- tipathy the unusual-set of his features aroused. He is not repellent, mind you. He has an odd personality to make him respected by a man, if not admired by the gentler sex. And, as.I learned to know the man in the later hours of the flight, I found that he is an excel- lent officer, a fine navigator and—as Jack Worthington had said—a good sport. Should I ever need a friend in a pinch, a real man in a tight place, I will select Madden to stand by me in place of a score of those loose-lipped, Apollo-faced gentleman of the ballroom variety. The Near-Catastrophe T was Madden who was first at the control when the unexpected thing occurred; and it was Madden who brought the Eastern Star to an even keel when her nose suddenly dipped earthward under the pressure . for upward flight. of her driving exhausts, Just how the near-catastrophe happened, when the ship-cast herself free from the anchoring tower, I do not know; although I learned later that one of the four pilots had neglected to test the elevators to make sure that they were in position As the result of this negligence, before the Eastern Star had risen to the necessary 2,000-foot level, her nose shot eatthward at a terrific clip under the power of her exhausts. I was thrown into a corner by the abrupt dive of the ship as her tail lifted skyward. I had one glance through the observa- tion windows of the control cabin and saw the earth rushing up rapidly. Then I caught sight of Madden, . who—with a bound like the spring of a panther at a victim—leaped aside and grasped a reserve elevation- control. wheel. The Eastern Star's nose missed the tops of the build— ings by inches, rather than feet. Then, with a force that caused her interior bracing girders to groan under the pressure of a sudden upward thrust; it swung up; while her keel grazed a spire opposite the Plaza. The ship seemed to leap into the air almost perpendicularly. With my arms locked around a rigid, stationary pilot chair, I clung in this precarious position to prevent my- self-from being hurled to the far end of the cabin; it was like hanging by the arms from a horizontal bar, legs dangling. Fearfully, I glanced upward, Frantic officers were clinging to various handholds, struggling to maintain equilibrium. Only Madden seemed cool, as he stood braced at the chair to which I clung. I could not see his face, yet I felt that, if the ship should escape total destruction and those on board and in her path below be spared, then Madden alone could be thanked. 1 saw him loosen a foot from its anchor around the chair, His boot scraped on the metallic floor as it sought a signal pedal to increase the power of the driving exhausts which, I was to learn, propelled the Eastern Star. With a jerk the huge air leviathan leaped upward, skimming the roof of the rebuilt Hall of Justice: Simultaneously with the sudden upward thrust, I heard the roar of her exhausts as they shot peculiar jets of pale blue flame: rearward from below her tail laterals, Then she floated on an even keel and I arose, shaking. Captain Markson stood in the center of the cabin, legs planted apart and arms akimbo, again in com- mand. ing the few long seconds when our lives hung in the balance I had not seen him once. His face was now livid and his mouth twisted in a rage! “Madden!” he shrieked: “Stay at the wheel! Walton, Blunt, Wilson and Baker, come here!” I mopped the perspiration from my brow with a shaking hand while Madden tensed at the controls; and the four pilots whom he had called detached them- selves from the maze of instruments before them and dejectedly faced the captain. I glanced earthward; throngs of onlookers filled Main and. Spring Streets, looking like white dotted insects as they stared upward at the huge ship. I heard Madden growling to him- self and I looked at him. His face was calm enough and his senses entirely under control; but he was mumbling of dire things to perform on the persons of certain negligent pilots who had permitted the near- catastrophe to happen. Just what had caused it I was soon to learn, for Captain Markson bellowed with mounting rage. \ “What in hell do you fellows mean by neglecting to test your elevators before your ship is put under way?” he roared. “Which one of you is to blame? ‘What kind of pilots are you—correspondence-school gradu- ~ €omicbooks.com