The Rocketeer Read Free

the otherwise silent Chaplin airfield. It was the sound of a hangar door opening, and light flooded through into the darkened building. It was an eerie feeling. One almost expected bats to come pouring out.
    The two men who had pushed open the hangar door did not chatter or waste time with idle movements. They were grimfaced, energized, excited, and trying not to show it. Part of it was professionalism, part superstition. They were mutually concerned that if they displayed too much enthusiasm, there might be some sort of arcane evil eye watching the proceedings that would feel constrained to cause that morning’s activities to end in tragedy.
    The two men scurried back into the comforting darkness of the hangar and then, moments later, were helping two other men wheel out what appeared to be an airplane. “Appeared to be” was a particularly effective term, for actually it was little more than a flying death trap. Many pilots had stormed their last barn attempting to master the intricacies of this particular model. This rather depressing statistic was not going to deter yet another pilot, this beautiful morning, from trying his hand at braving the skies in a plane nicknamed the Blind Bulldog.
    It was, in fact, a racing plane called a GeeBee, painted black and yellow, sunlight gleaming off its propeller and fresh paint as it was rolled out onto the tarmac. It bore the number four on its tail. The stubby GeeBee was little more than a gigantic radial engine with wings and a cockpit; a hunched, aggressive animal ready to pounce.
    Nearby, about a dozen fliers and mechanics had turned out to watch the plane’s flight. Every single one of them was pulling for the pilot to accomplish his goal, although some wouldn’t have minded this morning’s pilot being taken down a peg. He was the best pilot around; he knew it, and they knew it, and they hated knowing it. It would be a nice kick in the old ego for the plane’s pilot if he had a rough time of it.
    However, not a man on the field for even a moment wanted anything fatal or even near-fatal to happen. Annoyingly self-satisfied and cocky the pilot may be, but he was still a pilot. They were a fraternity, a brotherhood, and one did not wish ill on someone with whom such a bond was shared. A good scare, maybe, but not ill.
    The four men who were pushing the GeeBee were dressed in greasy overalls and looked like they’d been up all night, which of course, they had. Pushing on the left-hand side was lanky Goose Taylor, and grease monkey Eugene Turner was huffing and puffing on the right. Skeets Moran, who still proudly went by the name of the Loop King, was guiding the tail. And in the front, not really pushing, actually, so much as making a fairly big production of calling out, “Over here! This way! Watch it! Watch it now!” was pudgy, red-faced Malcolm Willis.
    Of the four men there, Malcolm was the most envious. Then again, of all the pilots there on the Chaplin field tarmac, his career as a flier was over. His best years were behind him, and Malcolm had an unfortunate tendency to look fixatedly back at those times. And while he was looking back, he had nasty habits of tripping over things in front of him, such as the bottles of booze that he’d developed a nasty habit of crawling into.
    But in the back of his mind, Malcolm knew that even in his prime, he would have thought long and hard about going up in a widowmaker like this one.
    Not Cliff though. Old Cliffie, he probably hadn’t given it so much as a second thought. Old Cliffie, he was that good. Or that stupid. Or maybe a little of both, thought Malcolm.
    He remembered the time when Bigelow, the overstuffed, obnoxious businessman who ran the Bigelow Air Circus, where they all worked, reamed Malcolm out for some offense that Malcolm had not committed. He docked Malcolm a day’s pay for it, and old Cliffie had gotten so hopped up about it that he’d snuck into Bigelow’s office that night and removed all the screws