Lucky looked sideways to find a man who was as tall as he was but who weighed at least two hundred pounds more. Bullard’s fat looked like it had been hung on him roll by roll. His brows bulged over small, quick eyes. His jaw protruded loosely, hiding his collar and tie. His paunch looked as though he had moored a blimp to his belt and let some of the helium out. A giant who rumbled rather than talked, who grinned eternally, Bullard possessed a heartiness which was too studied to be casual.

 

“Hello,” said Lucky, looking back up at the ship.

 

“The great Lucky Martin,” said Bullard, taking the pilot’s hard palm in the fat folds of his own and shaking it. “Well, this is a pleasure. I hear you’re to be the next boss in case anything happens. . . .”

 

Lucky looked steadily into the shifty eyes. “What did you say?”

 

“I said you’re sure Lucky, you sure deserve that name. Is this the pretty lady you’re going to marry? Well, well, Lucky is putting it much too mild. Always good politics to marry the daughter of . . .”

 

The crack of Lucky’s backhand against the fat mouth jarred the otherwise silent field.

 

Bullard’s eyes glowed redly, but he grinned and bowed and scraped. “I didn’t mean any harm, Mr. Martin. I’m sorry I said it, though it did . . .”

 

“He’s coming down!” yelled a mechanic named Lefty Flynn.

 

Forgotten was Bullard. The song of the dive bomber’s engine had been a soft whisper before. Now the sound began to rise in pitch and volume, to a hoarse roar, upward to a rasping snarl, and higher still to a shrill, hammering scream which stabbed down and bludgeoned the field.

 

The dive bomber had gone over the hump. Nose pointing straight at the earth, eighteen thousand feet down, engine on full, building up to terminal velocity when the resistance of the wind equaled the downward drive of the wide-open throttle.

 

From a dot against the blue, the ship swiftly became a silver cross inverted. Larger and larger, doubling in size with each passing second, the plane was hurling itself toward the checkerboard of earth, to seemingly certain destruction.

 

But this was not dangerous. The buildings shook with the flood of sound, ears deafened and closed. But this was not the worst. In a moment O’Neal would pull out and then the danger would come.

 

To jerk a ship level from a downward speed of seven miles a minute or more would put a strain of nine times the plane’s weight on the wings. From two hundred pounds, the pilot’s weight would be instantaneously stepped to eighteen hundred pounds, every ounce of which would be bent on crushing him into his pit. Men’s brains came loose in their skulls when the pullout was too sharp. Wings came off when the gravity increased to eleven. Over that men became a senseless, bleeding mass, smashed into their cockpit.

 

“He knows what he’s doing,” prayed Lucky into the din.

 

“The ship can take it,” whispered Dixie.

 

Three thousand feet up, still howling straight at the earth, the dive bomber was due to level out.

 

Lucky would have given ten years of his life to have been in that plane instead of O’Neal. Up there it was too loud and hectic to think. Down here it was terrible.

 

The plane’s nose pulled up slightly, fighting the inertia which strove to dash the silver wings to fragments against the dusty earth.

 

Abruptly the ship snapped level.

 

For an instant it sped straight out toward the horizon and then, as though a bomb had exploded between the struts, it flew into countless bits of wreckage which sailed in a scattering cloud about the fuselage.

 

“Her wings!” yelled Lawson. “Bail out! Good God, he’s trapped!”

 

They could see O’Neal’s head. He raised one hand. He strove to pry himself out of the plunging coffin which, with renewed speed was darting straight down again.

 

He might have made it if he had had another thousand feet.

 

Belt unbuckled, blasted back against the seat, O’Neal stayed where he was, half out of his pit, until the gleaming fuselage vanished into the earth, leaving a spreading cloud of twisted metal fragments to mingle with the hovering dust.

 

The silence which ensued was cut only by the soft patter of wreckage settling on the field.

 

People broke free from the paralysis of horror and began to run toward the plane. The crash siren screamed and an ambulance leaped toward the spot where no ambulance was needed.

 

Dixie tried to follow but could not. A mechanic’s wife gently put her arm across the girl’s shoulders and turned her face away from the lazy, curling dust.

 

Lucky was standing on the edge of the pit, looking down through the smoke. The banks had caved, quenching any fire, burying O’Neal.

 

Lucky wiped his hands across his face and slid over the shifting clay, searching for the cockpit.