The Race

“Three days ago.”

Bell pulled the topographic map of Kansas down from the hangar-car ceiling. “Plenty of time for Frost to get between us and Wichita.”

“That’s why I said we have trouble. Though I do wonder how he’ll fit two machine guns in a Thomas Flyer. Much less hide them. Takes three men to mount one of those guns. They weigh nearly four hundred pounds with their landing carriage.”

“He’s strong enough to pick one up himself. Besides, he has two helpers in that Thomas.”

Bell traced on the map the rail line they would follow to Wichita. Then he traced those converging at Junction City, the nearest town to Fort Riley. “He’ll move the guns by train, then freight wagon or motortruck.”

“So he can attack anywhere between Kansas and California.”

Bell had already concluded that. “We know by now that he doesn’t think small. He’ll hire more men for the second gun and spread them apart on either side of the railroad track we’re flying along. They’ll rake her coming and going from both sides.”

Bell did some quick calculations in his head, and added darkly, “They’ll open up at a mile. If she somehow makes it past them, they’ll whirl the guns around and keep firing. As she’s coming down the line at sixty miles per hour, they will be able to fire accurately for two full minutes.”

STEVE STEVENS SHOOK a copy of the Wichita Eagle under Preston Whiteway’s nose and roared indignantly, “They’re quoting your San Francisco Inquirer quoting me saying I’m glad that crazy Russian is helping that English feller because everyone’s in the race together, like we’re all one big family.”

“Yes, I read that,” Whiteway said mildly. “It didn’t sound like you.”

“Darned right, it don’t sound like me. Why’d you print it?”

“If you read it carefully, you will see that my reporters quoted Mr. Platov, who quoted you saying that the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and fifty thousand dollars is for everyone, and we’re all one big family.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You might as well have. Everyone believes it now.”

Stevens hopped angrily from foot to foot. His belly bounced, his jowls shook and turned red. “That crazy Russian put those words in my mouth. I didn’t say-”

“What’s the trouble? Everyone thinks you’re a good man.”

“I don’t give a hoot about being a good man. I want to win the race. And there’s Platov sashaying off to help Eddison-Highfalutin-Sydney-Whatever when my own machine is rattling to smithereens.”

“You have my sympathy,” said Preston Whiteway, smiling at Stevens’s confirmation of happy rumors his spies had reported: the fast-flying farmer might not go the distance. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I want to see my own entry – which is not rattling to smithereens, thank you very much – take to the air in the capable hands of Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air, who will win the race.”

“Is that so? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Fancy-Pants Newspaperman, I hear tell folks is losing interest in your race now that we’re so far west there’s no one to watch it but jackrabbits, Indians, and coyotes.”

Preston Whiteway arched a disdainful eyebrow at the rotund cotton farmer who was very rich but not as rich as he was. “Keep reading, Mr. Stevens. Events reported soon will surprise even you and keep ordinary folk on the edge of their seats.”

ISAAC BELL FLICKED the blip switch on his control post to slow the Gnome. Andy Moser had tuned the motor so finely that he was unintentionally overtaking Josephine’s Celere monoplane while riding herd above and behind her. Ironically, as her Celere began to suffer the wear and tear of the long race, his American Eagle seemed to get stronger. Andy kept repeating that Danielle’s father “built ’em to last.”

They were navigating by the railroad tracks.

Two thousand feet below, Kansas’s winter wheat crop spread dark yellow to the horizons on either side of the rails. The flat, empty country was broken now and then by a lonely farmhouse, in a cluster of barns and silos, and the occasional ribbon of trees lining a creek or river. It was from one of those ribbons that Bell expected Frost would rake Josephine’s aeroplane with machine-gun fire, and he had persuaded her to fly a quarter mile to the right of the tracks, to increase the range, and to steer clear of clumps of trees. If Frost did attack, Bell instructed her to veer away while he would descend in steep spiral dips, firing his mounted rifle.

They had just crossed a railroad junction helpfully marked with canvas arrows when Bell sensed motion behind him. He was not surprised to see Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s blue headless pusher overtaking them. The baronet’s new Curtiss motor just kept on getting faster. Andy Moser credited “the crazy Russian” with its performance. Bell was not so sure about that. A conversation with Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s regular mechanicians led him to believe that the six-cylinder engine was the real hero, being not only more powerful but smoother than the other flyers’ fours. They certainly were not inclined to credit the Russian volunteer with more than helping out.

“The six might not be so smooth as your rotary Gnome, Mr. Bell,” they said, “but it’s considerably easier to keep tuned. Lucky for you you’ve got Andy Moser to keep it ru

The blue pusher sailed past Bell, and then Josephine, with a jaunty wave to each from the baronet. Bell saw Josephine reach up to fiddle with her gravity-feed gas tank. Her speed increased, but at the expense of gray smoke pouring from her motor. Eddison-Sydney-Martin continued to pull ahead, and was several hundred yards past her, when Bell saw something dark suddenly fly back in the Englishman’s wake.

It looked like he had hit a bird.

But when the Curtiss staggered in the air, Bell realized that the dark object falling behind Eddison-Sydney-Martin was not a bird but his propeller.

Suddenly without power, forced to volplane, Eddison-Sydney-Martin tried to dip his elevator. But before the pusher could descend in a controlled glide, a piece flew from the tail. It was followed by another, and another, and Bell saw that the departing propeller had chopped parts of the tail as it flew away, still spi

The biplane’s elevator broke loose and trailed in blue shreds. The vertical tail with its rudder went next. A thousand feet above the ground, the baronet’s swift headless pusher fell like a stone.

31

“CAT RAN OUT OF LIVES.”

“Don’t say that!” Josephine rounded on the mechanician who had muttered what they all feared. She ran to Abby, who was weeping. But when she tried to hold her, the baronet’s wife pulled back and held herself stiff as a marble statue.

All Josephine could think of was Marco promising her, “You will win. I will see that you win. Don’t you worry. No one will stay ahead of you.”

What had he done?

They were gathered on the banks of a wide creek twenty miles southwest of Topeka, she and Isaac Bell, who had both alighted on a dirt road beside the tracks, and Abby and all the mechanicians, who had seen the smash from their support train. The blue pusher – what was left of it – was floating in the creek, caught on a snag halfway across.

Had Marco sabotaged Abby’s husband’s machine so that she could win? There he was, in his crazy Russian disguise. She was the only one who knew who he really was and the only one who suspected he had done something terrible. But she was afraid to ask.

I must, she thought. I have to ask him. And if it is true, then I have to admit everything, all the lies. She walked up to Marco. He was waving his Dmitri slide rule, and he looked as distraught as the others, but she realized with a terrible sense of lost trust that she could not be sure he wasn’t pretending. She said, in a low voice, “I have to talk to you.”