Chapter 14: Emergency Order

The throat of the old volcano was a pit of blackness in the midst of gray ash and the red-yellow of cinders. Beside it were other flecks of color: red, moving bodies; metal, that twinkled brightly under the desert sun--and in an instant they were gone. Nor did Smithy, throwing the thundering plane close over that place, know how near he had passed to sudden, invisible death. Rugged pinnacles of rock were ahead. The plane under Smithy’s hands vaulted over them and roared on above the desert.

“Did you see them?” Smithy was shouting.

The man in the forward cockpit turned to face his pilot. “I am apologizing, Smith, for all the things I have been thinking and haven’t said. We’ve got a job on our hands. Now let’s find that fool sheriff who thinks he’s hunting for drunken Indians. We must warn him.”

Smithy wondered at the wisps of blue smoke still rising from the ruins of Seven Palms as he drove in above it. It seemed years since he had left the Basin, yet the wreckage of this little town, only five miles outside, still smoldered.

Colonel Culver was shouting to him. “East,” he said. “Swing east. There’s fighting over there.” Then, in his usual cool tone: “I’ll take the ship, Smith. Give then a burst or two from up here--perhaps the sheriff can use a little help.”

Across the yellow sand ran a desert road. Ten miles away black smoke clouds were lifting. Smithy knew there had been a little settlement there. A dozen houses, perhaps, and a gasoline station. At half that distance the clear sunlight showed moving objects on the sand: automobiles, smaller dots that were running them. They came suddenly to sharp visibility as the plane drew near. Tiny bursts of white meant rifle fire.

They were a thousand feet up and close when Smithy saw the first car vanish in flame. Others followed swiftly. Men were falling. A dozen of them had made up the sheriff’s posse, and now, like the cars, they, too, burst into flame and either vanished utterly or, like living torches, were cast down upon the sand.

Still no sign of the enemy, more than the ripping stab of green fire from a sand dune at one side. They were over and past before Smithy, looking back, saw the red ones leap out into view.

Culver must have seen them in the same instant. He throttled down to a safe banking speed. Opened full, the DeGrosse would have whipped them around in a turn that would have meant instant death. From five miles distant they shot in on a long slant. Smithy’s hands were off the stick. It was Culver’s ship now.

He saw the man peering through his sights, then the roar of the motor held other, sharper sounds. Thin flames were stabbing through the propeller disk, and he knew that the bow guns were sending messengers on ahead where red figures waited on the sand.

Their trajectory flattened. Culver half rolled the ship as they sped overhead. “He wants a look at them,” Smithy was thinking. Then a blast of heat struck him full in the face.

It was Smithy’s hand on the stick that righted the ship; only the instant response of the big DeGrosse motor tore them up and away from the sands that were reaching for those wings.

His face was seared, but the pain of it was forgotten in the knowledge that their drunken, twisting flight had whipped out the fire licking back from the forward cockpit. He saw Culver’s head, fallen awkwardly to one side. The helmet in one part was charred to a crisp.

He leveled off. He was thinking: “Another man gone! Can’t I ever fight back? If I only had a gun!” Then he knew he was looking at the pistol grip, where Colonel Culver’s brown hand had brought an awkward weapon to life. His lips twisted to a whimsical smile, though his eyes still held the same cold fury, as he whispered: “And I don’t even know that the damn thing’s loaded--but I’m going to find out!”

They were clustered on the sands below him as he roared overhead. He was flying at two thousand, the throttle open full. Beside the ship a gun swung its long barrel downward. It sputtered almost soundlessly--but where it passed, the sand rose up in spouting fountains.

But his wild speed made the gunfire almost useless. The shell-bursts were spaced too far apart; they straddled the blot of figures.

He came back at five thousand feet, slowly--until the ship lurched, and he saw the right wing tip vanish in a shower of molten metal. He threw the ship over and away from the invisible beam; the plane writhed and twisted across the last half mile of sky. He was over them when he pulled into a tight spiral, then he swung the pistol grip that controlled the gun until the dot in the crystal was merged with the target of clustering red forms. The gun sputtered.

Below the plane, the quiet desert heaved its smooth surface convulsively into the air. Even above the roar of the motor Smithy heard the terrific thunder of that one long explosion.