NERVE ENOUGH

The time was when the T. M. O. Transportation Co. occupied a proud position in the latest infant industry—aerial passenger carrying.

The T., who was Jim Tyler; the M., Burt Minster; and the O., Delevan O’Connell, each had a plane of his own. The company leased a field on the edge of a sizable little city and erected hangars. No less than three mechanics labored to keep the ships in the air.

The three partners had a bank account and a growing clientele among the more progressive members of the community. They had carried doctors to patients, ministers to congregations and judges to court. Yes, undoubtedly the T. M. O. Transportation Co. was the peer of any aeronautical outfit in the country.

As Del O’Connell put it, in one of his prophetic moods—

“The day will come when T. M. O. means as much in this country as C. O. D.”

That was rather strong, perhaps too strong, for not three days later, quite without reason, Del’s motor threw a connecting rod clean through the crankcase. In the consequent forced landing in a pasture some distance from the field, he cracked two struts of his landing carriage in a successful effort to save the wings.

was what the morning paper shouted to the city at large, and the growing clientele shriveled like a violet on a griddle, and the bank account was not slow in following it. Of course Del O’Connell hadn’t fallen an inch; he had merely glided down without motor; but how are you going to explain that to a headline-reading public. It worried him, however, that the cracking of two struts should split their little business to its foundations. And he prophesied no more.

At last the T. M. O. Transportation Co. loaded itself into the two good ships remaining, left two of the mechanics behind and departed for fresh fields.

At another town, smaller than the first, they had pitched their tents and taken a field—by the month. The hard work of building up reputation in a business generally considered the apex of the risky was begun again. They carried hundreds of passengers in safety. Not once did one of the pilots yield to the desire for a jazz ride and tailspin a ship or even roll it over once or twice. The strict aeronautical aristocrats consider such antics in commercial flying equivalent to the employment of a puller-in outside the store in the retail clothing business.

Prospects were good, though the company was not yet prosperous. Then, one morning when Burt Minster took off alone to test-hop his ship, he banked a bit too much just after leaving the ground and came down in a side-slip that completely washed out his plane and left him in the wreckage with a split ear and a bad headache.

That reduced the T. M. O. Transportation Co.’s assets to Jim Tyler’s ancient training-ship. They moved on, minus the last mechanic. They were no longer an organization with a fixed base, a reputation and a bank. They had descended in the world to the low estate of gipsy fliers, winging hither and yon, picking up such business as presented itself and landing in more cornfields than in airdromes.

Yes, they learned about flying from those cornfields—more than a pilot will ever know who always has four hundred yards or so of neatly groomed turf in front of him to set his ship down on, but it didn’t help their self-esteem any.

And in Burt Minster’s big head grew the conviction that if he hadn’t side-slipped his bus in that silly way, the company wouldn’t have dropped so low in the scale. He had made them aeronautical hoboes.

The day arrived when an offer came from the Baychester Fair for a stunt-flying, wing-walking, parachute-dropping exhibition. The three partners grasped it eagerly. Stunting a ship, walking around on wings and fuselage with a desert of space under you and dropping overboard with only thin silk between you and the next world are all hazardous propositions, but not nearly so hazardous as consistently going without food. It was hard on their pride, of course, for they remembered the time, only days behind them, when no money would have tempted them to descend so low as to indulge in thrillers to drag a crowd into a fair grounds. They were—had been—in the transportation, not the Desperate Desmond, business.

The contract was couched in terms that permitted them to kill themselves without incurring the animosity of one Jenkins, manager of the fair, provided that they did it in a spectacular and public manner. In return for this concession, they extracted sufficient cash from Jenkins to buy two parachutes and three square meals.

And here they were, in an old shack within the mile track of the Baychester Fair Grounds on the evening before opening day, with discord rampant in their ranks, and threatening to blow the company into its three component parts.

At one end of the rickety table sat Delevan O’Connell, a slender, animated young man. His wiry body was so short that he was compelled to lean forward on his elbows in order to raise his angry blue eyes above the two brand new parachute packs on the table and focus them on the big form of Burt Minster. Burt scowled back at him.

“Oh, shut your traps, both of you,” growled Jim Tyler, bestowing an impartial glare on his two partners. “What difference does it make which of you does the first jump?”

The gist of the trouble was this: Both O’Connell and Minster felt responsible for the straits in which the company found itself, and therefore each man aspired to go over the side in the new parachutes. Now a chute jump is nothing much; but when you haven’t made one before, and haven’t even a man alongside you who has and knows something about the sensation and the harness, it is somewhat lacking in dullness.

Delevan O’Connell was swift to answer Jim Tyler’s question. Already the discussion had gotten well within the bounds of plain speaking.

“It makes this much difference,” he snapped, keeping his eyes fixed on Burt, although he spoke to Jim. “The first jump must not be botched.”

“And therefore you must make it!” exclaimed Burt Minster, with a great laugh.

Del O’Connell flared up.

“I can not have this outfit broken up because this great oaf lacks a little nerve at the crucial moment.”

Burt Minster leaned backward in his chair to give his chest room for the discharge of another roar of mirth.

“Why, you poor insect, you, I’m only about twice your size, but I’ve three times your grit, at least.”

Jim Tyler thumped Del O’Connell on the back in time to halt the fiery little man’s response.

“It isn’t nerve but nerves that both of you have,” he asserted emphatically. “You’re both worried about those crashed ships, and you both want to take the first risk, in consequence.”

The truth does not belong in an argument. This theory of their conduct was drowned in a combined shout of protest, but Del O’Connell was a bit faster on the tongue than Burt.

“I’ll make that first jump; I’ve got to!” he cried, springing to his feet and thumping a quick fist on the parachute packs. “You can’t trust this fellow, and if he bungles it, we’re gone!”

“I’ll not bungle it,” retorted Burt Minster stubbornly. “And as for nerve, I’ve more nerve than he has language, which is some.”

Jim Tyler slumped wearily against the side wall of the shack and waited for the argument to subside.

“I stand ready to prove you a liar in any way you want to pick,” Del O’Connell declared heatedly.

Burt Minster did not answer at once. His face reddened at the challenge, but his eyes, as they dwelt upon the parachutes, were merely thoughtful. Jim Tyler plunged into the lull.

“Since none of us has ever gone over, perhaps we’d better rehearse a jump this evening, before we try it on the crowd,” he suggested, in the hope that action would halt dissension.

But Burt Minster had by no means given up the controversy. He had merely been planning.

“This Jenkins who is running the fair intimated to-day that he might raise the ante if we pulled something particularly spectacular the first day,” he said slowly. “And we need the money, if we’re ever to get back where we started. Well, I have a scheme that’ll settle this nerve question once and for all, and give us a big lift toward buying another plane as well.”

“Out with it, then,” snapped Del O’Connell. “I’m willin’ already.”

Burt Minster laid a hand on the parachute packs.

“We have two of them, and we planned that the jumper should wear both, as is customary. Well, instead of that, we’ll both jump, you and I, at the same time.”

“And what would that prove?” snorted Del.

“I’m not through yet,” Burt rebuked him. “We’ll announce the thing as a race to earth, the man landing first winning. You see, you don’t have to pull the rip-cord that opens the parachute the minute you leave the ship. You can fall free—an army expert fell almost two thousand feet before he opened his ’chute—”

Del O’Connell’s eyes glinted.

“’Tis not a bad idea at all,” he admitted, and looked upon Burt Minster with less rancor. “I like it fine.”

“Wait a minute,” interposed Jim Tyler. “You mean you’ll both jump, and let yourselves fall a quarter of a mile or more? Why, that’s the craziest—”

“And the man who pulls his rip-cord last wins, for he’ll land first,” Del O’Connell explained. “As good a test of nerve as ever I heard of.”

“Well, you can fly yourselves, then, for I’ll not have a hand in it,” Jim Tyler announced firmly. “It isn’t necessary for you two to kill yourselves to prove you’re fools. I’ll believe it now.”

His statement made no impression on his partners. This was no sudden quarrel. Each, feeling guilty, was consequently touchy, and doggedly set on doing his utmost to retrieve their misfortunes. And from this attitude it was only a short step, in the ragged state of their nerves, to an open conflict over the issue of courage—or any other issue about which they could contend.

“Well, Jim,” said Burt Minster at last, as Tyler continued to stand his ground unswervingly, “there’s another plane here at the fair, you know. That fellow will take us both up if you won’t.”

Jim Tyler gave in at that, for he saw that his opposition to the plan was only making them more eager to try it. Secretly he nursed the hope that next day would bring them back to rational behavior.

But the opening hour of the fair found them still fixed in their resolve to carry on perhaps the strangest duel of nerve that had ever been devised. The three partners kept apart, since talk only led to acrimony, and each at his post of observation watched the crowds gathering.

They came in battered tin automobiles, and they came on foot, and they came in ancient horse-drawn vehicles, from Baychester County and from the county across the Baychester River which flowed past the Fair Grounds. Jim Tyler’s airworn but still airworthy Burgess training-plane was the center of a milling mob, for Baychester was not so sophisticated as some of its neighbors, and a flying machine was still an object of doubt and an object of awe. The ropes about it strained under the pressure of the curious, and the voices of the guards who reinforced the ropes grew hoarse and querulous. And word of the race to the ground through the thin air spread through the murmuring crowds.

The time of the flight came.

“Now boys, be sure and give us a good treat,” Jenkins, a stout, harassed, badge-encrusted gentleman instructed, as he bustled up to the shack wherein the partners had come together again.

“You’ll get it,” returned Burt Minster grimly.

“Two of them,” promised Del O’Connell, buckling the harness of his ’chute about him, and taking a final glance at the dangling rip-cord and the ring attached to it.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” the official declared, and dashed away.

At the plane the three men waited, while space for a takeoff in the infield was cleared of spectators. Jim Tyler warmed up his motor, and then, throttling down, left the cockpit and confronted his partners.

“If you’re set on going through with this fool thing I suppose I’ll have to stand by,” he said briefly. “Where are you jumping from—wing or cockpit?”

“Since we’re not pulling the rip-cords at once we might as well jump from the cockpit,” said O’Connell. “You can signal to us better from there and it will look more spectacular.”

“That suits me,” replied Burt Minster curtly.

“I won’t be able to get this bus up over six or seven thousand feet with the weight of three men in her,” Jim calculated. “Suppose we make it five thousand, to be sure?”

“A mile is plenty, since it’s going to be a sprint,” Del O’Connell said, with a chuckle. “Though of course,” he added, looking sideways at Minster, “one of us may not do much sprinting.”

“Speak for yourself,” growled the other man. “You’ll probably starve to death before you get to the ground.”

“Remember, when I turn and put up five fingers, get ready,” Tyler broke in hastily. “And when I nod, jump! One from each side. And jump hard, so you’ll clear the tail.”

“Right,” assented Del O’Connell eagerly, and Burt Minster nodded agreement.

The infield was clear at last. With a final glance at the fastenings of their harness and the rip-cords that would release the parachutes, the two men silently climbed into the rear cockpit. They wedged themselves into the narrow seat. Then both turned automatically and studied the direction and force of the wind, as revealed by the whipping flags on the grandstand.

Jim Tyler gave the ship the throttle. Bouncing and lurching, it charged into the wind, the propeller flickering as it cut the air and flung it back upon the tense faces of pilot and ’chute jumpers. Far across the infield the plane raced. Finally the wings took the burden from the rubber-tired wheels. The ship, with a final jolt, parted company with the ground, hung poised above the grass, and began its upward climb.

Though it was an old story to them, the two men in the rear cockpit looked downward, each upon his side, and the plane climbed in great circles above the fair ground below. The green of the countryside prevailed, but the brown of the oval racetrack cut through it, and just outside this ellipse was a speckled band of many indistinguishable colors that is the indication of people in masses. Beyond that, behind the cigar-box grandstand, stretched a tightly packed section of black and gray-black, where the automobiles of the crowd were parked. Booths and buildings, gay with bunting, displayed their tiny square outlines in regular patterns around the ground.

And then, as the plane rose higher, the fair grounds contracted until they were a mere detail of the landscape below—the great green and brown squares and oblongs, with larger irregular patches of woodland, interspersed here and there by tracts of well-watered pasture land, of a lush green. Across it all, as if dividing all the world into two parts, ran the almost straight course of the Baychester river.

Del O’Connell and Burt Minster at just the same time turned their attention from the earth to the back of Jim Tyler’s head. They were approaching their mark and both sensed it, although there was no altimeter in their compartment.

The motor labored on, and both men thrust feet out straight, and moved shoulders tentatively, as if to drive away any incipient stiffness that might hinder action in that one swift leap into space. Both were entirely at home in the air, as seamen are at home on the water, but neither had ever gone out, deserting their craft for the impalpable element in which it swam.

Suddenly Jim Tyler turned a grim face toward the rear cockpit and raised his left hand, with fingers outstretched. Five thousand! For an instant little Del O’Connell and big Burt Minster turned and looked at each other. Determination was imprinted in the lines of both countenances, and together they squirmed to their feet in that cramped compartment, standing full in the buffeting stream of air flung back by the whirling propeller. Del O’Connell, with an agile twist, got one foot up on the rim of the cockpit and gripped the edge with both his hands. His head turned forward, and his eyes fixed themselves on the stern face of the pilot.

Burt, a little slower, slung a foot over his side of the machine, and with one hand fumbled for the ripcord and dangling ring at the end of it. Tyler nodded.

Del O’Connell, with a quick spring, brought his other foot up out of the cockpit and, clinging with his hands, crouched on the edge of the fuselage. His legs bent more sharply for the leap that would carry him far out into space.

But just then the eyes of Jim Tyler caught a sudden flash of white from the pack on Del’s back. The next instant the great silken parachute whipped out of its confining envelop. Del’s rip-cord had fouled on something inside the cockpit, and his eager jump to the rim had jerked it.

The great spread of cloth billowed open instantly and whisked backward in the grip of the wind. For just an instant Del, entirely unconscious of what had occurred, held his place on the fuselage. Then, like a stone from a catapult, he was whipped off his feet and flung toward the tail of the racing plane.

The open parachute swept into the tail assembly. The tremendous force of the wind ripped it from skirt to vent as it caught. Shroud lines parted like threads. Then the silken cloth wrapped itself about elevators, and several of the shrouds that did not snap became entangled over the point of the balance of the rudder.

O’Connell’s whirling body struck the tail of the machine. Then it swept past, dropping out into space. But the remaining shroud lines were securely held by the rudder. O’Connell’s fall was checked by a bone-jarring jerk. His body dangled below the tail of the plane, swaying in the rush of the wind.

The plane wavered in the air, its flying speed dropping fast under the resistance of the silken cloth whipping backward from the tail assembly, and the drag of the man’s body swinging behind. Jim Tyler opened the throttle full, and thrust the stick forward for a steep glide. The elevators responded. They had been unhurt by the lashing parachute. The nose of the plane turned earthward; its speed increased.

The sudden catastrophe had come before Burt Minster had gone over the side. He drew back in the cockpit and stared over at the figure of Del O’Connell, dragging behind the plane by the precarious strength of a few unsevered shroud lines. As he watched, he caught sight of the white face of his partner, and saw that O’Connell, dazed by the suddenness of the accident and his whip-like snap from the cockpit, was just coming to a realization of what had occurred.

Jim Tyler turned and stared backward, too, and then the eyes of Jim and Burt met. Speech was impossible in the fury of the motor’s roar, but their eyes appealed to each other for help—for some way out. The plane was diving sharply earthward; to check that dive meant losing control of the ship; not to check it meant to crash at terrific speed into the ground. There was no way of getting O’Connell back into the ship; that was utterly impossible.

That communion of eyes lasted but a brief second; then both men turned despairingly to the doomed man trailing behind the plunging plane. They, too, were doomed in that headlong dash, but somehow their plight seemed as nothing compared to his.

O’Connell had not lost his senses. They perceived that with both hands he was fumbling, working at his right hip. Even as they watched, his hand went to his left side in the same peculiar movement. Then they comprehended.

O’Connell was unbuckling his harness. Already he had unclasped the snap buckles that fastened the heavy webbing straps about his thighs; now but one more buckle remained—the one across his chest. He did not look toward the plane; his whole attention was absorbed in his task, exceedingly difficult in that lashing wind, dangling there in space at the end of the cords. But in an instant he would no longer be dangling. The ship would be saved—at a price.

Jim Tyler watched, paralyzed by the horrible fascination of the thing. In another instant O’Connell would have cast himself off from the plane—and from life. His dry throat framed at last an inarticulate sound of protest at the sight of that sacrifice. The wind swept it away unheard.

Burt Minster, too, was watching. The breast buckle came apart. Del O’Connell was free of the harness. He hung there by his hands, and his face turned briefly toward them. A strained, twisted grin was on it.

A pain shot through Jim Tyler’s shoulder; it was a blow from Burt Minster’s heavy fist. The big man was squatting on top of the fuselage.

“Right turn!”

His voice blared in the pilot’s ear, audible even above the thunder of the motor. Jim obeyed automatically. The plane swerved sharply to the right.

As the machine swung around, O’Connell’s body whipped sidewise, no longer directly behind and below the tail. In that instant Burt Minster leaped out into the air, all the strength of his powerful muscles concentrated in the thrust of his legs. His body, its momentum aided by the rush of air, shot through space. He crashed like a plunging bull into the lean, small body of Del O’Connell.

The two men dropped together as the long arms of Burt wrapped themselves about his partner.

The plane disappeared instantly from their view; they plunged downward in a free drop, locked together, face to face. Air was all about them; the thunder of the machine died away in their ears. Beneath, the countryside was slowly expanding, opening up before them like a magically blossoming flower.

“R-r-r-r-rip-cord!” roared Burt Minster. His own arms tightened their clutch on Del O’Connell until the little man’s breath was squeezed out of his chest. But even before Burt had spoken the quick right hand of Del was wriggling downward, between Burt’s shoulder and his own, toward the release ring. He found it. He pulled.

Burt Minster’s breath followed Del O’Connell’s out of his body as an iron band tightened across his breast; his thighs were squeezed as if a boa had wrapped his constricting merciless folds about them. Del felt a repetition of that shock that had hurled him from the fuselage.

Burt emitted a sound, half expiration, half grunt. His parachute had opened.

It spread above them like a shield. The country below ceased its eerie expansion. Burt Minster’s grip about Del O’Connell’s chest relaxed slightly, and the smaller man breathed again—deep, lung-distending mouthfuls of sweet air. There was no longer any rush of wind or roar of motor; nothing but a gentle, lulling sway from side to side under that great canopy of silk.

Burt Minster spoke first.

“These things are supposed to handle up to four hundred pounds, so I guess we’re all right,” he remarked, with an effort at a casual tone.

Del blinked.

“If you’ll loosen up on those arms of yours, I’ll be able to get a grip myself,” he answered. They adjusted their positions, and Del took some of his weight from his hands by fastening his belt about Burt’s harness. They continued to drift downward. The sudden cessation of hubbub and speed made this gentle movement dreamlike.

Del O’Connell cleared his throat—and cleared it again. Finally he muttered:

“That stuff about nerve, Burt—I’m a liar of the first water. Nerve? You’re nothing else.”

“I saw what you were doing, yourself,” mumbled Burt Minster, equally shamefaced and uncomfortable. “That certainly took guts, Del.”

“I’m glad to be out of that mess,” said Del fervently. “Look! Here comes Jim!”

Jim it was, and he was not above but below them. He was climbing fast, and it was plain to see that he had complete control of the ship. As they craned their necks toward the ascending plane he banked sharply, and went circling under them, waving his hand toward the tail. Nothing but a few tatters of silk and several shroud lines trailed from the control surfaces of the tail assembly. Jim had dived his encumbrance into ribbons.

With the plane whistling around them, they were wafted downward almost directly over the fair grounds. A gentle wind was drifting them toward it, for Jim had calculated well before signaling for the jump. The earth was coming upward now with greater speed, as their horizon drew in upon them. No longer could they survey half the county.

Legs dangling, they waited. Past the eastern end of the racetrack they drifted, and then, suddenly, the ground thudded up against their feet, and down they went in a heap together. The parachute slipped sideways, and lay billowing on the ground.

“We finished together, Del. It’s a dead heat,” said Burt Minster, climbing to his feet and lifting the smaller man with him.

“Dead enough,” answered Del O’Connell emphatically. “But I’ve a hunch this last little stunt has broken our run of bad luck, Burt. See! Here comes Jenkins on the run, and I’m crashed if he hasn’t got his checkbook in his hand!”