The Dive Bomber by L. Ron Hubbard Page B

long drive, they came to a wide field in the country. Smith was already waiting for them.
    Lucky wondered just how this would be done, just when he would get his. On this test dive, or on the following cross-country trip?
    Shaky and jittery Smith might appear, but for all that, there was nothing wrong with his nerves. Coolly he buckled his seat pack and crawled in. The gun occasioned no comment because the plane had to be tested under a full military load.
    Lucky looked at the empty bomb racks. “She hasn’t got all her weight with her.”
    Bullard’s confidence in Smith’s ability was amazing. “Fill the racks,” he ordered.
    Streamlined bombs were clamped into the compartments. Lucky, satisfied, stepped into his cockpit and strapped his helmet down. He felt very lonely. He could not remember a time when Dixie had been absent at a test takeoff. He missed her smile, her advice for caution, her pretense at being calm.
    â€œGet going,” said Smith in his whiney voice. But there was no mistaking the command in his black diamond eyes.
    Lucky pulled down his hood without looking back. He jabbed throttle.
    The bordering trees fled in a blur. The wheels lightened and parted from the earth. Lucky cranked the gear into the belly of the ship, let up the wing flaps, adjusted the tab trim with expert fingers.
    Reckless, half hoping for disaster, he stood the ship on its tail and shot it at the zenith, engine full on and clamouring a protest against such violence.
    â€œTake it easy,” said Smith into the tube. Lucky noted that the voice was not in the least afraid. Another stick was back there, all connected.
    The dive bomber went up the scale like a spurred Pegasus. The altimeter lifted visibly without pause. Ten, twelve, fourteen thousand feet.
    â€œPull out at eight thousand, when you dive,” said Smith.
    Minutes passed, the altimeter touched the big white twenty. Lucky leveled off and looked over the side.
    Even the bulk of Bullard was invisible on the green, yellow and brown chessboard below. The world curved off to its horizons, a crisscross of white lines which were rivers and highways.
    â€œGet it over with,” ordered Smith.
    Lucky went into a dive so fast that his inertia pulled him clear of the seat. Full throttle, accelerating ten times as fast as a freely falling body, streaking in a vertical line, the diminutive bomber eagerly devoured great gulps of the four miles down.
    A red barn, a big barn about the size of a match head, was Lucky’s target. The eaves fanned out, the yard became square, the wind vane’s movements on the peak grew plain.
    â€œEight thousand!” screamed Smith into the racketing yowl of engines and wings.
    They were past terminal velocity, lancing into a blurred funnel of swelling earth.
    The altimeter was at the big white eight.
    Lucky jockeyed his stick. The fins were biting.
    â€œOut!” yelled Lucky and instantly followed with a wild shout.
    Back on the stick.
    A sledgehammer hit the underside of the ship, almost halting it in midair.
    Abruptly the earth dropped flat and tipped to normal level.
    The dive bomber, streaking straight ahead at something more than four hundred miles an hour, had held!
    For a moment Lucky Martin exulted in the ship. She was perfect. Full load of bombs. Two men. And not even a quiver as it came out. A perfect plane!
    Let the clumsy, waddling battleships beware when the O’Neal bomber took the skies. No gun could get into position fast enough to stop that terrific dive. Nothing could stop the imminent hail of bombs, themselves carried by a swift projectile. Nothing could disturb the gunner’s aim when he laid the eggs on a rolling deck, because the plane itself decreed the path of the missiles…
    Suddenly, as they slowed to cruising, the taste of triumph was as stale as cigarette ashes in his mouth.
    Who knew but that those battleship targets might someday be flying the Stars and