Algis Budrys - The Nuptial Flight of Warbirds

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I would love to be a pilot. Someday, everything willing, I shall be. When my sister, who is French,

tired of reading to me from Robinson Crusoe in an accent which rendered "parrot" as "pirate,"

and thus charmingly confused me, she read to me from Night Flight and the other aviation volumes

of Sainte-Exupery. I think Only Angels Have Wings is the greatest junk motion picture ever made,

with the possible exception of Star Wars. One of my favorite books is Richard Bach's Stranger to

the Ground, which I found long before anyone had heard of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and

another is Nothing by Chance. When I was a lad on a chicken farm, I built, on a porch, a

contraption with control surfaces connected to a working stick and rudder-bar. I sat in it for

hours, aviating.

The aviation books in my attic, guest room, living room, cellar, and office would startle Martin

Caidin by their number. There was no greater fan than I, once, of G8 and His Battle Aces, though I

could not obtain very many copies, and my first fan letter to an editor went not to Planet Stories

but to an air war pulp. I find the rarely seen opening sequence of Breaking the Sound Barrier is

some of the most exciting black-and-white film footage ever shot. Once in a while, my friend

Frank Stankovich, the chopper motorsickel fork king who also chromed the three-bearing

crankshaft of my Rapier, used to take me for a ride in his Luscombe tail-dragger. But it didn't

have a stick. And once I wrote scripts for industrial films. Another time, I worded for girlie

magazines. And by the time I wrote this story, I had finished Michaelmas. But I remember--oh, I

remember--the Saturday my father would not let me go to the Beacon and see not only Episode

Four of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe but, also, ah, Dawn Patrol. Hello, Mr. Flynn. Happy

landings. Happy landings, Frank.

The Nuptial Flight of Warbirds

THE WOMAN GASPED slightly as he began to see her. Dusty Haverman smiled comfortably,

extending his lean arm in its brocaded scarlet sleeve, white lace frothing at his wrist. He tilted the decanter

over the crystal stem glass shimmering in the stainless air of the afternoon, and rosy clarity swirled within

the fragile bell. "You'll enjoy that," he said to her. "It doesn't ordinarily travel well."

She was very pale, with dark, made-up eyes and lips drawn a startling red. A lavender print scarf was

bound around her neck-length smoke-black hair, and she wore a lavender voile dress with a full

calf-length skin and a bellboy collar. Below the collar, the front of the dress was open to the waist in a

loose slit.

She sat straight in her chair. Her plum-colored nails gripped the ends of the decoratively carved wooden

arms. The breeze, whispering over the coarse grass that grew in odd-shaped meadows between the

lengths of sandy concrete, stirred her hair. She looked around her at the sideboard, the silver chafing

dishes of hot hors d'oeuvres, the Fragonard and the large Boucher hung on ornate wooden racks, the

distant structures and the marker lights thrusting up here and there from the edges of the grass. She

watched Haverman carefully as he sank back into his own chair, crossed his knees, and raised his own

glass. "To our close acquaintanceship," he was saying in his slightly husky voice, a distinguished-looking

man with slightly waving silver hair worn a little long over the tops of the ears, and a thin-ish, carefully

trimmed silver mustache hovering at the rim of the rose cordial. He wore a white silk ascot.

The woman, who had only a very few signs of latter twentyishness about the skin of her face and the

carriage of her body, raised one sooty eyebrow. "Where are we?" she asked. "Who are you?"

Haverman smiled. "We are at the juncture of runways twenty-eight Left and forty-two Right at O'Hare

International Airport. My name is Austin Gelvarry."

The woman looked around again, more quickly. Her silk-clad knee bumped the low mahogany table

between them, and Haverman had to reach deftly to save her glass. She settled back slowly. "It certainly

isn't Cannes," she agreed. She reached for the wine, keeping one hand spread-fingered over the front of

her bosom as she leaned. Her eyes did not leave Haverman's face. "How did you do this?"

Gelvarry smiled. "How could I not do it, Miss Montez? Ah, ah, no, don't do that! Don't press so hard

against your mouth. Sip, Miss Montez, please! Withdraw the glass a slight distance. Now draw the upper

lip together just a suggestion, and delicately impress its undercurve upon the swell of the edging. Sip,

Miss Montez. As if at a blossom, my dear. As if at a chalice." He smiled. "You will get to like me. I was

in the Royal Flying Corps, you know."

Just at first light, the mechanics would have the early patrol craft lined up on the cinders beside the

scarred turf of the runway. They would waken Gelvarry with the sound of the propellers being pulled

through. He would lie-up in his cot, his eyes very wide in the dim, listening to the whup, whup, whup!

The mechanics ran in three-man teams, one team for each of the three planes in the flight. One would be

just letting go the lower tip of the wooden airscrew and jumping a little sideward to turn and double back.

One would be doubling back, arms pumping for balance, head cocked to watch the third man, who

would be just jumping into the air, arms out, hands slightly cupped to catch the tip of the upper blade as it

started down.

They ran in perfect rhythm, and they would do this a dozen times before they attempted to start the

aircraft. They said it was necessary to do this with the Trompe L'Oiel engine, which was a French

design.

Sergeant-Major MacBanion had instituted this drill. If it were not performed precisely, the cylinder walls

would not be evenly lubricated when the engines were started. The cylinder walls would score, and very

likely seize-up a piston, and all you fine young gentlemen would be dropping your arses, beg pardon

(with a wink) all over the perishing map of bleeding Belgium. Then he knocked the dottle out of his pipe,

scratched the ribs of the little gray monkey he liked to carry, and turned his shaved neck to shout

something to an Other Rank.

Sar'n-Major Mac's speaking voice was sharp and confident, and his manner assertive, in dealing with

matters of management. In speaking to Gelvarry and the other flying personnel, however, he was more

avuncular, and it seemed to Gelvarry that he saw more than he sometimes let on.

Gelvarry, who was hoping for assignment soon to the high squadron, reckoned that Sergeant-Major

MacBanion might have more to do with that than his rank augured for. Nominally, he was only in charge

of instruction for transitioning to high squadron aircraft, but since Major Harding never emerged from his

hut, it was difficult to believe he was not dependent on Sergeant Major MacBanion for personnel

recommendations.

Gelvarry swung his legs over the side of the cot, taking an involuntary breath of the Nissen hut's interior.

Gelvarry's feet had frosted a bit on a long flight the previous week and were quite tender. He limped

across the hut, arranging his clothes, and went over to the washstand.

Gelvarry felt there was no better high squadron candidate in the area at the present time. Barton Fisher of

XIV Recon Wing had more flight time, but everyone knew Armed Chase flew harder, and Gelvarry had

been in Armed Chase for the past year, now being definitely senior man at this aerodrome and senior

flying personnel in the entire MC Armed Chase Wing. "I should like very much to apply for assignment to

the high squadron, Sir," he rehearsed as he brushed his teeth. But since he had no idea what Major

Harding looked like, the face in the mottled fragment of pier glass remained entirely his own.

He spat into the waste bucket and peered at the results. His gums were evidently still bleeding freely.

Squinting into the mirror, he lathered his face cold and began shaving with a razor that had been most

indifferently honed by Parkins, the batman Gelvarry shared with the remainder of his flight in the low

squadron. Parkins had been reduced from Engine Artificer by Sar'n-Major Mac, and quite right. "Give

'im a drum of oil and a stolen typewriter," Gelvarry grumbled as he scraped at the gingery stubble on his

pale cheeks. "He'll jump his bicycle and flog 'em in the village for a litre of Vouvray."

He rubbed his face with a damp gray towel full of threads and bent to stare out the end window. The

weather was expectable; mist just rising, still snagged a little in the tops of the poplars; eastern sky giving

some promise of rose; and the windsock pointing mendaciously inward. By the time they'd completed

their sweep, low on petrol and ready for luncheon and a heartfelt sigh, it would have shifted straight

toward Hunland and God help the poor sod who attempted the feat of gliding home on an engine

stopped by fuel shortage or, better yet, enemy action also involving injury to flying personnel. All up then,

my lad, and into the Lagerkorps at the point of some gefreiter's bayonet, to spend the remainder of the

war laying railroad lines or embanking canals, Gott Mit Uns and Hoch der Fuehrer! for the Thousand

Year Empire, God grant it mischief.

In fact, Gelvarry thought, going out of the hut and running along the duckboards with his shoulders

hunched and his hands in his pockets, the only good thing about the day to this point was that his

headache was nowhere near as bad as it deserved to be. Perhaps there was truth in the rumor that Issue

mess brandy had resumed being shipped from England. It had lately been purchased direct under

plausible labels from blue-chinned peasant gentlemen who cut prices im deference to the bravery of their

gallant allies.

"Get out of my way, you creature," he puffed to Islingden, John Peter, Flying Officer, otherwise third

Duke of Landsdowne, who was standing on the boards with a folded Gazette under his arm, studying

the sky. "If you're done in there, show some consideration." They danced around each other, arms out

for balance, "Nigger Jack" Islingden clutching the Gazette like a baton, his large teeth flashing whitely

against his olive-hued Landsdowne complexion, introduced via a Spanish countess by the first Duke,

neither of them wishing to step off the slats into the spring mud, their boot toes clattering, until Gelvarry at

last gained entrance to the officers' latrine.

The dampness rising from the ground was all through his bones. Gelvarry shivered without cease as he

sprinted along the cinder track toward his SE-5, beating his arms across his chest. He paused just long

enough to scribble a receipt for the aircraft and return the clipboard to the Chief Fitter, found the

reinforced plate at the root of the lower plane, stepped up on it and dropped into the cockpit, his hands

smearing the droplets of dew on the leather edging of the rim. He felt himself shaking thoroughly now,

proceeding with the business of handsignalling the other two pilots--Landsdowne and a sergeant pilot

named O'Sullivan--and ensuring they were ready. He signalled Chocks Out, and the ground personnel

yanked sharply at the lines, clearing his wheels and dropping flat to let his lower planes pass over.

As soon as he jassed the throttle to smooth his plugs and build takeoff power, a cascade of water blew

back into his face from the top of the mainplane, and he stopped shivering. He glanced left and right,

raised his arm, flung his hand forward, and advanced the throttle. The trim little Bristol, responsive as a

filly, leapt forward. For a few moments, she sprang and rebounded to every inequality of the turf, while

her flying wires sang into harmony with the increasing vibration of the engine and airscrew. The droplets

on the doped fabric turned instantly into streaks over the smoke-colored oil smears from the engine.

Then there was suddenly the smooth buzzing under his feet of the wheels rotating freely on their axles, all

weight off, and the SE-5 climbed spiritedly into the dawn, trailing a momentary train of spray that

glistened for an instant in the sunlight above the mist. Soon enough, the remaining condensation turned

white and opaque, forming little flowers where the panes of his windscreen were jointed into their frames.

Gelvarry held the stick between his knees and smoothed his gloves tighter over his hands, which retained

little trace of their former trembling.

Up around Paschendaele they were dodging nimbly among some clouds when Gelvarry suddenly

plucked his Very pistol from its metal clip in the cockpit and fired a green flare. Nigger and O'Sullivan

jerked their courses around into exact conformity with his as they, too, now saw the staffel of Albatros

falling upon them. They pointed their noses up at a steep angle toward the Boche, giving the engines more

throttle to prevent stalling, and briefly testing the firing linkages of their twin Vickers guns. Tracer bullets

left little spirals of white smoke in the air beyond Gelvarry's engine, to be sucked up immediately as he

nibbled in behind them. He glanced at Landsdowne and Paddy, raising one thumb. They clenched their

fists and shook them, once, twice, toward the foe who, mottled with garish camouflage, dropped down

with flame winking at the muzzles of the Spandau maschingewehren behind the gleaming arcs of their

propellers.

Gelvarry felt they were firing too soon. Nevertheless, there was an abrupt drumming upon his left upper

plane, and then a ripping. He saw a wire suddenly vibrate its middle portion into invisibility as a slug

glanced from it. There was no damage of consequence. He held his course and refrained from firing, only

thinking of how the entire aircraft had quivered to the drumming, and of how when the fabric split it was

as if something swift and hot had seared across the backs of his hands. It was Gelvarry's professional

opinion that such moments must be fully met and studied within the mind, so that they lose their power of

surprise.

There were eight Albatros in the diving formation, he saw, and therefore there might be as many as four

more stooging about in the clouds waiting to follow down stragglers.

The stench of overheated castor oil came back from his engine and coated his lips and tongue. He

pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, hunched his face down into the full lee of the windscreen, and

now, when it might count, began firing purposeful short bursts.

The Albatros is a difficult aircraft to attack headon because it has a metal propeller fairing and an in-line

engine, so that many possible hits are deflected and the target area is not large. On the other hand, the

Albatros is not really a good diver, having a tendency to shed its wings at steeper angles. Gelvarry had

long ago reasoned out that even an apparently sound Albatros mainplane is under considerable stress in a

dive, and so he fired a little above the engine, hoping to damage the struts or even the main spar, but

noting that as an inevitable consequence there might also be direct or deflected hits on the windscreen.

He did not wish to be known as a deliberate shooter of pilots, but there it was.

The staffel passed through the flight of SE-5s with seven survivors, one of which, however, was turning

for home with smoke issuing from its oil cooler. The three British aircraft, necessarily throttling back to

save their engines, began to mush out of their climbing attitude. Three Albatros which had been waiting

their turn now launched a horizontal attack.

His head swivelling while he half-stood in the cockpit, searching, Gelvarry saw the three fresh Albatros

emerge from the clouds. Below him, six of the original assault were looping up to rejoin. On his right,

Paddy's aircraft displayed miscellaneous splinters and punctures of the empennage, and was trailing a few

streamers of fabric, but appeared to be structurally sound. O'Sullivan, however, was beating at the

breechblock of one of his guns with a wooden mallet, one hand wrapped around an interplane strut to

hold him forward over the windscreen, the other busy with its hammering as it tried to pop out the

overexpanded shell casing. His aircraft was wallowing as he inadvertently nudged the stick back and

forth with his legs.

On the left, Nigger was nosedown, his airscrew windmilling, ropy smoke and pink fire blowing back over

the cockpit. For a moment, the SE-5's ailerons quickly flapped into a new configuration, and the rudder

and elevators came over as Landsdowne tried to sideslip the burning. But they were, in any case, at

7000 feet and at this height there was really no point to the maneuver. Landsdowne stood up in the

cockpit as the aircraft came level again, saluted Gelvarry, and jumped, his collar and helmet thickly

trailing soot.

"So long, Nig," Gelvarry murmured. He glanced up. A mile above them, the silvery flash of sunlight upon

the Ticonderoga's flanks dazzled the eye; nevertheless, he thought he could make out the attendant cloud

of dark midges who were the high squadron. He looked to his right and saw that O'Sullivan was being hit

repeatedly in the torso by gunfire, white phophorus tracer spirals emerging from the plucked leather of his

coat.

Gelvarry took in a deep breath. He pushed his aircraft into a falling right bank, kicked right rudder, and

passed between two of the oncoming Nazis. He converted the bank into a shallow diving roll, and so

went down through the climbing group of Albatros at an angle which made it useless for either side to

fire. He had also placed all his enemies in such a relationship to him that they would have had to turn and

dive at suicidal inclinations in order to overtake him as he darted homeward.

He flew above the remains of villages that looked like old bones awash in brown soup, and over the lines

that were like a river on the moon, its margins festooned with wire to prevent careless Selenites from

stumbling in. A high squadron aircraft dropped down and flew beside him for a while, as he had heard

they sometimes did lately.

He glanced over at the glossy stagger-wing biplane, its color black except for the white-lettered unit

markings, a red- and-white horizontally striped rudder panel, and the American cocardes with the

five-pointed white star and orange ball in the center. The pilot was looking at him. He wore a pale yellow

helmet, goggles that flashed in the sun, and a very clean white scarf. He raised a hand and waved

reservedly, as one might across a tier of boxes at the concert hall. Then he pulled back on his stick and

the black aircraft climbed away precipitously, so swiftly that Gelvarry half-expected a crackling of

displaced air, but instead heard, very faintly over his own engine, the smooth roar of the other's exhaust.

He found that his own right hand was still elevated, and took it down.

He came in over the poplars, and found that he was going to land cross-wind. Ground personnel raised

their heads as if they had been grazing at the margins of the runway. He put it down anyhow, swung it

about, and taxied toward the hangar, blipping the engine to keep the cylinder heads from sooting up, and

finally cut his switch near where Sergeant-Major MacBanion was standing waiting with the little gray

monkey perched on his right shoulder. As the engine stopped, the cold once again settled into Gelvarry's

bones.

"All right, Sir?" Sar'n-Major Mac asked, looking up at him. The monkey, too, raised its little Capuchin

face, the small lobstery eyes peering from under the brim of a miniature kepi.

Gelvarry put his hands on the cockpit rim, placed his heels carefully on the transverse brace below the

rudder bar, and pushed himself back and up. Then he was able to slip down the side of the fuselage. He

stood slapping his hands against his biceps.

Sergeant-Major MacBanion put a hand gently on his shoulder. "And the remainder of the flight, Sir?"

Gelvarry shrugged. He pulled off his helmet and goggles and stuffed them into a pocket of his coat. He

stamped his feet, despite the hunt Then as the cold began to leave him, he merely stood running his hands

up and down his arms, and hunching his back.

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AlgisBudrys-TheNuptialFlightofWarbirdsIwouldlovetobeapilot.Someday,everythingwilling,Ishallbe.Whenmysister,whoisFrench,tiredofreadingtomefromRobinsonCrusoeinanaccentwhichrendered"parrot"as"pirate,"andthuscharminglyconfusedme,shereadtomefromNightFlightandtheotheraviationvolumesofSainte-Exupery.Ithink...

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