Free The Dive Bomber by L. Ron Hubbard Page B

planking.
    The gray pursuit whipped by, left at five thousand feet as though standing still. It came around, nosed over, opened up and started after them, hopelessly lost for the moment, but ready the instant Lucky came out.
    The weave of the coiled hawsers could be clearly seen. Men were staring up with frightened faces. Grim-visaged gunners began to shoot at the perfect target, the .50-caliber weapons spilling a stream of glittering brass to the decks, hosing lead and flame into the sky.
    Down, down, down sped the dive bomber.
    Lucky sighted on the after hatch. He did not dare glance forward at Dixie.
    The zigzagging steamer rolled hastily out of the way but sure hands on rudders and stick placed the quarterdeck again between the two front cylinders without faltering.
    Noise hammered the world. A bolt of lightning with thunder as well.
    Flynn knew when to pull. The instant he felt the ship start out of the dive. Holding the releases, light as a feather in his seat, ready to pull and yell all at the same time, Flynn saw them go lower than three thousand.
    Two thousand! One thousand!
    He could count the buttons on Bullard’s vest. Would Lucky stay in the groove forever?
    Five hundred, four hundred, almost as low as the pennants, almost level with the scared sailor in the crow’s-nest .
    Lucky knew he could not afford to miss. At seven hundred feet per second, the timing would have to be perfection itself.
    He eased the stick. Flynn yanked the releases.
    Thrown like pebbles from a sling, five bombs threw themselves at the triangle made by the three machine guns.
    Lucky yelled and hauled out. The fist which was split air banged against the wings and fuselage. Waves licked for the withdrawn wheels.
    Lucky kept the stick back. Like a pole-vaulter, he shot skyward again, straight up.
    Over his shoulder and down, he saw flame and smoke and steel fly up from the stern of the freighter, to hang in a cloud as suddenly lazy as it had been violent.

    Over his shoulder and down, he saw flame and smoke and steel fly up from the stern of the freighter, to hang in a cloud as suddenly lazy as it had been violent.
    It was impossible to see anything through that haze now. Impossible to tell if he had sunk the vessel outright.
    Flynn yelled, “The plane!”
    The same instant, metal sang, pierced by stabbing lead.
    Lucky went over on his back in a loop, upending the sea completely, mingling sunset with smoke, waves with wings.
    Upside down, looking straight ahead, he saw the gray ship.
    The wing guns let drive. The pursuit dodged frantically to the left.
    Lucky rolled and banked and fastened the other plane’s tail through the gleaming disc of the prop.
    Wing guns started up again.
    â€œCold meat!” shouted Flynn.
    The dive bomber overrode the other plane, slapped it with the shadow of wings. Lucky looked down at Smith, but Smith did not look up.
    Even in that fraction of a second, Lucky saw that Smith would no longer contemplate shooting pilots in the back. There was very little left of Smith’s head.
    The gray ship slopped over on one wing, straightened out and then whipstalled . With engine still on, it began its final dive, describing a corkscrew.
    Lucky circled and presently the gray ship hit with a geyser of spray, almost instantly gone below the surface of the waves.
    But Lucky had become aware of a certain clanking sound in his ship’s engine, a certain smell.
    Either Smith or a machine gunner on the steamer had got the bomber’s gas tanks.
    A fine spray of the fluid was whipping back from the left wing like a veil, and before Lucky could say anything to Flynn, the engine quit entirely and left them in a sibilant void.
    â€œHere,” said Lucky, “is where we find out if one of these things will float.”
    â€œMight as well add that to the tests. She hangs together in a dive, she bombs perfect and she bested a pursuit job, so we may as well know all about it,” said Flynn.
    Lucky felt