"[The 'R' engine of the Supermarine S.6] would have taken at least three times as long to produce under normal process of development, had it not been for the spur of international competition." -- R.J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire, 1929

"We thought of air warfare in 1938 rather as people think of nuclear warfare today." -- Former British P.M. Harold MacMillan

Chapter 1

600 Nautical miles W-NW of the Spontoon Archipelago

"I'd a thought you'd know by now," said the Duchess, flicking the stub of her cigar out the window, "that it's a little too late to talk me outta this, Zeke."

"I'm aware of that, Miss MacArran," responded her crew-chief, heaving a sigh as he followed her in the direction the hangar, "and yes...I did  agree that a distance-flight to Spontoon was a good way to introduce yourself. All I'm saying is...well, 600 nautical miles nonstop?  That's pushing it."

Ezekiel 'Zeke' Bronstiel didn't look like the typical Schneider-Trophy race-crew chief...the squat beaver in grease-stained coveralls with a perpetually foul mouth and temper.  In fact, Zeke almost never cursed, never wore coveralls, and he wasn't of an aquatic or even semi-aquatic species; he was a rabbit.

And not just any rabbit.  Zeke Bronstiel was as thin as vaulting pole, with bulging, blue eyes that peered at the world through thick, horn-rimmed spectacles, and an Adam's-apple so prominent, it looked as if he'd caught one of 'the Babe's' homers the hard way.  As if that weren't enough, Zeke habitually worked on aircraft wearing a LAB coat.  Small wonder that the other members of Katie's crew liked to call him 'Professor' or just plain 'Prof'.

Zeke didn't mind.  He reveled in his moniker.

"If I weren't pushin' it , Zeke." Katie remind him, pausing before the hangar door and regarding him over a shoulder,  "What the Hell'd be the point of doing it?"

She didn't wait for a response, but opened the door and stepped briskly through to the other side.

The hangar itself was a simple, two-story box consisting of gray walls held in place by a series of triangular metal girders, fashioned of u-shaped metal bars riveted together in what was known as a reinforcing crosshatch pattern.  The hangar floor constructed of Duralumin diamond-plate...and if it was looking a bit scuffed for wear these days, it was still clean enough to have served as picnic table, sans cloth.

Katie MacArran wouldn't have it any other way.

As she stepped through the door, she could see the other members of her race-crew in various states of activity and hear the clink and tink of tools against parts.  And there...waiting patiently in the center of the hangar...there was her pride and joy.

She inhaled deeply, breathing in the rich, heady combination  (For her, at least.) of oil and av-gas.

"Mornin' boys!" she declared, striking that pose they had all come to know so well, left hoof on left hip, right leg slightly forward, a grin as infectious as a dry-brush fire.

If there was one thing Catherine MacArran, 14th Duchess of Strathdern knew how to accomplish, it was to make an entrance.

In the years since the first Schneider Trophy, years that had been Anything but uneventful, she had grown into what Mary Fallon liked to call 'a fine figure of a mare.'  To put it mildly;  Katie's conformation was almost faultless.  True, she had matured to a height no greater than that of her dam, but with a dry, slightly dished muzzle, a small nose, a fine, flowing mane, long, perfectly proportioned legs, and a delicately-rounded 'peach' croup, with a tail set so high it might have been transplanted from an Arabian horse  Add to that, three sets of numbers, 37...24...36 and it was fairly amazing that she was still unmarried after all these years...a source of no small consternation to her advisors.  (  Not that she hadn't come close, at least once, and certainly not for any lack of suitors. )

The only real flaw in Katie's appearance was in her eyes, one blue, the other brown...but even this was an asset in it's own way.  Like the single, deliberate blemish that Navajo rug-makers always weave into their creations, it served to emphasize her other points.  That blue eye also came in handy from time to time.  It was said of Katie MacArran that she could 'stare down a statue' if the need arose, it being no easy task to hold the gaze of two different-colored facial orbs.

The response to her appearance was not entirely unified.  Some furs  waved, others gave her the thumbs up, and one just muttered a greeting and went on with his work.  What nobody did was salute.  This was a civilian, not a military hangar.

"Mornin', Miss MacArran."

"Good Morning, Your Grace."

"Y'ready for this, ma'am?"

"Been ready for this for almost twenny years." she said, moving amongst her crew members and shaking hooves with them all.  They were a motley crew, to say the least.  Toby Moran, a bandy-legged packrat from Chicago, liked to brag that he was distantly related to 'Bugs' Moran the gangster who had once gone to war with the notorious Al Capone.  Toby was Katie's chief electrician, and he knew more about aviation electrical systems than the rest of her crew put together.

Then there was Geoff Thistlewaite, a stoat from Brighton, England.  Geoff, who always sported a slouch hat and looked more like a retired prize-fighter than an aviation fuel specialist, was affectionately referred to by the rest of the crew as Dr. Jekyll...and a very apt sobriquet it was.  His concoctions could transform even the most docile aircraft engine into a roaring beast.

Artie Wister, the assistant crew chief and hydraulics expert was a Douglas Squirrel from Seattle Washington.  Like most of his species, he almost never shut up.  Fortunately, Artie was possessed of an absurdist sense of humor that frequently had the other crew-members in stitches.  Whenever the tension in the hangar began to ice over, you could always count on Artie to break it.

And there, perched atop a narrow ladder with his head buried in the engine cowling, was the newest member of the crew, chief mechanic Trevor Cadogan, a barrel-chested Corgi from Llangollen, Wales.  If Artie was the crew's comic relief, Trevor was it's Greek chorus; always full of dire warningsabout the possible consequences of this decision or that.  Predictably, his manner had rubbed some of the other crew members the wrong way.  In fact, shortly after he'd signed on, two of them had approached Katie about having him replaced.  "The guy brightens up a room by leaving it." Toby Moran had pleaded.

Katie, just as predictably, had patiently heard them out and then patiently informed them that Trevor was staying.

"I know he's a Goddam sourpuss," she had said, "But there's nobody knows more about that new engine than he does.  Anyway, give him time, boys. What's it been, only two weeks?  He'll fit in.  You'll see."

And that had been that.

Except now it was five MONTHS later and Trevor still hadn't fit in...looked as if he might never fit in.  In his presence, even the perpetually sunny Artie Wister was beginning to turn gloomy.  To say nothing of the fact that
he was starting to grate on Katie herself

The problem for her was...she'd been 100% right in her other assessment of him.  There really WAS no one who knew more about the engine chosen to power her Schneider-Cup racer than Trevor Cadogan...at least no one who was available. (Even Toby'd had to give that one to the Corgi. )  And finding that power-plant had been the culmination of a long and often bitterly frustrating process of trial-and-error.

Like him or not, she NEEDED Trevor.

"So's my little girl ready for her coming out?" she asked, regarding the canine with crossed arms and a twinkling smile.

Trevor's head stayed right where it was

"'Bout ready as she'll ever be, Y' Grace." came the answer in a dry, Welsh
brogue.  Trevor pulled his head from the cowling, closed it, and began to descend the ladder, "But I'd be lying if I said I though it was wise t' fly her inta Spontoon from this far out.  Nothin' between us and there but open water, full o' sharks and shoals."

Katie's ears rotated until they were sticking almost straight out, sideways.

"I've already discussed this with Zeke." she told him, making it clear by the tone of her voice that she did NOT waant to rehash the subject with anyone else.  Trevor either didn't catch the inflection or chose to ignore it.

"Plane's a racer, Y'Grace...not the bloody Winnie Mae."

"No, she's not." Katie agreed, brushing past him without looking...and finally, he got the hint.

"Well, little girl," she asked, buffing an affectionate hoof over the wing
of her plane, "you ready to show these boys what you can do?"

Her plane.

She was a small aircraft for a Schneider-Cup racer - smaller than the Macchi MC 72, smaller even than the fondly remembered Supermarine S6. Stacked up next to the truly cyclopean Bugman and Dross BD 232 'Blitzen', she would have looked like a midget racer.

But what Katie's race-plane lacked in quantity, she more than made up for in quality.  She was a beautiful ship, a plane that might have sprung from the imagination of an artiste-nouveau rather than an aircraft designer; long, raked snout, big, angular, vertical stabilizer, and a half-bubble canopy set far back, close to the tail fin.  The effect was as that of a javelin or perhaps Scots' dirk clutched in a fist.  Her stressed surface was flawlessly smooth, smoother even than that of the Hughes' H-1 but without the sculpted lines that had caused that aircraft to be rejected by the Army Air Corps as a pursuit plane.  There was not a hint of unnecessary protrusion anywhere, not even bracing cables for the wing floats. (Well, except for the ring-shaped RDF antenna behind the cockpit, but that could and would be easily removed come race-day.)

What the aircraft was NOT was a radical looking plane...well, not to the layfur anyway.  A trained aeronautical engineer would certainly taken note of the large air-intake being mounted not under the racer's chin but almost directly beneath the COCKPIT.  Then too, someone versed in aircraft design might observe that the aircraft was sprouting a then unheard-of four propellor blades from her spinner.

But even if an aviation specialist WERE here in the hangar today, his attention would most likely have ended at the coloration of Katie's aircraft - gold, with cobalt-blue trim.

And not just gold paint.  Using a combination of a new anodizing process, and plenty of elbow grease, Duchess Catherine MacArran had created a Schneider-Cup racer that appeared, for all intents and purposes, to have been fashioned from REAL gold.  (Something not at all inappropriate, given her activities in the early part of the decade.)

And this plane was HER brainchild...no question at all about that.  The other furs in this hangar, and still others back at MacArran Aeronautics, Burlington Vermont and her aircraft company in California might have helped bring the aircraft to fruition...but it had been Katie's vision and her decisions, all the way down the line:

"Boys...according to conventional wisdom, the way to the Schneider-Cup Trophy is through piling on the cubic displacement, the more cylinders, the better.  I say that's spinach, and I say the HELL with it."

And so, over the course of the previous year, Katie's race plane had taken shape, with her shepherding the concept at every step of the journey.   No, we won't use contra-rotating props. Yes we will use a four-bladed prop. No, we won't use two engines, but damn straight, put in that two-stage supercharger.  Hey, what did I say about no external cable-bracing for the wing floats?    Look...here's how we can brace 'em up internally.   Well, you're just gonna have to trust me on that new wing-design, boys.  And simply boys, SIMPLIFY...the less complicated this plane is, the less weight she's gonna carry and the easier she'll be to work on.  Find a way to cut back on the number of parts, and let's make those cable, hose, and wiring routes as quick n' direct as we can.  It was her plane...Katie's plane, and anyone who doubted it needed only to take a gander at the name stenciled in cobalt blue, just forward of the cockpit.

Catherine MacArran's Schneider-Cup racer was known as The Little Engine.

"Well," she said, pulling on her flight-helmet and turning around with that infectious smile, "One a you boys want move that ladder over to the cockpit for me?"

"I've got it, Your Grace." said Artie, hurrying over.

Katie suppressed a wince.  Even now, almost eight years becoming the Duchess of Strathdern, she still felt a bit uneasy whenever an American addressed her as 'Your Grace.'  From a Brit, it didn't bother her...but an American, it was another story.  Katie had spent most of her life in America... had gone to school and come of age in America, and truth be told, she still  felt more American than British, title or no title.  For her, the righteous protagonist would always be George Washington, not George III.

Certainly she didn't talk like a Duchess of Strathdern, at least not in everyday conversation.  Her accent was rooted in the Colorado Sagebrush of her maternal grandfather, not the Scottish Heather of her father.  She could have easily played the lead in a radio-production of Calamity Jane.

Not that she couldn't also play the role of the Scottish aristocrat when the need presented itself.  Katie could, and often did slip into that fursona when in the company of fellow members of the English gentry.  At such times, she was capable of an almost astonishing transformation of character; George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion played out in mere seconds.

But in the presence of her fellow Americans, that role was about as comfortable as mohair undergarments. Certainly it wasn't as comfortable as the garment she was wearing now.

Like another race-pilot of her acquaintance, Katie wore a flight suit of her own design, this one an updated version of the one in which she'd had her big year.  It was a one-piece coverall, with short sleeves that bore absolutely zero resemblance to the shapeless, baggy coveralls favored by itinerant pilots and mechanics.  Katie's suit, which she'd ordered made in Hong Kong was as perfectly tailored as anything to come out of Saville Row.  Cobalt Blue in color, to match the Little Engine's trim, above the waist, it was cut to resemble the tunic worn by officers of the French Armee De l'Aire, complete with shoulder epaulets and a black leather Sam Browne belt.  Below, it became a pair of riding breeches tucked into elegantly polished, black field-boots.

But what was truly amazing about Katie's flight-suit was that unlike it's predecessor, this one was constructed entirely of silk.

"Why not?" she'd said, "Us fliers always wear silk scarves, so why not do the whole thing in silk?  It's comfortable on the body, it's perfect for the tropics, and anyone who thinks silk is fragile is someone who's never worn a parachute."

(Of course, the fact that silk tended to highlight Katie's figure in a manner that khaki or serge never could didn't hurt the case either.)

The other striking thing about Katie's flight suit was that it also matched her plane in it's trim...gold, same as most of the fuselage and wings.  Only this time it was genuine, not fool's gold.  The tunic buttons, the buckles on her belt and flight helmet, the zipper and the image of Pegasus pinned into the epaulets...all were done in 18K gold.  Even the thread with which she had braided her mane earlier that morning was the real thing.

If you're gonna make an entrance...make an ENTRANCE.

Katie grabbed the ladder and began the short climb towards the cockpit, allowing herself a single amused glance over her shoulder at the gaggle  of males below...all of whom were trying very hard NOT to look at her backside.  For just a second, she considered lifting her tail a little, then swiftly decided against it.  That kind of tease ran wholly against her grain.

Reaching the top of her climb, Katie hefted herself into the Little Engine's cockpit in a single fluid motion, then eased into the pilot's chair.  Almost immediately, Zeke was beside her, helping her buckle in and then working with her through the pre-flight check.

"Check right wing-flap."

"Right wing-flap." Katie echoed, and then moved the joystick, watching the flap move obediently up and down.

"Check left-wing flap."

"Left wing flap..."

For the next few minutes, they continued this pas-de-deux, checking the tail flaps, the tail rudder, and the propellor pitch.  Katie then turned the landing lights on and off, made a '1...2...3...testing' call on the radio, and verified that the RDF, gyroscope and compass were in order.

"Okay," said Zeke, giving everything a final glance, "I'd say you're cleared for launch., Miss MacArran."  He thrust a paw into the cockpit, "Good luck."

"Thanks, Zeke." she responded, shaking it, then leaned over the side of the cockpit, to address the others, "An' that goes for you boys, too." She said.

This was met with varying expressions of acclamation.  Artie and Geoff both applauded, Toby whooped, and Trevor, she noted uncomfortably, merely nodded once.

Zeke dropped from sight and the ladder was withdrawn.

"Okay," said the gangly rabbit as soon as this was accomplished, "Open hangar doors."  And Geoff, who was the largest, nodded and began to turnthe big wheel.  There was a meshing of gears, a clanking of chains, and then an effect that would have been highly startling to anyone in the hangar unaware of it's location.  Instead of the front wall rising upwards, the FLOOR began to open, spreading outwards like a coal hopper to reveal a teal-blue sea, 3000 feet below.

And as the doors in her underside continued to open, the airship Republic (formerly the R-100) continued to move in stately fashion through a cerulean sky, her nose pointed firmly in the direction of Spontoon Island.

The doors reached  their full width and stopped.

"Drop her down." Zeke commanded.   Another wheel began to turn, and the Little Engine was lowered slowly into the air beneath her mother-ship, nestled snugly in a cradle of Katie's own design.  Like so many of her innovations, this one was simplicity itself.  Eliminating the need for the cumbersome struts that the US Navy dirigibles, USS Akron and USS Macon had mounted on their Sparrowhawk scout planes, Katie had based her design on the midair refueling hookups pioneered by the US Army Air Corps. As an added touch, she'd ingeniously incorporated the Little Engine's Radio Direction Finder ring-antenna as a hookup point.

Now, as the cradle reached it's low-point,  Zeke's voice became inaudible beneath the purr of the Republic's six engines.  She reached for the speaking tube incorporated into the cradle and pulled it close to her ear.  Immediately, she heard Zeke again, remote but still quite discernable.

"Okay, Miss MacArran.  How are you reading the Spontoon Island direction-finder signal?  It should be coming in loud and clear."

Katie checked...frowned. "It's spotty." she said, shouting into the tube.

"Try adjusting the frequency upwards one-half kilohertz." came the rabbit's reply.  Katie did so, and was instantly gratified.

"Loud and clear now," she said.

"Very well, Miss MacArran," said Zeke, the solemnity in his voice somehow managing to cut through all the background noise, "You are cleared for launch.  Start your engine."

Katie did not start her engine.  She had a ritual to perform first.  Reaching to her right, she lightly rubbed a hoof over her good-luck charm.

'Linc' had gone through a number of changes in the years since she had created him.  His face had darkened to a walnut-brown, his suit and body had acquired a number of frays, several oil-stains, a spangle of pinhole-burns, (souvenirs of a crash four years previously.) and his golf-cap had been replaced several times.  Nonetheless, he was still here, her constant companion...the one who had shared more of Katie's airborne adventures than anyone else.  Linc had been with her in Spain and Ethiopia, he had flown with her in the Dole Derby and The King's Cup, he had traveled with her to China and Papua and accompanied her on the airship Norge's historic flight across the Arctic Sea and on the Graf Zeppelin's circumnavigation of the globe.  When she had roared to victory in the Bendix and the Thompson-Trophy races, he had been right there in the cockpit beside her.  "He's the only guy I can trust to respect me in the morning. " Katie had once joked  -- and not without some bitterness.

Now, she pressed her thumb to the starter button.  There came a metallic whistle, a soft chuffing, and then the Little Engine's four-bladed prop began to slowly rotate, the engine coughing and sputtering as it struggled into consciousness.  Then, with a burst of gasses from the exhaust pipes, the engine caught and Katie's ears were filled with a sound that would become both familiar and satisfying to Allied airfurs in the years ahead...the unmistakable baritone thrum of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, a sound that at least one aviation writer has described as 'one of the most goose-bump-inducing engine noises on the planet'.  Sitting in the cockpit, hearing it's leather-lunged song, feeling the vibrations course through her frame to mix with the rush of adrenaline, Katie Mac Arran could only agree.  Her level of excitement was almost sexual in it's intensity.

The Rolls-Royce Merlin would one day be hailed as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest aircraft engine of all time, (Though certain furs at Pratt & Whitney might tend to disagree.)  This was the engine destined to one day power the doughty AVRO Lancaster bomber and the legendary DeHavilland Mosquito.  It was the engine already being installed on the RAF's new front-line pursuit planes, the Hawker Hurricane and  the Supermarine Spitfire.  It was the power-plant that would, God willing, one day propel the fighter aircraft to be developed from the plane in which Katie MacArran was seated at this very moment.

But, for the more immediate future, it was the engine destined to give her trouble.  When Major Finlayson found out what was underneath that cowling...well, she'd cross that bridge when she got there.

She eased the throttle forward, increasing the revs, bringing the Little Engine up to launch speed.

In the radio-room of the Republic, just aft of the control cabin, wireless operator Peter Stonebridge, a heather vole, had just set down his cup of tea, the better to hear an incoming message from Lae, New Guinea.  He  was about to acknowledge when a low scraping sound diverted his attention.  Peter looked... and saw the teacup sliding along the table towards the bow of the ship, as though moved by an invisible paw.

"Oh, shite!" he thought, whipping off his headset and laying for the door.

Two decks below. in the Republic's hangar, someone clapped Zeke Bronstiel on the shoulder.  The rabbit did a quick half-wheel, and saw that it was Artie, another speaking-tube clutched in his paw.

"Goddammit Artie, not..."

"It's Captain Speake." said the squirrel, shouting to be heard.  "Says talk to him right NOW!"

Zeke grabbed the tube, and heard the gruff voice of the Republic's Ursine commander Captain Walter Speake crying plaintively in his ear, "Zeke, for God's sake, tell 'er Grace to ease off on the throttle of 'er bloody seaplane.  She's pulling us into a nose-down attitude."

The rabbit groaned and quickly switched tubes:

"Katie, I mean Miss...Aggh!  Back off on the throttle, you're dragging the Republic into a nose dive."

Had there been time, Katie would have let go a string of curses that would have made a Glasgow dockworker blush.  There wasn't, so instead she pulled back on the throttle, and shouted into the speaking-tube.

"Dammit, that didn't happen in any of the test launches!"

"Yeah!" came a voice from somewhere behind Zeke...probably Toby.

"Those test launches," the lanky rabbit reminded her, archly, "were conducted over Long Island Sound, remember?"  Tropical conditions tended to reduce the lifting qualities of both hydrogen and helium.

Katie just snorted and pulled the canopy halfway closed, bracing herself for the tirade from Zeke that must surely burst forth from the speaking-tube.

He did not disappoint her.

"Kay...?  Miss MacArran, what are you DOING?!  You can't launch NOW...you're almost at stall speed!"

"Sorry, boy." she replied, speaking as much to herself as to her crew-chief, "but like I said, it's a little too late t' walk outta here at this point."

She pushed the tube away, reducing Zeke's voice to faint, exasperated fragments.

"Listen...can't...you'll...a stone!"

Katie ignored him and grabbed for the release handle, seizing it in a firm grip.  At once, Zeke's voice became discernible again.

"Miss MacArran...DON'T!"

Katie MacArran just grinned that grin.

And shouted, the way she always did, "Let 'er rip!"

She yanked the release handle.

The cradle snapped open, like a reverse bear-trap.  The hook holding the ring antenna also snapped away.

And the Little Engine disengaged from her mother ship and began to drop away.

In an almost perfect vertical nose-dive, displaying all the aerodynamic qualities of a flat-iron pitched from a rooftop.

Even over the sound of the Republic's engines and her own, Katie could hear the cries of dismay coming from the hangar above her.

She slammed her rising panic back in it's box, then slammed the canopy all the way shut.

A less experienced pilot might have tried to pull up suddenly, immediately transforming their aircraft into a wingless missile.  That was how Katie's hero, Lincoln Beachey had met his end, plummeting into San Francisco bay at a speed of more than 200 mph when the wings of his new stunt plane exceeded their load limit and collapsed.

Well, that was NOT how Katie was going to meet her maker.  Not on your life, bub!  Hardening her nerves into diamonds, she forced herself to ignore the steel-blue wall of the ocean rushing towards her, and began to ease forward on the throttle and pull slowly back on the stick...the latter being no mean feat since the stick had apparently determined to stay right where it was.  It seemed to now to have been welded to the floor.

"Oh no, you don't." she snarled, the veins standing out on her quivering arm as she forced the stick to move backwards, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."

Slowly, slowly...the stick began to obey, and surface of the sea stopped moving towards her and began charting a parallel course...still advancing, but not as fast as before.  She continued to pull back on the stick.  The altimeter continued to drop.  1000...900...800...700.

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

600...550...500...450...

The sea below now looked like a rushing river... coming closer... closer... closer... closer.

400...375...350...325...300...275...250...  Katie could smell the tang of salt water now...taste it in her mouth.

250...240...230...220...

Along with the bitter taste of bile

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...c'monnnnnn!"

210...205...200...195...190...185...180...

'C'MONNNNNN!!!!"

180...180...180...180...

With a whinny of triumph, Katie hauled back on the stick and the Little Engine peeled up and away from the surface of the Pacific and back into the deep blue firmament from whence it had come...back towards the Republic.  Coming level with the dirigible, she pulled left on the stick, circling the airship once to let everyone aboard know she was all right.  Several furs waved to her from the control car, and the observation window.

Then she dipped her plane below the level of the dirigible, preparing to pass underneath.

In the hangar, the sighs of relief were so palpable, that Artie Wister would later swear he'd felt the Republic lift slightly upwards at that moment.

"Here she comes." Zeke suddenly announced, and the others just gave him a puzzled look.  Toby Moran walked over to the communications console and peered straining through the one of the observation periscopes. "Uhhh, no sign of her, Prof."

Zeke just stroked one of his oversized, lapin ears.

"She's coming," he repeated, "I can hear her."

Now the rest of them could hear it too...the song of the Merlin, rising rapidly in volume and pitch.

"Blimey," said Geoff, peering downwards through the open hangar door, "Yer don't think she'll try to...?  Cor, not in a bloody water-plane."

At that instant, as if in reply to the stoat's speculations, the Little Engine shot beneath the hangar...
and as the airplane passed below the hangar door, they all observed it: the racer twisting over in a fast, 360 degree corkscrew before disappearing from sight.

Then the Merlin's voice was fading quickly beneath the drone of the Republic, and all was serenity once more.

"Bloody Hell," murmured Geoff, crouching down and staring into the vacant air below,  "She did it...she did another bloody snap roll."  He stood up, shaking his head, addressing no one in particular. "How the HELL did she do that?"

"More I'd wonder is, WHY the Hell does she always do that?" asked the gravelly Welsh voice of Trevor Cadogan.

As usual, it was Artie with the answer.

"She says it's coz the snap-roll was invented by a female pilot...so's she always does one whenever she knocks it outta the park...says it's how she signs her work."  This statement elicited a derisive yip from the corgi.

"Signs 'er work...'nother damn chicken's what that was."

"Just what do you mean by that, fella?" came a harsh, vexed inquiry.  It was Toby Moran, hurrying over.  All the others were crowding around the canine as well.  Was he really accusing Katie of...? .

"What I mean is," said Trevor, putting his paws truculently on his hips, "Every time she gets away wi' a stunt like that, makes her a little more cocksure.  Sooner or later, all those times she's got it right an' us lot didn't are gonna have her trying something that even she knows deep down she shouldn't...but not you, me, or the yiffing Cardiff Giant'll be able to talk her out of it."  He corked a thumb out the hangar-door. "An' that's when all those chickens Her Grace keeps hatching'll be coming home t' roost."

No one said a word....but everyone was furious with the Corgi.  How DARE he talk that way about Katie behind her back??  They ought to send him on one-way flight of his own, and right now.

Except, what if...?  Just...what if...?

Finally, Zeke broke the silence.

"All right," he said, "Let's get this hangar secure and get back upstairs to our cabins.  There's nothing more for us to do at the moment.  We'll have lunch at one, and then try to see if we can manage a siesta.  The Republic's still ten hours out of Spontoon I want us all well rested for our arrival."

There was no discordant response to THIS order.

Twenty-five miles to the Southeast, Katie MacArran was cruising at 330 mph, the Little Engine following the Spontoon radio-beacon with the tenacity of a bloodhound following the scent of a fleeing convict.  Now that the was into the routine part of her journey the adrenaline rush had completely faded, replaced by a numbing sense of monotony.  There was nothing to see out the bubble of the canopy...no clouds, no birds, nothing.  There was not even any real sense of motion.  In less time than it took to attend a movie, Katie would be touching down in the Spontoon Islands main lagoon...but for now, all was ennui.

And so...Katie did what she always did at such times...she took the opportunity for some inner reflection.


next



Aircraft References:

Macchi-Castoldi MC 72:
http://www.pilotfriend.com/century-of-flight/racing/aircraft/Macchi-Castoli%20%20MC%2072.htm

Supermarine S.6:
http://www.hydroretro.net/coupeen/avions/sms6.htm

Bugman and Dross Bd 232 'Blitzen'
http://spontoon.rootoon.com/SPwRac01.html
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