Winthrop found himself facing backwards, but twisted in the cockpit to follow Courtney's procedure. The pilot checked his Aldis sight and the engine gauges, humming 'Up in a Balloon, Boys' to himself. After tapping the compass to see if the needle moved freely, he confirmed that the height indicator was set to zero and the bubble was central in the spirit-level that showed if the machine was flying on an even keel. When Courtney slipped goggles over his eyes, Winthrop followed suit.
The Snipes taxied down the field in arrow formation, Cundall at the point. Courtney turned his engine a couple of times to check its air-worthiness, then let the petrol flood in. Most machine failure in the air was due to interruption of the flow of fuel. A ground man clunkily spun the RE8's propeller
'Contact, sir?' the mechanic asked.
'Contact, Jiggs,' Courtney agreed, flicking switches as the groundman gave the propeller a whirl. The air-cooled Daimler engine caught at once, belching black smoke and raising a slipstream whirlwind that tore at Jiggs's hair and whipped everyone standing within fifty yards. The pilot advanced the throttle for two minutes, upping the revolutions, as mechanics got a hold on the strings attached to the wooden chocks jammed under the RE8's wheels.
Satisfied with the engine sound, Courtney waved his hand like a swimming fish. The mechanics pulled the chocks free and Jiggs gave the pilot a smart salute. Courtney replied with a wave and manoeuvred the ungainly aircraft into formation with the fighters, which were taking off at intervals of about a minute. All the Snipes were aloft by the time the RE8 got under way.
There was a lurch and Winthrop was forced to turn round by the rush of wind. A cold blast shot straight down the back of his neck, icy air ballooning inside his Sidcot. He looked down the field at Dravot and the ground crew, their long shadows stretched in front of them. He remembered to clamp his jaw shut to avoid biting his tongue. The RE8 bumped a couple of times on the iron-hard field, then lifted off.
The jogging shudder stopped and he was excited by the smoothness of the ride. There were no pot-holes in the air. He felt a thrill in his water as Courtney gunned the engine and the machine picked up speed and gained altitude.
The farmhouse and the people on the field receded. The sun was not yet down and stretches of unmelted snow shone grey. Hat, dreary ground sped by below them. Despite the wrapping, Winthrop was completely chilled. If he relaxed his jaw muscles a fraction, his teeth would chatter forever.
He moved steadily, swivelling his seat inside his cockpit, bringing the Lewis round with him. The gun was fixed to a scarf-ring, a rail rimming the hole in the fuselage. He wanted to see where they were going. Up ahead, Cundall's Snipe was a fixed point, streamers on his struts marking him as squadron leader. The other machines flew in perfect formation to either side. Ball and Bigglesworth were at the extremes of the arrowhead, flying only a little forward of Courtney. It must be a trial to keep the nippy little fighters in pace with the lumbering Harry Tate.
He got more used to the cold. Flying was easier for vampires but a warm man could bear it. The exhilaration was undeniable. In this century, the skies would call to the adventurous as the sea had to their forefathers. It was a shame such romance was wasted in war.
Down below, in a wasteland where there had been a country lane, a sexless figure leaned on a bicycle and waved up. An unknown friend, though somehow familiar. Winthrop felt kindly towards the anonymous bundle and tried to get an arm out of the cockpit to wave back. The wind fell on his arm like a blow.
They passed a deep scar across the landscape. He realised it was the Allied lines. They were over No Man's Land. The ground below was pocked and ravaged as if a dozen earthquakes had struck at once, just as a hundred volcanoes were erupting and a thousand meteors pounding the landscape. Tons of shells had fallen on every square yard. After another scar, the German trenches, they were in enemy territory, Hunland.
17
A Solitary Cyclist
She had to pedal at speed so her greatcoat's tails would not flap into the spokes. Given the state of the roads near the lines, she came off her bicycle at least once an hour. With vampire resilience, she felt hardly anything from her tumbles. Most bruises faded inside a minute. Kate would have enjoyed the rush if the air here had not tasted of ash and death. When life passes, blood spoils instantly like milk left in the sun. The stench of rancid blood hung miasma-like.
The lanes were narrow and shell-holed. She wove from side to side, skirting cavities. The old signposts were mainly blasted to splinters and replaced by sheets of painted tin wired to bushes. If further bombardment disturbed the bushes, the makeshift signs wound up pointing in wrong directions. Pre-war maps no longer resembled reality. Old routes were buried under rubble, new ones driven through fields. The courses of rivers were altered by the random landscaping of a million tons of shelling.
Still dogging Edwin, she looked for Maranique. Her reporter's sense, sometimes finer even than her vampire senses, twitched.
As the sun went down, a flight of aeroplanes passed over. She was on the right road: the machines came from the direction where she had guessed the airfield was.
The war in the air was changing. That was the story she had scented. Mata Hari had inclined her to look to the skies. Edwin had confirmed the insight.
She braked and touched one boot to the ground, then looked up through her thick glasses, afraid she would see black crosses °n the undersides of wings. The blue, white and red roundels of the Royal Flying Corps (soon to be reconstituted as the Royal Air Force) told her she was at least not completely lost.
Pilots called their aeroplanes 'kites' or 'birds'. The wire and canvas contraptions were pitifully frail, ready to fly apart in a stiff crosswind let alone heavy fire. She was not convinced the things were safe even for peacetime use. At RFC flying schools, pupils were called 'Huns' because they wrecked more aeroplanes than the enemy. Half as many pilots were killed in training accidents as in combat. Wilbur and Orville Wright had much to answer for. Then again, her father had been certain bicycling would be the death of her.
She waved up but could not see any of the pilots return the greeting. It was possible this patrol was to do with the story. Once she lit on something, everything suddenly seemed connected, a dozen chance remarks and incidents forming a pattern.
The popular press in which Kate Reed was not published, typified by that fathead ass Horatio Bottomley's bloodthirstily patriotic witterings in John Bull, invariably called Allied pilots 'gallant' and 'dauntless'. Watching them soar away to probable death, it was hard to disagree. There was such a spirit in the fighting men. It was a crime the planners and the propagandists were so intent on wasting it with sheer carnage.
The patrol flew towards the lines in a neat arrow like a flight of ducks heading south for the winter.
Her position was not without risk. A reporter who seeks the truth is easily mistaken for a spy. GHQ concealed its blunders from press and public as keenly as it concealed its stratagems from the enemy. Like Mata Hari, Kate was forced to use her wiles, to cultivate friendly officers, to snoop where she was not wanted, to winnow out the germane from the gossip. General Mireau, for one, would be happy to see her go to the stake. She wondered if he still had his Jesuit after her. She would have to be wary: holy water and rattling rosaries were a joke, but silver bullets would be impossible to laugh off.
She wore the arm-band of an ambulance driver, which won her admittance to most military facilities. This close to the front, men were so pleased to see a female, even one whose attractions were as meagre as hers, that she could pass unquestioned in a mess-hall or a field hospital.