Two Hawks had only gotten started on this when Raske removed him. The German said, “I have a much more interesting job. You and I are going to train pilots. These will be the nucleus of the Imperial Perkunishan Air Force. How does it feel to be cofounder of an air force?”
Raske glowed with joy. He was always enthusiastic, happy, and optimistic. Two Hawks knew that Raske would have him shot if he thought Two Hawks was a traitor, but he could not help liking Raske. The feeling certainly made it easier to work with, and for, him.
Three weeks passed. Fall came swiftly; winter would soon be here. Two Hawks asked Kwasind if he had received any more messages from the Blodland agents. Kwasind replied, “No. I was told I would not be contacted again until they’re ready to act.”
Two Hawks did not tell Kwasind that he was not, at the moment, concerned about escape. Despite himself, he was getting enthusiastic about the pilot-training. By then, there were four tandem two-seater monoplanes ready, all hand-built. Each had a rotary, water-cooled, 12-cylinder engine, dual controls, and a range of 150 miles. They could cruise at 100 mph.
They were far from being what Raske could have built if he had had more time and better materials. Aluminium was lacking, and the steel was not even up to the 1918 A.D. standards of Earth 1. The gasoline was low grade. Thus, the airplane had to be of utmost simplicity and confined in speed and range. Still, they were adequate for the present purposes of the Perkunishan Air Force, which were scouting and strafing and bombing of near-front ammunition dumps. And the destruction of dirigibles.
Raske planned on building more rugged and faster pursuit planes later and also hoped to have a force of two-motored bombers. The Perkunishan High Command said that this would have to be much later. It expected to have finished conquest of Europe before these were needed. When the time came to tackle the Ikhwani of South Africa and the Saariset (the Finnic speakers of the Japanese islands of Earth 1), then better and more varied aircraft could be designed.
The day that Raske flew the first one, the Kassandras himself came out with the High Command to observe.
The Perkunishan ruler was a tall, heavily bearded man in his early fifties. He had lost his right arm in the last war when he led an infantry charge against the only Blodlandish fort holding out on the European mainland. During the face-to-face combat that followed, a Blodlandish officer had severed the young officer’s arm during a sword-fight. The outraged Perkunishan troops had executed the Blodlandish victor and then massacred all the defenders.
Two Hawks was introduced to the Kassandras. Having been drilled for an hour on the ritual phrases and gestures used during the occasion, he got through it without disgracing himself. The
Kassandras had Two Hawks stand by him since he wanted his technical questions answered while Raske was aloft. Raske swaggered out of the hangar. He wore a red, black, and blue uniform he had designed himself as the dress of the new air force. On his head was a helmet with a spike on top, a long yellow scarf was tied around his neck, and he carried a pair of goggles with hexagonal rims.
The Kassandras’ daughter, Persinai, went to him, and he put his arm around her waist and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her father did not seem to mind what they were doing, but some of the noblemen scowled. They belonged to a faction that did not like the princess being in love with a foreigner and, far worse, a commoner. Nor did they like the power he had in military affairs. It was no secret that the head of Internal Security, himself only a lesser nobleman, half-Rasnan, was a very good friend of Raske’s.
Raske climbed into the plane and started the engine. This made the High Command gasp, since internal-combustion ground vehicles so far had to be cranked and the dirigible motors had to be turned over by auxiliary steam-engines before starting. The silvery low-wing monoplane took off, climbed to 3,000 feet, and then went through a series of spins, loops, and Immelmans. It came in for a three-point landing. Two Hawks winced at the impact on the rubberless rims of the wheels. While the others clustered around Raske to congratulate him, Two Hawks examined the landing gear. The spokes of the wheels were bent a little. After a few more landings, the wheels would have to be replaced. It would be two or more years before synthetic rubber would be available. The chemists were experimenting on the basis of information from Raske, but he had only a vague idea about the making of neoprene from chloroprene.
The next five days, the German and the American tested out all four prototypes. They also made machine-gun strafing attacks on dummies on the ground, shot rockets, and dropped bombs. Two Hawks noticed that, when he took a plane up, its tank was always only a quarter-full. Raske was taking no chances that his colleague might cut and run for the sea-coast, only 90 miles away.
The aircraft factory was working in three shifts at top speed. Despite this, the first mass- produced planes would not be turned out for at least a month. Raske and Two Hawks were up in the air every daylight hour training pilots. When ten had enough skill (not in Two Hawks’ estimation), they began to instruct others. The inevitable happened. One plane spun in with both instructor and student. Another stalled during takeoff and was completely demolished, although the pilot suffered only minor injuries.
Raske was furious. “We’ve only two left. And we’re losing time on those, what with repairs and changing wheels!”
Two Hawks shrugged, but he was more concerned than he appeared. He had a plan which required one of the planes. If the accidents continued, he would be grounded for a long time.
One evening, while he was working on a design for auxiliary detachable fuel tanks, Kwasind came into his study.
“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “The Blodlandish agent says we must be ready when dusk comes. Just before we leave the airfield to come here.”
“What’s the plan?”
Kwasind said that the two armored cars which usually accompanied them would be ordered off to deal with a fake emergency. The order would be given by a Blodlandish agent in the uniform of a Kreion (general). After the guards had driven off, Kwasind would kill the soldier that rode with them, and Two Hawks would dispose of the chauffeur. Should the commander of the armored cars refuse to obey the pseudo-kreion’s orders, both cars would be bombed and the survivors shot by agents hidden near the field. However, the Blodlandish hoped this would not be necessary.
“Where are they taking us?”
“They’ll drive us through the country at night and we’ll hide out during the day at various stations. When we get to the coast, a boat will take us to Tyrsland (Sweden). Perkunisha hasn’t invaded Tyrsland yet, it isn’t strong enough to worry about. In Tyrsland, we’ll be flown out by a dirigible to Norway. From there, a ship will take us to Blodland.”
“Sounds risky to me,” Two Hawks said. “But I guess they know what they are doing.”
Raske greeted him as he came into the hangar just after the second of the morning’s instruction flights. The German had a peculiar smile. Two Hawks wondered if the escape plot had somehow been exposed. He looked around for arresting officers, but everything seemed normal. The workers were putting together two new planes, the parts for which had been rushed through factories and shipped to the field. A group of students was listening to a lecture by one of the recently graduated aviators. The only soldiers in sight were the usual guards. Nevertheless, he patted the derringer stuck inside his belt to reassure himself that it was there. The Itskapintik police had missed it when they had searched him, they were so eager to get to Ilmika. And the Perkunishans had never searched him because they presumed the Itskapintik had done so.