HUNGRY’S SHIP BURNED

Lieutenant Hungry Gates’ ship caught fire in the air. He pulled his throttle and worked carefully but fast. He undid his belt and started to raise himself out of the cockpit. He started to leap but remembered something. That swell bottle of pre-war liquor that a friend had given him just before he took off was in the map case. He’d need that if he got down alive. He made a quick grab back into the cockpit for it and leaped head foremost, clear of the burning wreck.

He missed the tail surfaces and waited a moment, thankful for that much. He didn’t want the ship to fall on him. He didn’t want any of the burning débris to fall on his chute when he opened it.

When he had waited long enough, he started to pull his rip cord to open his chute, but discovered both hands already engaged. He let go of the bottle of liquor with his right hand and hugged the bottle tightly with his left arm. He grabbed his rip-cord ring with his freed right hand, yanked hard, grabbed his bottle to him with both hands again, and waited. The sudden checking of his speed when his chute opened jolted him up short in his harness, but he didn’t drop the bottle.

He thought of the flaming wreck above him. He looked up but saw only his white chute spread safely above him, etched cold against the clear blue sky. He looked around the sky. He saw a long trailing column of black smoke and followed it with his eyes downward until he saw the hurtling ship at the end of it. It was beneath him now and no longer a threat to his chute. He watched it nose violently into a wooded patch off to his left just before he settled down into a pasture. He hit hard, fell down, but held on to his bottle. His chute toppled over into a limp heap in the still air.

He sat up and decided he needed a drink before he even got out of his harness to gather up his chute. He hauled his bottle out from under his arm and gazed at it in consternation, licking his lips.

It wasn’t a bottle at all. It was the fire extinguisher!