The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Bad choice. Not moving fast enough to fly.

The airplane snarled its nose upward for a second or so, but that was the last it would do. Sagebrush flashed beneath us; the wheels settled and instantly the left main landing gear broke off. The monster propeller hit the ground, and as it bent, the engine wound up, howling, exploding inside.

It was almost familiar, time falling back into slow motion. And look who's here! My observer, with clipboard and pencil! How've you been, guy, haven't seen you in days!

Chats with observer while airplane gets torn to hell in sagebrush. May be worst pilot have ever seen.

Mustang-crashes, I knew full well, are not your everyday left-over-from-dinner airplane-wrecks. The machines are so big and fast and lethal, they go tearing through whatever happens to be in the way and blow up hi sudden pretty fireballs of flame-yellow and dynamite-orange and doom-black, detonating bolts and pieces a half-mile round impact center. The pilot never feels a thing.

Slewing toward me eighty miles per hour was impact coming up ... a diesel-generator shack out in the middle-of-nowhere desert, an orange-and-white checkerboard generator-house that thought it was safe from getting run over by huge fast airplanes crashing. Wrong.

A few more jolts along the way, the other landing gear disappeared, half the right wing was gone, the checkerboard slid huge in the windscreen.

Why is it that I have not left my body? All the books say ...

I slammed forward in the shoulder harness when we hit and the world went black.

For a few seconds, I couldn't see anything. Painless.

It is very quiet, here in heaven, I thought, straightening, shaking my head.

Completely painless. A calm, gentle hissing . . . What is it hi heaven, Richard, that could be hissing?

I opened my eyes to find that heaven looks like a demolished U.S. Government diesel-generator shack, flattened under the wreckage of a very large airplane.

Slow as toad to understand what is going on.

Just a minute! Could it be ... this isn't heaven? I'm not dead! I'm sitting inside what's left of this cockpit and the airplane hasn't blown up yet! It's going to go VOWNF! in two seconds and I'm trapped in here . . . I'm not going to be exploded to death I'm going to be burned to death!

Ten seconds later I was sprinting two hundred yards from the steaming wreckage of what had once been a handsome airplane, if not reliable or cheap or sweet. I tripped and threw myself face-down in the sand the way pilots do in movies just before the whole screen blows apart. Face down, covered my neck, waited for the blast.

Able to move with remarkable speed when finally gets picture.

Half a minute. Nothing happened. Another half.

I lifted my head and peeked.

Then I stood up, casually brushed the sand and sagebrush from the front of my clothes. For no reason, an antique rock-'n-roll tune began brassing my mind. I barely noticed. Trying to be nonchalant?

Son of a gun. Never heard of a '51 that didn't go up like a lit powderkeg, and here the one exception is the disaster scattered over there of which lately I was the pilot. Now there will be a stack of paperwork, reports to file ... it'll be hours till I can catch an airliner west from here. The tune clattered on.

Doesn't suffer much from shock. B-plus for cool when it's all over.

Flattered, whistling the tune, I walked back to what was left of the Mustang, found my garment-bag and shaving-kit, took them safely aside.

Strong cockpit, got to say that for the thing.

And of course! The airplane hadn't blown up because we were out of gas, landing.

Around that time the observer faded, shaking his head, and the fire-trucks hove into sight. They didn't seem particularly interested in what I had to say about being out of fuel, smothered the wreck in foam, just in case.

I was concerned about the radios, some of which were undamaged in the cockpit, each of which cost more than gold. "Try not to get any foam in the cockpit, please, fellas? The radios . . ."

Too late. As a precaution against fire, they filled the cockpit to its rails.

So what, I thought helplessly. So-what so-what so-what?

I walked the mile to the airport terminal, bought a ticket on the next airline out, filled in the minimum possible incident report, told the wreckers where to sweep the parts of the obstinate machine.