The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

I swung back into the cyclone, looked up the center of the half-mile cylinder of climbing aircraft. Not many pilots, I thought, ever see anything like this.

The moment I looked, an odd movement, way above. It was a sailplane, spinning/ down through the center of the other planes! I saw, and could not believe . . . what a stu-

pid, dangerous thing, to SPIN! in the midst of so many other airplanes!

I squinted against the sun. The glider was not spinning for sport, it was spinning because it had lost a wing.

Look! Not one plane spinning-two! Two sailplanes tumbling out of control, falling straight down toward my cockpit.

I snatched the stick to the left, floored the left rudder and shot away, out from under.

High behind my right wing whipped and tumbled the two broken aircraft. In their trails floated a cloud of broken pieces, lazy autumn leaves swirling down.

The radio, that had been quiet static for minutes, shouted, "MIDAIR! There's been a mid-air!"

"BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!"

What possible good can it do, I thought, to tell them on the radio to bail out? When your airplane is reduced to pieces, doesn't the idea of a parachute come right quickly to mind?

One of the glider-parts in the midst of the cloud was a man's body, tumbling. It fell for a long time, then nylon streamed behind it, into the wind. He was alive; he had pulled the ripcord. Good work, fella!

The chute opened and drifted without a sound toward the rocks.

"There's two parachutes!" said the radio. "Contest Ground, there's two parachutes! Going down three miles north. Can you get a jeep out there?"

I couldn't see the other chute. The one I watched collapsed as the pilot hit the ground.

Still fluttered the parts of the demolished gliders, one sec-

tion with half a wing attached, pinwheeling slow-motion round and round and round.

Never had I seen a midair collision. At a distance, it was gentle and silent. It could have been a new sport invented by a bored pilot, except for the shreds of airplane sparkling down. No pilot would invent a sport that shredded airplanes for fun.

The radio crackled on. "Anyone have the pilots in sight?"

"Affirmative. Got 'em both in sight."

"How are they? Can you tell if they're OK?"

"Yeah. They're both OK, seem to be. Both on the ground, waving."

'Thank God!"

"OK, chaps, let's look alive up here. We got a lot of airplanes in a little space. . . ."

Four of the pilots in this race, I thought, are women. How would it feel to be a woman, flying up here, and be called a "chap"?

All at once I froze in the heat. / saw this yesterday! What are the odds against it ... the only mid-air I've ever seen, coming the day after I lay on the floor of the trailer and watched it in advance!

No, I hadn't watched, it had been me, hit by the wing! It might have been me, down there in the desert, and not so lucky as the two climbing into the jeep with exciting stories to tell.

Had Leslie left me last night, had I been tired and sad today instead of rested and cool before the race, it could have been me.

I turned on course, in a sky oddly deserted. Once they get started, contest sailplanes don't stay much in clumps if the leaders can help it.

Nose down, my quiet racer hushed top-speed toward a mountain ridge. Rocks close below, we burst into a new thermal, spiralled steeply up in the lift.

The vision, I thought, had it saved me?