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"THE ADVENTURES OF VIC SOCOTRA, PRIVATE DICK"
TODAY: "INTO THE WESTERN SKY" I"LL TELL YOU, WHEN THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED INTO THE RUSSIAN SHIP I was petrified. Anyone who tells you they don't get scared in the face of Death is a barefaced liar. I was almost unconscious. There I was, turning that steering wheel like a whirling dervish, puffing on ray Lucky like crazy because I knew it might be my last. I was just feet away from the ship. I was moving at supersonic speed, flapping the wings up and down. The last spin of the steering wheel turned me just enough to miss the bridge. I headed in toward a bunch of naked people sitting on top of some long white tubes. In the last second I saw them start to scramble for cover, but it was too late. I hit with a crash like the A-bomb. I was thrown forward into the steering wheel and my head hit the imitation leatherette dashboard. The Brodie knob gouged me in the stomach. The impact forced a cassette forward into the stereo tape deck, and there was a sudden blast of loud boogie-woogie music from the rear speakers. The gun rack was torn off the back window, hit the Fat Man on the back of his legs, and vanished out of the cockpit. The impact forced the wings down. I couldn't get them to flap any more and, like a miracle, the plane began to rise! I was still flying. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the ship disappearing behind me. One of the long white tubes from the front of the ship was missing. I looked down and saw it was jammed onto my landing gear. The Fat Man was blubbering like a beached whale. "Socotra, release me! I'll give you anything!" His voice was curiously muffled. Maybe it was because all three hundred and fifty pounds of his belly had folded down over his head. "Huh?" I replied cleverly. "We can work out a deal. Socotra. Just get me out of here." It was like talking to a huge inverted laundry bag. I lit up another couple of Luckies and started to do some hard pondering. "Start talking. Fat Man. And it had better be good." As the Fat Man began to fill me in on his plan, I let the plane gain altitude. I turned the steering wheel so that the nose was pointed east into the setting sun. It was a beautiful sunset. Soon I would be back in L.A., hanging around, playing up to-the- newspaper boys; drinking good hooch. I wondered if the long white tube from the Russian ship was worth anything. A red light came on on the dashboard next to the FM radio. It was the same color as the spectacular sunset ahead of me. I wondered idly what the words "Low Fuel Warning" meant .... TOMORROW: "THINK FAST, SOCOTRA!" |