À procura de título e autor de um conto.
"Falcão Entre os Pardais" , uma novela de Dean McLaughlin .
Um piloto de um jato militar (americano?) próximo a futuro e sua máquina se encontram em um campo de pouso perto da linha de frente na Primeira Guerra Mundial.
Blake appeared to consider while he started on his second glass. He permitted himself a smile and a chuckle. "I'd say a man's got to be a bit crazy if he wants to fly in this war, and if you want to fight Huns you've come to the right place."
He didn't believe. Well, you couldn't expect him to. "I was born in 1946," Farman told him. "I'm thirty-two years old. My father was born in 1920. Right now it's nineteen . . . seventeen?"
"Nineteen eighteen, Blake said. "June tenth. Have another brandy."
O piloto decide usar o incrível poder de sua máquina moderna para ajudar a causa aliada.
"You are a pilot, M'sieu Farman?" Deveraux asked.
Farman nodded. "And I've got a plane that can fly faster and climb higher than anything you've got. I'd like a try at this Keyserling."
No entanto, ele encontra problemas. É preciso uma enorme quantidade de tempo e esforço para filtrar o óleo da lâmpada para produzir o combustível que seu jato precisa.
Deveraux frowned, touched his moustache. "Kero-sine?"
"Paraffin," Blake said. "Lamp oil." He turned to Farman. "They call it paraffin over here. But five hundred gallons—are you nuts? There isn't an aeroplane flying that needs that much lubricating. Shucks, this whole escadrille doesn't use that much gas in a week. Besides, it's no good as a lubricant—if it was, you think we'd be using the stuff we do?"
Os aviões inimigos de madeira não aparecem no radar, e seus mísseis que buscam calor não os trancarão.
Farman swore with self-directed disgust. He should have thought of it. Those planes were invisible to radar. They didn't have enough metal to make a decent tin can, so his radar equipment rejected the signals they reflected as static. For the same reason, the proximities hadn't worked. The rockets could have passed right through the formation—probably had—without being triggered. As far as the proximities were concerned, they'd flown through empty air. He might as well have tried to shoot down the moon.
Os pilotos da Primeira Guerra Mundial são geralmente céticos em relação às capacidades de sua máquina.
Deveraux was philosophically gentle. "You have seen now, M'sieu, the rockets you carried were not an adequate armament for combat situations. Now, if you will show our mechanics where you think it would be best to mount the machine guns they . . ."
Eu acredito que a aeronave possa ter sido chamada de algo como "Pica Don".
O parágrafo de abertura:
The map-position scope on the left side of Pika-Don's instrument panel showed where he was, but it didn't show airfields. Right how, Howard Farman needed an airfield. He glanced again at the fuel gauge. Not a chance of making it into Frankfurt, or even into West Germany. Far below, white clouds like a featureless ocean sprawled all the way to the horizon.