PICTURE STUFF By Raoul F. Whitfield Illustrated by William Molt The first of a spirited series of sky-aventure stories by a writing-man who has himself been a test pilot. Russ Healy’s dislike for camera-men and cameras dated from those air-seconds, six months ago, during which he had fumbled for the rip-cord of his Irving seat-pack ’chute, while tumbling down from the wreckage of the DeHaviland he had been piloting. That D.H. had been airworthy until the pilot of the camera-ship had crashed her tail assembly, five thousand feet above the earth. With all the air in the sky he had banked into the D.H., just after his camera-man had shot Al Rodger’s jump from a wing of Healy’s ship. And right then the veteran had commenced to dislike camera-ship pilots. The fact that all of them had got down on ’chutes didn’t make any difference. The fact that Russ hadn’t been flying his pet Jenny, the “Old Lady,” didn’t help much. Russ was off the shoot stuff. “No more for me!” he’d say. “The pilots these camera boys get to fly ’em are crazy. And the crank-boys are crazier. When I see a movie ship in the air--I nose down and land. Let ’em have the sky--that’s me!” The outfit just grinned. Russ Healy is a long, lanky veteran. Two thousand air hours, with a bit of every type of flying thrown in--he knows his stuff. There had been a time when he’d almost gone “film-flying” himself. But no more. When a fellow’s ’chute opens only a hundred feet off the ground--he does some thinking. Bob Brooks, boss of the Brooks’ Flying Circus, humored Russ. He let him handle the jump-off ship, and the upper plane in the air-transfer stuff. But he kept him away when they were cranking something. That is, he did until we hit Bakersfield. Then things went bad. They go like that in a flying outfit. Quiet for a few months--and then everything pops the wrong way. That was what happened at Bakersfield. Sid Lunn blew a front left tire in a forced landing, and when we pulled him out of the wreckage he had a busted leg. Charlie Ryan taxied into a couple of carelessly-deposited fuel cans and the plane nosed over. He came out with head cuts that would stop his flying for a week. And to top the three-day session off, Mel Duncan went up in a Laco Special, and the engine cut out, went dead. It was a night flight, and Mel was too far from the field to glide in. He cut loose a flare which didn’t light. So Mel stepped over the side and let the plane go. The ’chute let him down hard and gave him a nasty drag. They flivvered him into the Bakersfield hospital with a couple of broken ribs and a fractured left wrist. * * * * * On the fourth day Russ and myself were sitting on a couple of empty oil cans and smoking pills. We were wondering who’d get it next, but we kept that guesswork to ourselves. It was a pretty quiet session until I happened to look up and spot Bob Brooks coming along with something decidedly nice.