The Mission Starts
Typical Biggles: the mission starts.
Two weeks later an amphibian aircraft droned over the far reaches of Back-of-beyond. The sky was like a huge aquamarine dome stretching from bleak horizon to bleak horizon. Ginger looked down at the endless waste below and listened to the note of the engine, as failure out here would end in certain death. Algy sat drinking a cup of tea and Bertie was manning the 1mb radio pc in the mini radio cabinet. Professor ‘Donald’ Duck had persuaded them to take him along although what he had to do with the latest mission was unclear, but as he only sat quacking quietly to himself in the rear seat no one worried too much.
It had been a busy two weeks since Raymond had come up with his latest pointless mission of peril. Biggles had chosen the matchstick-o-plane which he had glued together by hand from his endless supply of matchsticks used to light his endless supply of cigarettes. He had toyed with the idea of the fag-packet-o-plane but had turned it down as landing on water presented countless problems. He had decided on the single engine model as that was the most plot provoking unit.
The plane named by Bertie the “deth-trap-o-smoko” had been equipped to Biggles specification for such a pointless mission. The rear cabin was stocked to capacity with several thousand cigarette packets in order to keep Biggles in smokes for the rest of the flight, what he would do for more fags when they reached their objective he was yet to decide. Strapped to the underside of the wings was their meagre rations, which was just about less than would be needed. The only other equipment was the emergency cardboard Ginger, which as Biggles had said, could be relied upon should they have problems.
“I say, I don’t like the look of that, old chap, old bean, what!” said Bertie coming forward after having finally managed to get out of the mini-radio-cabinet, much to Biggles annoyance, who had specifically designed it to keep Bertie shut up until after the mission had ended.
“What have you seen?” murmured Biggles.
“Those jolly killer flowers growing out of your cigarette packets, what?”
“Oh no, Donald hasn’t been planting those killer flower seeds again has he?” exclaimed Ginger.
At that minute, the engine note changed. Biggles threw out his left leg and pulled the stick hard over into his thigh. Ginger somersaulted out if his seat right into Donald.
“Dashed foolish thing to do Biggles old chap,” shouted Bertie, over the wail of the engine as he gripped the mini-radio-cabinet to keep his balance as the plane wallowed. “Throwing your jolly left leg out of the window like that old bean.”
