“You and me both” agreed his wife.
“Mr. Canter,” she called, “I thought you were all alone?”
“So’d I,” came back the response. “But this consarn phantasm here jest won’t stay avanished—an’ I reckon as haow I don’t perticulerly want it ter, anyhaow.” He cackled lustily.
“Ye kin tell me all abaout yer trip after we look araound a bit. Haow d’yer like my city. Built it after a pitcher thet thet feller Billikin had with him. Non-ob-jec-tive he called it.”
“But we object!” gasped Jocelyn. She dashed to the controls and applied full power to the Prototype.
“Consarn!” muttered the ex-hermit of Razorback Crag to his yellow-haired consort as the Prototype vanished, “some people jest don’t have no manners nohow!”
THE END
1943
R.A.F. Wings East
There would be no chance to make a break from the prison camp, and shooting down unarmed men was a favorite indoor sport with the Nazis. But Halladay and his comrades knew they’d have to make the break, because they were being set to work, building a secret airfield to use against their valiant Russian allies!
FAR below him, Halladay saw the fire from a flak bursting orange against the blackout. That was where the fighting was—down there, where the Spitfires and Hurricanes were pitting their strength against the Nazi fighters. Not up here, riding an eleven-ton behemoth four miles up.
“Pilot to radio op,” he said. “Pilot to radio op. Do you see any ’Schmitts, Kelly?”
“Radio op to pilot,” the earphones crackled back. “Good God, no! The nearest ones I see are straight down. We getting near the objective?”
“Ten minutes,” Halladay promised. Tom Kelly, back in the tail stinger of the big Handley Page Harrow, was Irish as the shamrock, and pugnacious as they come. Halladay wasn’t Irish, but he was spoiling for a fight.
Little chance of that, with the Nazi fighter planes tied up in knots ten thousand feet below.
He looked at the course-map and eased forward on the stick. Obediently, the big bomber nosed down in a shallow dive. He had a mile of altitude to lose, and only a few minutes flying time.
“Pilot to navigator,” he said. “Pilot to navigator. Open bomb bays. Get ready to drop ’em.”
Seaton took his time about answering. Then, “Bomb bays open,” he said, his voice flat and muffled in the earphones.
Halladay straightened the plane out. Huge as the rock of Gibraltar, these big babies responded as smoothly as any fighter, handled like a Stratoliner. He looked around—and his eyes were drawn down to the orange puffs far below. He grimaced and told himself that he had no right to be in a plane. Halladay was no coward; he rated the trust the R. A. F. put in him when they gave him command of their mighty Harrow. But he had been shot down once—caught in his own flak! It had happened when he was green, up for the first time in an early Hurricane, helping to hold off Goering’s air blitz over London in those dark days when every man who could fly a plane was thrust aloft to stave off the frightful flow of Nazi ships that swarmed overhead.
He had lived—had not a scar to show for his ignominious down-floating trip in a parachute. But a mark remained on his soul, and its name was: fear of anti-aircraft fire.
He tightened his lips and stared around in the darkness. The night was cloudy, too cloudy for perfect bombing conditions. It hid his own ship, but also concealed the asp-like Messerschmitts that danced in, unseen, for the kill. If there was one—there was one, and there was nothing he could do about it, other than keep his eyes wide open and hope that the three others aboard did the same.
He craned his neck and saw, just in range of vision to the left, one of the Harrows that had risen with him on the same mission, visible only by the faint glow that trickled through the baffled exhaust. He looked for the one on the right, but it was a little off formation and out of sight.
“Radio op to pilot!” The voice was sharp with tension, and to punctuate it Halladay heard a thin rat-ta-ta-tat from someone clearing his guns. “ ’Schmitts!” the voice of Kelly yelled. “Four of them chasing us, a thousand feet back and down!”
HALLADAY darted a glance around, fruitlessly. Where were the escorting Spitfires? Not in sight—“Pilot to co-pilot!” he yelled. “Do you see them?”
“Nope.” Weiss was prompt. “Must be down below.”
“Me neither,” Seaton broke in, disregarding etiquette. “Do you want me to unload?”
“No!” Halladay said tightly. “Wait’ll we see what happens.” Those bombs were precious. It was risky to hold on to them, but that he had to do, until the last possible moment.
“Pilot to radio. They still coming?”
“Sure!” Kelly’s voice was almost joyful now. “Hold onto those bombs, though. There’s only four of them—and there’s four of us. They look like the old ME 109’s—square wings. Almost in firing range!”
His voice stopped for a second, then, exultantly, “They’ve got Spitfires on their tails! Three of ’em.”
“How far?” Halladay snapped. He had a crazy thought of Seaton and Weiss, sitting in the dark in their Perspex blisters, listening to the words that would decide their fate.
“Half a mile,” Kelly guessed. “That’s ail now. We’re in!” Halladay, grimly clinging to the controls, heard Kelly’s guns twice, through the phones and from the tail turret. And faintly he heard other guns—Nazi guns, hurling lead at the stinger in the Harrow’s tail!
Halladay had been racing the plane for all it was worth, striving to keep away from the ME’s as long as possible. Now he dropped the nose of the big bomber in a crazy dive, screamed down toward earth. He flipped the rudder around, and the criss-crossed gray darkness below slid to the right as the Harrow spun.
“Navigator!” he yelled. “Unload the bombs!” Simultaneously he evened the bomber’s course in a straightaway. Now flak was bursting around him, and he had time, in all the turmoil, to feel the thin worm of fear crawl into his brain. A burst brighter than the sun exploded a few hundred yards ahead, and shreds of Perspex dropped to the floor around his feet, as the dome bulged and splintered. Halladay hadn’t forgotten his objective. Even now it was underneath, the great docks of Ernden. No time for accurate aiming, but there was the one-in-a-million chance of a lucky hit.
Halladay felt the ship bob up as three tons of explosives left the bomb-bays and dropped down. He couldn’t wait to see the effects, but—“That’s for you, Adolf!” he whispered, and grabbed for altitude.
As the Harrow went into its slow climb he heard Seaton reporting from the nose blister. “Bombs gone,” he said. “But there’s trouble ahead—more ‘Schmitts!”
HALLADAY saw them—three of them. The rattle of machine guns from the tail had stopped. The Nazis had missed on the first dive and were circling in line for new attack. Halladay saw a Spitfire flash by his nose, circling also for a vantage against the ’Schmitts—then was abruptly too busy to watch.
He straightened the Harrow again, then swung it around, in a tight arc. He cursed—in a lighter plane he could show these guys some fancy flying, but not in these floating coffins! Machine guns were speaking all around him now, from the tail and nose as well as in the blister right behind the wings. The air was suddenly full of planes—bombers and fighters, Nazis and British rolled together in a devil’s turmoil of blaring motors and spitting guns.
Out of nowhere a Messerschmitt sliced in before him, spraying lead from half a dozen nozzles. He ducked involuntarily—then sat up as he saw the green ship crumple and fall off on one wing. “One for you, Seaton!” he yelled.
“Two!” Seaton snarled. “Keep your eyes open—here comes another!”
“I got one too!” Kelly exulted.
“I saw a Spitfire get one—but it went down itself!” Weiss reported. “Me—none of them come near me!” Flak was finding the range again, and Halladay tardily realized that he’d been flying straightaway too long. He swirled off on one wing, standing the bomber up on one side t
he way its designers had planned it not to be stood.
Another Messerschmitt danced down on him from the front. He heard Seaton’s guns speaking from the front, felt the vibrations of the big slugs striking the fuselage near the greenhouse, then heard Weiss take up the attack from the overhead blister. Belatedly, he heard the whining noise of its Daimler-Benz engine, above the deep roar of his own two powerful Pegasus XX Bristols. Then the drone returned, doubled, and the ’Schmitt reappeared, beating a hasty retreat with a speed Spitfire on its tail. The two planes looped and criss-crossed before him, then the ME returned to the attack with the Spitfire blasting it.
Halladay yelled and stared. The great bomber lurched crazily and shuddered like a pole-axed steer. Halladay saw the big wing slowly crumple, bend back where the fighter had struck it. The motor on that side, its prop wrecked, roared crazily, trying to tear itself apart. Automatically he chopped the throttle. Then, collecting himself, he shouted into the interphone: “Jump! We’re going to crash!”
Only when he heard each of the three reply, did he lock the crazy controls and crawl back to the escape hatch.
He slid through and hung from its lip for a second, trying to decide which way the whirling ship was going to go. Decision was taken from him as the uncontrolled plane fell into a close spin and ripped his fingers off their precarious grasp.
Halladay never knew what fragment of the wreckage hit him. Only, as his fingers instinctively pulled the ripcord, he felt an a.a. shell explode again—in his brain, this time—and passed into unconsciousness.
HALLADAY awoke in a white bed. For a confused second he thought he was back in that London hospital where they’d put him after the ’chute jump. Then he saw that his nurse was a man who wore a neat little gilt swastika pinned to his lapel.
The man—a hospital orderly of some sort—looked at Halladay motionlessly. Then, without a word, he stepped over to Halladay’s bedside, thumbed back an eyelid and peered into it. He grunted, took his hand away, and said something in German.
“If you don’t speak English,” said Halladay, “you might as well save your breath.”
The German looked puzzled, then stepped to the door and called to someone outside.
A German soldier in the uniform of a leutnant stepped in, his heels clicking on the concrete floor. He grinned sardonically at Halladay and spoke in slow English.
“You are a prisoner,” he said carefully. “Do you wish to co-operate with us?”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Halladay snarled.
The leutnant shrugged. “Tell me, at least, your name and rank.” He produced a pencil and pad.
“My name is Halladay, Flight Lieutenant Willard Stephen Halladay. I was in command of a bomber dispatched on a special mission over Emden. My age is twenty-four, I’m five feet eleven inches and weigh thirteen stone seven and I have no near relatives in England or anywhere else with whom I would like you to communicate. Is there anything else you’d like to know?” he finished.
The leutnant looked flustered. “Why, yes,” he began.
“Save it,” Halladay advised. “That’s all you’re going to get out of me.”
The leutnant flushed and gritted something in German. “You are lucky to be alive,” he said. “Remember that. We do not always treat captured men so well.”
“I know,” Halladay murmured. He pushed himself up in the bed and fumbled automatically for a cigarette. His pockets were empty.
“I anticipated your wishes,” the leutnant smiled sardonically. “Here are your cigarettes; you may have them. All the other things in your pockets will be kept for you.”
Halladay grunted and took the battered pack. His probing fingers revealed the dismaying fact that there was only one cigarette in the container. He groaned and put it in his pocket. He was, he found, wearing his uniform still—but the insignia had been ripped off the breast and sleeves.
The Nazi officer spoke rapidly to the orderly, who saluted and replied briefly, then made his exit.
“You are well enough to leave,” announced the Nazi. The door opened again and a soldier in corporal’s uniform entered, saluting. “The corporal here will escort you to your new home. Reconcile yourself to the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of the war in it—prison camp!”
THE food was terrible and the barracks were dirty and overcrowded. Still, Halladay reflected, things could have been worse. Life in a Nazi prison camp had one or two things to recommend it—and the biggest one was that he managed to catch up on a lot of sleep.
When he had been there two weeks, he was put in with a group of others, some forty British airmen in all, and taken down to a troop train. They were only lightly guarded, and conversation was possible. The principal subjects, of course, were their possible destination—and the chances of escape.
Halladay found himself in a group with three or four other pilots, one of whom he had known slightly in cadet school, a flying officer named McIlwraith. Here, with the emblems gone from their sleeves, rank meant little. All spoke on an equal basis.
They started off almost before the dawn, and the slow train made frequent stops, often being shunted off to a siding while faster trains roared through. Halladay, peering through the barred, greasy windows, speculated on the contents of those special trains and wished grimly that he had a stick of dynamite or two with which to open them up.
They stopped briefly at a way-station and were fed by a taciturn Nazi soldier cook, under the watchful eyes of the guards. Then they were herded back into their car. Halladay got his first good look at the rest of the train. Their own car was right behind the engine, and stretching off in back of it was a long string, more than a score of cars, packed with boisterous Nazi soldiers. That gave him his first inkling of where they were going, and when the sun went down he became positive. The sun set almost directly behind them. . . .
“The Eastern Front!” he murmured to McIlwraith. The others, like themselves, were stretched out on the uncushioned seats, trying to rest.
McIlwraith nodded soberly. “I guess that’s it,” he agreed. “What do you suppose they want with us?”
“Reinforcing their defenses,” Halladay guessed. “Helping to repair the Russian ‘scorched-earth’ destruction, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is they need manual labor for something. It has to be manual labor—they wouldn’t trust us on anything we could sabotage.”
“And it’s against all international law,” McIlwraith said bitterly. “They can’t make us work on anything like that. They—”
“Save it,” Halladay advised. “We don’t know yet just what we’re going to be up against. Let’s wait till we find out!” He turned over, grunted, “Good night,” and tried to keep his eyes closed.
BUT sleep was a long time coming. He was filled with thoughts of what lay ahead. Halladay’s bravery did not extend to the point of madness. If Nazi guards held guns over him, he would work for them—digging trenches, chopping wood, or whatever simple job they might force him to do. He would not throw his life away for that slight aid he would be made to give the cause he hated, but should an opportunity come along . . .
Sabotage—escape—whatever he could do, he would try. In a way, he decided, it was rather cheering to know that the Reich was going to make him a labor-slave. It indicated a terrific shortage of manpower, so great that they had to use men who would be certain to take advantage of every chance to wreck what they built. And that indicated—internal dissolution in Nazi Germany!
That thought lulling him, Halladay fell into a sort of stupor. Sleep it was, but it brought no rest; not with the jolting, creaking noises of the train thundering all about him.
For three long days they kept up that weary trip, stopping only infrequently for food. Then Halladay awoke from deep, stuporous sleep on the third night to find that the train had stopped, and the shouts of men were coming from outside.
He peered into blackness, with only faint blue blackout lights anywhere to be seen. The troops were marching off in a
ragged stream. No longer were they boisterous as they had been; the cries came from the officers who cursed them on.
Halladay took out his battered cigarette and meditated lighting it. God alone knew when he’d get another—but who knew when he’d have a better chance to smoke this one? His prudence prevailed, and he put it regretfully away.
He turned to McIlwraith, busily snoring, and shook him into wakefulness. “Look,” he said. “We seem to have arrived.”
McIlwraith snorted, stirred, and rubbed his eyes. He clambered up with a groan and stared out, blinking sleepily. They were in a car yard, judging from the double ribbons of blue-reflecting rails that glittered dimly. It was cold, intensely cold. Halladay hugged his dirty flying jacket closer about him and wished for the warmer outer garment that had been taken from him while he was unconscious.
“Hush!” said McIlwraith. “Listen!”
Faintly, above the sporadic shouts and clanking of equipment from outside, Halladay distinguished a more sinister noise. It was a deep, muffled boom. Big guns, firing on the Russian front!
They could not be more than a few dozen miles from the big gun emplacements—a hundred miles, say, at the most, to friendly soil!
“Achtung!”
The small door slid open and a Hauptmann appeared at the vestibule. “Get out!” he ordered in heavily accented English. “You haff arrived!”
The British airmen stirred and began to move toward the door. They were counted carefully by a black-uniformed S.S. man, who seemed to give orders to the Hauptmann.
They were marched off, through bitter cold, into a barber-wire enclosure, and bedded down in warped wooden barracks through which the cold raced in and fastened itself to their spines.
THEY were allowed to sleep for about an hour more. It was broad daylight when they were roused again, but the sun was not too high in the sky.
They were stirred up, ordered to form ragged ranks in the wire-enclosed little exercise grounds. The S.S. man and the Hauptmann appeared again.
Collected Short Fiction Page 87
