In that respect, the Curtiss-Wright Company came to their assistance across the chasm between worlds. They’d foreseen the need to assemble the planes in primitive conditions and done everything they could to ease the process. The engine was already installed on the fuselage assembly, and the landing gear was likewise mounted in the wing. Each crate also contained a hefty volume of assembly instructions. The problem was getting the two bulky, heavy objects suspended, properly oriented, and bolted together. After that, it was a supposedly simple matter of installing the tail surfaces, propeller, and attaching all the hydraulic, electrical, and cable connections—supposedly. Without a proper building to work in, most of the heavy stuff was being done in the open air with a pair of mighty timber hoists Ben designed on wheels of their own, that could be moved from one crate to the next. In this manner, a crate was cracked, the top and sides removed, and the contents inspected. If found satisfactory, one of the hoists was manhandled into position by dozens of’Cats, either pushing or pulling until it stood ready to lift the assembly from the iron brace cradling it. With several chain hoists, lifting the heavy wing or fuselage wasn’t that hard. Moving the two together and positioning them just so was an unmitigated bitch.
“Easy there, you pack of fuzzy runts!” Ben roared. “Stop! Belay! Quit lowering the damn thing!” He was heaving on a tagline, trying to torque the tail ever so slightly to the left as a fuselage descended toward a wing. What seemed a gallon of sweat had just burst through his eyebrows and gushed into his eyes. “Just hold on a second, wilya?” he said less forcefully. “Here, take this a minute,” he growled to a swarthy, 3rd Pursuit Squadron Lemurian beside him, handing over the rope. “Keep the same tension,” he warned, then trotted over to a bench where his grimy T-shirt was wadded into a ball, retrieved it, and sopped up the sweat on his face. Walking around the port wing, he studied how the fuselage looked as it neared the leading edge. “Okay,” he said grudgingly, “that’s not so bad. Start her down again, but take it easy!”
He was trying something new on this one. Instead of attempting to bolt two free-swinging structures together, they’d blocked up the wing with the landing gear already down and locked. This way, the procedure wasn’t quite the . . . kaleidoscope of motion the first attempts had been, but now all the adjustments had to be applied to the fuselage as it came down.
“Easy does it!” he crooned, watching the gap narrow. “Hey, you back at the tail, a little more left!”
“My left, you left?” cried the ’Cat he’d given the rope.
“You lef . . . Your left, you nitwit!” He studied the correction. “Okay, keep her coming . . . down . . . down . . .” There was the slightest gasp of painted aluminum coming together, then a creaking groan as the wing began bearing weight. “Stop!” he shouted. He sighed heavily and wiped his face again. “There! See if you can wiggle the front bolts in; then we’ll let her down some more for the rest.”
Two ’Cats scampered under the big, flared cowl. “Ow!” one cried.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Watch where you put your hands; that skin’s hot! You other fellas, soon as that’s secure, get some shade and water!” He turned back to the bench.
“You Colonel Mallory?” asked a tall, thin man he’d never seen.
“Yeah . . . Say! You must be Jack Mackey! Adar told me to expect you.”
The man saluted. “Second Lieutenant Jack Mackey, reporting as ordered, sir!”
Ben returned the salute, then waved it aside, grinning. “You can forget that stuff unless there’s Navy types around. You like Jack or Mack?”
“Mack.”
“Mine’s Ben,” Mallory said, sticking out his hand. They shook. “Where’s your pal?” he asked. “They said there’d be two of you.”
Mack tilted his head. “He’s over there, with the ‘Navy type’—Mr. Sandison. He told me to come see you. Sergeant Dixon’ll be along. He’s the best crew chief in the business. Stayed over there to make some suggestions, I think.” He shook his head. “He really needs to take it easy, sir.”
“The way I heard it, the Japs gave you a rough time,” Ben said grimly.
Mack forced a brittle smile. “The way I heard it, things haven’t been too rosy around here either.”
Ben nodded. “I guess neither one of us knows the half of it, do we?”
“No, sir.”
“C’mon, let’s go collect Sergeant Dixon and Mr. Sandison and find some shade.” He raised his voice. “Hey, you ’Cats, take five . . . or ten. Catch some shade, but don’t run off! We still have work to do, and then more ground school!” Several Lemurians, mostly cadets, had gathered around the two humans, their large eyes going back and forth between the speakers. Ben suddenly noticed a few of them blinking . . . well, not hostility, but something close.
“Hey, what’s with you guys?” he asked, surprised. He focused on one, a “Navy” jg whose name had somehow become “Soupy.” He was already a pilot with PatWing 1. “What gives?”
“With respect, Col-nol, that’s what we want to know.”
“Huh?”
Soupy looked at the fighter they’d been working on, his ears slightly back. “We hear scuttlebutt. These guys may be just the first of more ‘old world’ Amer-i-caans show up here. That’s swell, but I went to Chill-Chaap, bust my ass, fight swamp lizards, puke on crummy ship. I keep bust my ass, build Pee-Forties.” Soupy’s tail swished. “I don’t volunteer for all that to watch some skinny guy, just show up, fly my plane!”
For a moment, Ben was speechless. Sure, he’d been ecstatic to learn there were other pursuit pilots in the world, real ones, with combat experience. The resource they represented was priceless. He didn’t know how many there were yet; one more was twice as many as they’d had . . . but Soupy had a valid point.
“That’s not your plane, Lieutenant,” he finally said, “it’s mine! Look up there on the nose and you’ll see where I chalked an M when we first opened the crate back at Chill-Chap. M means ‘Mine.’ It means ‘Mallory.’ As a matter of fact, you open up any of those crates and you might as well imagine an invisible M scratched on every one, because they’re all mine! You want to chalk an S, or paint a naked picture of your girl on one”—there were chitters of amusement—“you’re going to by God earn it in the air!” He shook his head. “I guarantee you’ve earned a shot—all of you have—but so have Lieutenant Mackey and any other experienced pilots who show up here, because right now, they know more than you.” He looked at Mack. “That’s going to change. If you or anyone else wants to fly these ships we’ve worked so hard to save, you’re first going to help me teach these ’Cats every single thing you know about them. After that, it’s up for grabs, and don’t expect it to be a shoo-in. ’Cats are natural born acrobats, and I’ve seen them translate that into flying.” He looked at Soupy and the others gathered round. “That’s the deal.”
Soupy was nodding. “Okay, Skipper. Just so long as it fair. Good to meecha, Lieuten-aant Maa-kee.”
“Uh . . . thanks,” Mack said, watching the “deputation” depart.
“Oh boy,” said Ben, chuckling. “Let’s hit the shade,” he shouted, so Bernie could hear. Once under a grove of trees with palmated leaves beyond the line of crates, Ben offered Mack a rough-looking, but comfortable lounge chair and poured him a mug of cool water from a carafe nestled in a damp cloth. He saw Sandison approaching, walking slowly and accompanying another thin man.
“You really going to give those . . . Lemur . . . ’Cats a shot at those ships?” Mack asked. Ben looked at him. “I meant every word.”
“You think they can handle it?”
“What do you think? Who flew that ungainly goose that brought you here from the Philippines?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not?” Ben took a breath and scratched his nose. “Look. I know you’re new here, but here’s the Word on Lemurians: it doesn’t matter what they look like, what color they are, or whether they’re guys or gals; they’re people just like you and me, a
nd you’ll treat them that way.”
“I already got that word from Lieutenant Tucker—not that I needed it. It’s pretty obvious how things stand. Hell, there’re Japs on our side! That’s weirder than . . . anything else I’ve seen.”
Ben nodded sincere understanding, even though he still had only a vague idea what Mack and the other survivors of that hellish ship had been through. “Good. Just make sure you spread the word if more of your guys get here. This isn’t the States, with ‘colored’ drinking fountains, or India, China, or even the Philippines. ’Cats generally have a good sense of humor. You can razz ’em for being short, stripey, furry, or having tails, and they’ll throw it right back at you for being freakishly tall, ‘naked,’ ugly . . . or not having a tail, but it’s all in fun. Always. We’ve been through too much together as real, honest to God friends for any of that other crap to even much occur to anybody, them or us, and that’s the way it stays, clear?”
“Clear, Colonel.”
“Good.” Ben shrugged. “Besides, we still have the Grik, and plenty of ‘bad’ Japs to hate.”
Bernie Sandison and a winded Sergeant Dixon arrived. “I think the sergeant here will be a big help assembling these machines,” Bernie said distractedly. “He’s done it before, and knows a lot of the mistakes they made in the Philippines when the E models showed up.” He shook his head. “What a nightmare. No wonder the Air Corps got plastered! Even if they got on a Jap’s tail, the guns wouldn’t fire! The assembly instructions with the planes tell you how to put them together, but they don’t say squat about really making them work.”
“Then I’m very glad to see you, Sergeant Dixon,” Ben said, but he noticed Sandison was still bothered by something.
“Thank you, sir,” Dixon replied. “Glad to be here.”
Ben cocked his head. “What’s the matter, Bernie?” he asked.
“Well . . . it’s that damn Silva! He was supposed to be on the ‘Buzzard’ with these guys. I need him here! He’s the one who came up with the idea for the breechloaders we’re working on. He’s just going to waste out there. . . .”
“What happened to him? Comm said he got on the plane. . . .”
“Silva?” Mack asked. “Big guy? Eye patch?”
Ben looked at him. “Yeah.”
Mack shook his head. “It was the damnedest thing. The guy’s nuts. We talked about it with this Dutch nun, and she just said, ‘He’s always doing stuff like that.’ Say, you know? She acted horrified when he did it. Called him all sorts of things! But later, she seemed to think it was funny!”
“What did he do?” Ben asked, rolling his eyes.
Mack started to answer, but Bernie interrupted him. Sergeant Dixon had already told him. “He got on the plane through the port hatch, covered in grease, visited for a few minutes, then squirted out the starboard hatch right into the water!”
“In the water? On purpose?”
“Yeah,” Mack confirmed. “What’s the deal with the water?”
“Don’t get in it,” Ben murmured thoughtfully. “Especially in the shallows—like anywhere in the Malay Barrier . . . Grease? What did he say?”
“He said a lot of things that didn’t make any sense to us,” Dixon admitted, “mostly to the nun. But he did say the grease was an ‘experiment’ some old, ah, Lemurian named Moe suggested. Said it was time he ‘give it a shot, since he had too many orders to follow at the same time.’ Does that make any sense?”
“I hope that grease saved Silva’s miserable hide,” Bernie said darkly, “so I can kill that maniac myself!”
“Now hold on, Bernie,” Ben said. “Maybe he had a reason.” Ben caught himself. He didn’t really know Silva very well. He was an odd duck, that was certain, but why was he defending him? He shook his head. “Hang him when he gets home. In the meantime, don’t worry about it. You’ll bust a seam. Besides, from what I’ve heard, he’s more aggravation than he’s worth.”
Mack gestured at the hangars. “How many planes are ready to fly?”
“None,” Ben confessed. “That’s another reason I’m glad you guys are here. We’ve been bolting them together and getting them in the dry, but all the technical stuff has had to wait.” He looked at Dixon. “You know how to hook all that up?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Figure out what you need, labor and toolwise, and have at it.” He looked at the man. “But take it easy, wilya?”
“Yes, sir.” Dixon paused. “What about the guns? Where are they, and do you want them in?”
“They’re in that big warehouse, and hell yes, I want them in. Just two per plane for starters, though. We’ve got more guns than we can use, but ‘they’re’ thinking about sticking a gun in the nose of some of the ‘Nancys’—our single engine jobs—so we need to save back as many as we can. There might be a Jap plane out there somewhere, and right now all we’ve got to throw at it are spitballs. That’s another chore for you; familiarize yourself with the ‘Nancys.’ Figure out if they can handle a gun without shaking themselves apart, and if they can, cook up a way to mount one.”
“Yes, sir. Uh, Colonel Mallory? How come you call them ‘Nancys’?”
Ben’s expression became pained. “I don’t usually call them that, but I guess it’s stuck. Don’t worry about it; it’s a long story.”
CHAPTER 8
Mid Pacific
I say,” said Courtney Bradford, stunned, as if he’d just made some momentous discovery. “It’s Christmas Day!” He glared around the darkened bridge of USS Walker, casting a suddenly scandalized look at the new first lieutenant, Norman Kutas. Norm had been chief quartermaster’s mate, and still kept the log. Norm looked back, his scarred face crumpled in a frown, made even more gruesome by the poor light. He had the morning watch, 0400 to 0800, and was the only other human on the bridge.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bradford, I know,” he said, “but it ain’t like there’s a Christmas tree, presents, and kiddos chompin’ at the bit.”
“There should be,” Courtney said with conviction. “We’ve let too many of our traditional observances fall by the wayside. It’s scandalous, sir! Scandalous! And here I was, left alone to discover it. . . . It shall not stand!”
“I was going to mention it to the Skipper when the watch changes,” Kutas defended.
“But you didn’t ‘mention’ it to me! No ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Bradford’ did I hear!”
“Well, with the rest of the bridge watch being ’Cats, who wouldn’t know Christmas from Armistice Day, I guess it slipped my mind. You’ve never been up this early, that I recall, and besides . . . I sort of figured with your ‘Darwin this,’ and ‘evolution that,’ you weren’t such a Holy Joe.”
“That’s the second time someone has questioned my faith on such an assumption!” Courtney declared. “And what would the captain do?” he demanded, righteous indignation beginning to swell. “Last Christmas came and went without so much as a notice. . . .” He paused, reflecting. “Perhaps understandable, under the circumstances, but not twice in a row! I recall Captain Reddy took note of the unremarkable date of your misguided separation from the British Empire, but again Christmas is upon us without fanfare!”
“The Imperials had a few decorations up,” Kutas offered, a little lamely, “for their ‘Christmas Feast.’ ”
“Unacceptable! And of no use to you as an excuse. What’s the time?”
Kutas was increasingly flustered. Bradford’s stream of consciousness mode of communication was well-known, but it always caught his victims off guard. The Lemurians on the bridge were amused by the discussion, but, as Kutas had predicted, had little idea what it was about. The chronometer on the forward bulkhead was long deceased, and Kutas looked at his watch. “Uh, oh four forty-three,” he said.
“Close enough,” Bradford proclaimed, and passing a suddenly horrified Min-Saakir, or “Minnie” the female bridge talker, Courtney Bradford sounded the general alarm. Amid the raucous cries of a duck being burnt alive, he twisted the switch for the shipwide c
omm and spoke into the bulkhead microphone. “Merry Christmas, everyone,” he said in a kindly tone, reproduced as a snarling shout. “Yes indeed, it’s Christmas Day! Joy to you all!” He released the switch with a satisfied expression.
“God . . . dern it!” Kutas moaned. “Seventeen minutes early for morning GQ! The Skipper’s going to skin me for your stunt!”
“Piffle!” Bradford said, suddenly a little hesitant. “What is seventeen minutes?”
“It’s a quarter hour for tired destroyermen, Mr. Bradford!”
The ship quickly came to life on the black sea, under the purple-smeared sky. Fire controlmen scampered up the steel rungs to the platform above, and drowsy lookouts joined those on the bridgewings, who’d remain at their posts until the sun was fully up. They were no longer cramped by the torpedo directors that hadn’t pointlessly made the trip. Dark shapes shuffled quickly to their posts on the fo’c’sle below, on the number one gun, and Earl Lanier’s distinctive bellow came from the galley just aft, demanding that the men and ’Cats “line up, straight and smart, and wait your goddamn turn! No, it ain’t ready yet; you got a date?” A few minutes later, taking longer than usual, Captain Reddy trotted up the metal stairs behind them, looking at his watch.
“Caap’n on the bridge!” Staas-Fin (Finny) cried loudly.
“As you were,” Matt said. “Report, Mr. Kutas.”
“Fire control, engineering, an’ lookout stations manned an’ ready, Mr. Kutaas,” shouted Minnie, her voice high-pitched and soft as usual, but touched with a note of anxiety.
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