Stand BY-Y-Y to Start Engines

by Daniel V Gallery

  After much legal wrangling, the cops had to admit defeat. They marched Curly out to the car and started back to Santa Rosa in cold fury.

  "Now that I'm a free man," said Curly pleasantly, "you might as well take these irons off me."

  "Free man, hell," snorted Napoleon. "You got two, maybe three murder raps against you!"

  "Yeah," agreed John Paul Jones.

  "Wait a minute," said Dr. Einstein. "Maybe he made that up too - like he did all that stuff about being a Navy flier."

  "We got plenty to hold him for anyway," said Napoleon. "Loitering, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, interfering with police officers performing their duty, disturbing the peace. And, besides, he's crazy as a hoot owl."

  The corporal reported this new angle of the case by radio to headquarters, and soon thereafter got word from headquarters that the actual maniac had just been recaptured close to Napa.

  "Just who the hell are you, mister?" demanded Napoleon after getting this report.

  "Like I said this morning, Bub," replied Curly, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Cue, U. S. Na- "

  "Cut it out," snapped the corporal. "You heard us talking to the Guadalcanal on the short-wave phone. The Admiral himself said he never heard of you."

  "That old buzzard," said Curly, "is the worst admiral in the whole U.S. Navy, and that takes in a lot of ocean. He's so dumb he doesn't even know the difference between the port gossard and the starboard anchor. He couldn't navigate a cake of soap in a bathtub. I even seen him spit to windward the other day with twenty knots of wind blowing. Got it all right back in his face, he did."

  "No admiral could possibly be that dumb," said Dr. Einstein scornfully.

  "This one is," said Curly. "He probably never will find out I'm missing. He's almost as dumb as some of you cops." Then, warming to the intriguing task of doing justice to Admiral Day, he went on, "He's scared to death of airplanes. You couldn't drag him into one. Scared of everything, as a matter of fact. Goes to his cabin and locks the door whenever a little blow comes up at sea. He had a heavy cruiser during the war and ran like hell one day from a little Japanese destroyer."

  "Then how did he ever make admiral?" demanded John Paul Jones.

  "His political friends hushed it up," said Curly confidentially. "He's a chippy chaser and fanny pincher, too, he is. And talk about a rumpot! He's drunk all the time at sea. Gets so blotto he can't tell the bow from the stern... But I'm glad to see men like him make admiral. It means there's hope for all of us."

  "Knock it off, mister," said John Paul Jones. "I was in the Enterprise in World War II. If a plane is missing, the Admiral knows it right away, no matter how dumb he is. The Captain tells him."

  "That Guadalcanal," observed Curly, "is the most ragtime ship afloat. They never tell the Captain nothing. The main reason is that most of the time they don't know . Nobody keeps track of how many planes they got in the air or where they are going. We lost two planes out in the middle of the Pacific a week ago and nobody noticed the pilots weren't around any more until yesterday. But it was too late to do anything then."

  "Even if that was so, I wouldn't believe it," said John Paul Jones firmly.

  "Lots of things happen on that ship that I wouldn't believe either unless I seen them," said Curly sadly. "Two weeks ago up on the flight deck they taxied a brand-new jet fighter onto the forward elevator. The only trouble was the elevator was down on the hangar deck at the time. They had a bad time explaining that one to the skipper."

  "That's enough of your fairy stories, Buster," said John Paul Jones, "Come on now. Level with us. Who are you?"

  "Cross my heart and hope to die, I'm either Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Einstein, or John Paul Jones. Guess which."

  "Corporal," said Dr. Einstein, "when we get back to the station house, you get lost for about an hour and leave the three of us with this wise guy. We'll have him singing like a canary bird when you come back,"

  "Okay by me," grunted the corporal, "if I can clear it with the captain. But he's kind of narrow-minded, you know."

  Curly took up the cudgels to defend the captain. "He's an efficient law-enforcement officer," said Curly indignantly. "He protects the constitutional rights of citizens from rock-headed cops."

  Back at the police station the captain was conferring with the county attorney by phone. "You've got plenty of grounds for holding him," the legal beagle was saying: "obstructing justice, concealing his identity, suspicion of murder, and attempted assault on four officers in the performance of their duties. And from what you say, a sanity hearing certainly seems to be in order. I'll send my mental examiner right down. He'll be there in a minute."

  When Curly was again escorted into the captain's office, that official said, "Are you ready to come clean now and tell us who you are?"

  "Sure. The story I told you this morning is true. Every word of it. I'm Lieutenant Commander Cue, U. S. Navy -"

  "Wait a minute," snorted the captain. "The only trouble with that story is the USS Guadalcanal says it ain't so and you heard them say it. Remember, Buster?"

  Curly stood there hanging his head for a minute and trying to act as if he were going through an emotional struggle. Then he said, "All right. I'm licked. Get the Russian consul in San Francisco on the phone. I want to talk to him."

  "What the hell has the Russian consul got to do with this?" demanded the captain.

  "More than you think," said Curly, assuming a crafty, furtive look. "According to your laws I'm entitled to a lawyer and the minute the consul hears you've got me, he'll have the best one in California on the way up here."

  "Holy cow!" said Dr. Einstein. "A Soviet spy! He must of been flying a Russian U-2!"

  Visions of sugar plums began dancing in the corporal's head. He could see banner headlines all over the country and his picture on the front page as the alert police officer who made the pinch.

  "Get Officer Zinkoff in here," ordered the captain. "He speaks Russian as good as Krookyschuff himself."

  Officer Zinkoff entered and undertook to check Curly's command of the Russian language.

  It only took about four minutes to flunk him cold. Curly's entire command of the language consisted of phrases such as "Ya vash leblou" and "Ya hachoo vash selavatch," useful only in dealing with inexperienced females who are willing and anxious to acquire more experience.

  After Curly had used these phrases alternately to answer the first four of Zinkoffs' questions, the officer said, "This guy's about as Russian as Paddy's pig. Even his bedroom Russian has a Brooklyn accent."

  The sugar plums in Corporal Bonaparte's head shriveled into prunes and the headlines faded away.

  "Cap'n," said Dr. Einstein, "they've got this big Air Force-Navy maneuver going on now. Sometimes on these war games they are very mysterious about everything while the game is going on. A guy who gets separated from his unit has to tell a phony cover story until the maneuver is over. Maybe this guy is an Air Force pilot."

  "What?" roared Curly. "Captain, I've never been so insulted in my life. He wouldn't dare say that if I didn't have these chains on. You cops have no right to insult law-abiding citizens and assassinate character like that."

  "For the first time," observed John Paul Jones, "I'm beginning to think that maybe the guy might be in the Navy."

  "Yeah," said the captain, "but not the Guadalcanal's navy anyway. That's for sure. And that's where he claims he's from."

  At this point the mental troubleshooter from the county attorneys office came bustling in. "Where is the patient?" he demanded in a businesslike manner.

  "There he is, doctor," said the captain, pointing to Curly. "I don't think you gotta waste much time on him. He's crazy all right. He's not sure whether he's a Navy jet pilot, a Russian U-2 pilot, or the guy from the bug house. Confessed to a couple of murders, too. You better have some cop's in the examining room with you, doc."

  "Yes, good idea," said the doctor. Napoleon Bonaparte and John Paul Jones escorted Curly and the headshrinker to
the back room.

  "Siddown and relax now, son," said the doctor, "I'm not a policeman. I'm a doctor. I'm here to help you and try to keep you out of trouble. So, take it easy and just answer my questions as best you can."

  Curly leered at the doctor and said, "Okay, doc. How about prescribing a big shot of hooch for me first? I need it."

  "No," said the doctor, "not now. Answer the questions first."

  Curly looked down at the front of his pajama coat and began brushing it with both hands and blowing at it.

  "What's the matter?" asked the doctor.

  "These feathers," said Curly. "The air was full of feathers above 5000 feet this morning, and when I bailed out I got 'em all over me."

  "I see," said the doctor thoughtfully. "We are going to start with a word association test. I'll say a word and you must tell me as quickly as possible the first word that enters your mind. I'll write that word down and then give you another and you do the same thing. Do you understand?"

  "Yeah," said Curly with a silly giggle. "This is gonna be easy, doc."

  "Aileron," said the doctor.

  "Brigitte Bardot," said Curly like a flash.

  "Flame out"

  "Brigitte Bardot."

  "Mach number."

  "Brigitte Bardot."

  "Wait a minute," said the doctor. "Maybe I didn't explain very well. When I said, 'do the same thing,' I didn't mean give the same answer all the time. I meant you say the first word that pops into your mind after you hear what I say."

  "That's what I been doing," said Curly. "Everything reminds me of Brigitte Bardot. I'm thinking of her all the time," he added with a sly smirk.

  The Rorschach test produced no better results. On this test the subject is shown a group of inkblots of various sizes and random shapes. He is supposed to study these abstractions, give his imagination free rein, and tell the bug expert what mental pictures the blots conjure up in his mind. Most people can see animals, flowers, atomic explosions, cloud formations, or the like.

  Curly positively identified the ugliest blot of all as being the headshrinker himself, the next as the corporal, and the rest as various other cops and police officials. According to his mental images, as related to the doctor, they were all caught red-handed performing very reprehensible and unprintable acts.

  "All right, son," said the doctor, "that's enough. Let's go back."

  "Did I pass, doc?" asked Curly eagerly.

  "I'll have to study the data before I can answer," said the doctor evasively.

  Back in the captain's office, the doctor shook his head at the Captain and held out a fist with the thumb pointed down.

  "Mister," said the captain, "if you won't, or can't, tell us who you are, there's no use asking you any more questions. I'll just have to lock you up."

  "Well, sir," said Curly, picking imaginary butterflies out of the air putting them carefully into his pajama pocket, "when you look back on this thing later on you're going to have to admit I gave you a hot clue about being a Navy jet pilot when I first came in this morning. I have no fresh leads to offer at this time."

  "I give up," said the captain. "Book him, mug him, fingerprint him, and lock him up."

  While Curly was being mugged, the captain got a phone call from Clear Lake. The voice said, "I'm a skin diver. I saw an oil puddle out in the lake this morning and I went down to see what was making it. It's pretty deep there so I couldn't see too well. It feels like a speedboat, but I've checked around the lake and no speedboat is missing."

  "Okay, thanks," said the captain, scribbling on his memo pad. "We'll send regular divers down tomorrow and find-out."

  A small voice in the back of, the captain's head was trying to make itself heard but didn't quite get through.

  A few minutes later the squad car that had gone out to dig up the bodies called in. "That guy is the biggest liar in California and that means in the world. There isn't a cabin within miles of the location he gave. We searched the woods thoroughly. But we did find a parachute hanging in a tree and some aviator's gear at the bottom of it. We are bringing it back with us. No signs of the flier, though. That is all."

  The little voice in the captain's head suddenly came in loud and clear. "Corporal," he yelled, "bring that crazy blankety-blank prisoner back in here."

  All the cops in the station house came trooping in to follow this latest development.

  "Take off the cuffs and leg irons," ordered the captain, when Curly was ushered in.

  "So you believe me now, sir, do you, sir?" asked Curly with mock courtesy.

  "I'm not sure I do yet," said the bewildered police officer: "The Guadalcanal claims they never heard of you. How do you explain that?"

  "Like I told your officers coming back here, she's not a very efficient ship. They're just a bunch of beatniks out there. They might not miss me till next payday. Why don't you phone them again about ten days from now and see what they say? They lose planes and pilots every day and don't find out about it for a week."

  "That's a lie," snarled John Paul Jones. "I was in the Enterprise during the war and that's just impossible."

  "Nothin is impossible on that bucket," said Curly. "One day they got the ventilating system of the garbage disposal cross-connected with the air conditioning for the Admiral's cabin. There was a big stink about that one."

  "Hah!" observed John Paul Jones.

  Curly glanced at his watch and said,

  "Commissioner, I am six hours overdue now. Maybe some sharp character may have noticed and started rumors going which might get to the captain about now. Why don't you phone them again now?"

  "He's still lying," said John Paul, loyal to the wartime traditions of the Enterprise. "The ship would of called in and told us if they found anybody missing after our call this morning. Maybe he ain't even an Air Force pilot. Maybe he put that stuff in the tree to throw us off the scent and cover up something else he done."

  "Okay - lock him up," sighed the now completely befuddled captain.

  As they were leading Curly away the beat of a rapidly approaching helicopter was heard. The whirlybird fluttered down on the front lawn of the station and disgorged the Guadalcanal's legal officer and doctor.

  They briskly identified themselves, vouched for Curly's identity, and began talking fast. The Navy doctor shook his head knowingly, made circular motions with his finger pointed at his temple, and gave his headshrinking colleague a song and dance about oxygen anemia and high altitude bailouts. The headshrinker didn't know anything about oxygen anemia but nodded emphatic agreement with the finger signals. The legal officer spouted a lot of stuff about federal jurisdiction, the Universal Code of Military Justice, and the Attorney General of the United States - meantime producing a legal paper with the ship's seal on it acknowledging receipt of Commander J. C. Cue, U.S. Navy. At the end of his harangue he signed this document with a flourish, handed it to the captain, and before the flabbergasted cops could get over their flabbergast, he, the doctor, and Curly beat feet out the door.

  Chapter Four

  NIGHT FIGHTER

  In the headquarters of Patrol Wings Pacific Fleet, squadron commanders sat nervously around the conference table awaiting the arrival of their boss, Admiral "Bugler" Bates. The previous night a large-scale operation had been snafued by poor radio discipline and only a few days before Admiral Bates had issued an order saying that from now on radio discipline would be "excellent." So everyone expected him to lower the boom this morning.

  When the Admiral strode in, his blood pressure was still in the emergency red sector of the dial from the previous night's performance. He glared menacingly around the table and said:

  "I will not tolerate any more of this Flash Gordon stuff on the radio. In the kind of operations we're now doing, lives Can depend on proper radio procedure - and we are going to have it. From now on I'm not going to bother with individual pilots but if there are any more violations I will hold the squadron commander responsible and suspend him from duty."


  Bugler scowled. Each squadron commander glanced accusingly at each of his neighbors and at the same time assumed an air of injured innocence himself.

  "So much for that," the Admiral continued. "Radio discipline will be especially important in the fleet exercise next week which all this is leading up to. In this exercise, our job will be to defend San Francisco against an atomic attack coming in from a fast carrier task group at sea.

  "The rules agreed on require the task group to launch its attack not more than 1000 miles from San Francisco. I want to 'sink' those ships before they can do this. Even after we locate the task group, it will take some time to get our attack organized and fly 1000 miles to sea, so we've got to find them at about 1500 miles. I am especially anxious to do well on this exercise because... because of its strategic aspects."