In the next ten minutes Parker dictated the tale he had got from the secret folder. He was a sharp reporter and remembered what he had read almost verbatim. When he had finished dictating, he said, "I haven't been able to get the Admiral and the Captain's comments on this yet, but I'll see them this afternoon. They may not want to talk, but now that the story has been broken they'll have to. Over."
"Okay, Parker," said Willy's pal. "Thanks a lot. Good work, Ace. Over and out."
When Parker hung up, Willy observed to his pals, "Hook, line, and sinker. Now the fun begins."
At lunch Parker told Willy, "I gotta see the Admiral this afternoon."
"You just saw him yesterday," said Willy.
"I know. But I gotta see him again. This is urgent."
"Okay," said Willy. "I'll make an appointment for you."
Parker came right to the point with the Admiral. "Sir, I would like to get a statement from you about that business on the cruise to San Francisco."
"Hunh?" said the Admiral, taken unawares. "What do you mean? That foolishness with the Lafayette?"
"No, sir. I mean the stowaway incident."
"Stowaways? I don't know what you're talking about."
"I mean the two prostitutes that stowed away in San Francisco and weren't discovered till you were almost in Honolulu."
"Good God!" said the Admiral. "This is news to me." He buzzed for bis orderly and said, "Tell the Captain I want to see him right away."
"I thought you knew all about this, sir," said Parker. "Didn't you direct that these women be turned over to the FBI in Honolulu?"
"This is the first I've heard about it," said the Admiral. "This is outrageous. Where did you get this story from?"
"I can't tell you, sir," said Parker. "I have an obligation to protect my sources, you know."
When the Captain came in, the Admiral said, "What's this about women stowaways on this ship on the trip to Honolulu?"
The Captain was just as amazed as the Admiral had been.
"Young man," said the Admiral to Parker, "I think your 'source' has taken you for a sleigh ride."
"I think my source was pretty reliable," said Parker. "I have reason to believe this thing is being hushed up."
"Do you mean to stand there and accuse me of lying?" demanded the Admiral.
"Sometimes denying a bad story isn't considered lying," said Parker. "The State Department does it all the time... sometimes even the President does, like in the U-2 incident."
"Well, Parker," said the Admiral, "I'm telling you that there isn't a shred of truth in this story and you're going to look pretty silly if you send it out."
"It has already gone out," said Parker, "so there's no use trying to cover it up any longer."
"That's your tough luck then," said the Admiral. "And now, Mr. Parker, get the hell out of my cabin before I lose my temper."
Outside the cabin the Captain said, "Parker, you've just been had, that's all, and I can't really say that I'm sorry for you. A story like that couldn't possibly be hushed up. Everybody on the ship would know about it five minutes after the gals were found - hell, five minutes after they came aboard, for that matter. If you won't take my word for it, I suggest you inquire around among the sailors. And you had better kill that story you sent your magazine about it."
Parker asked the next five or six sailors he met if they knew anything about the floozie stowaways. None did, and their eager inquiries for further details convinced him that he had indeed been hoaxed. However, his inquiries started a rumor going which was all over the ship in five minutes that there were a couple of floozies up in the paint locker and the painter had to call the CMAA to break up the curious crowd that collected there.
Now Parker hit the panic button. That story he had dictated would call for a big play in the magazine and would make them look very foolish indeed. It would certainly get him fired and would make him the laughingstock of the Press Club. He had to kill it right away.
He hurried down to his room and dialed the number he had called that morning to get main radio. No answer. He beat it down to main radio and told the CWO he had to talk to his New York office on sideband radio. The CWO said he would have to get permission from the staff to use sideband. The staff communications officer informed him that the sideband channel was held clear for emergency traffic from the Pentagon, but he could send his message via regular radio in the normal manner.
"But I talked to my office on sideband this morning," protested Parker. "They called me from New York."
"Sometimes shore stations on the circuit will let a call to the ship come through," explained the communicator, "because if the Pentagon wants the circuit they can always cut in. But we have to keep the circuit open. Send your message regular radio. It ought to be delivered in five or six hours at the most."
Parker could visualize the presses beginning to roll with the phony story while he struggled with Navy red tape trying to kill it. He scribbled a message: "To Time N.Y. Kill stowaway story I phoned in this morning. Parker."
Then he hastened down to the wardroom coffee lounge to steady his nerves with a cup of black coffee.
Among those gathered around the urn was Willy. "What's the matter, Parker?" he asked. "You look worried."
"Humph," replied Parker, filling his cup.
"Have you got your story written yet?" asked Willy. "We got a lot more things I can show you if you want me to."
"I've seen a lot more than I want of this bucket already," observed Parker.
After about ten minutes a messenger from the radio room handed Willy a copy of Parker's outgoing message to TIME with a note from the CWO saying, "We are holding this for verification. There is no record of any outgoing sideband traffic today. Please check with Parker."
Willy pushed the note across the table and Parker blew up when he read it. "Good God," he said, "hasn't my message gone out yet?"
"No. You see what they say. They just want to make sure it's correct before sending it."
"I wrote it myself," stormed Parker. "There's no reason for them to doubt it. I gave it to them half an hour ago and here they are diddling around trying to make up their minds whether I mean it or not."
"Keep your shirt on," said Willy. "There's no hurry."
"No hurry, hell, the magazine goes to print tonight," roared Parker. "That message has got to get out right now or there will be all hell to pay."
"But they say they don't know anything about any story you sent," said Willy. "They would have to clear anything you sent for security so there must be some mistake."
"God damn it, I sent it by sideband radio," said Parker. "What if I didn't clear it? I'm killing it now."
"Come down to my room for a minute," said Willy. "Maybe we can straighten this out."
"Please, Wigglesworth," pleaded Parker, "get that message out, will you? I'll be ruined if you don't."
"Sure. In a few minutes. Come along with me."
In his stateroom Willy said, "My friend, you have been had so many ways I can hardly count them."
"Whadaya mean?" asked Parker.
"First of all, you fell for the phony stowaway story."
"Anybody might have made that mistake," said Parker. "It all looked pretty official."
Willy reached into a drawer, hauled out the big manila envelope, and tossed it on his desk. "It was in an official envelope marked secret. Do you always sneak a look inside envelopes you find lying around that aren't addressed to you?"
"Never mind preaching to me now," said Parker. "I've got to get this message off to New York before it's too late. Time's awasting."
"Before coming aboard you signed an agreement to clear your stuff, but you tried to sneak this one out anyway."
"All right, I did. We can argue about that later on. But I've got to kill that story I sent off - right now!"
"Relax, Parker," said Willy. "No story went out."
"Whadaya mean? I phoned it to New York myself this morning."
"No, you didn'
t," said Willy. "You phoned it to this room right here and some friends and I canned it for you in case you have any use for it," he added, tossing a small can of tape from a recorder on the desk. "A couple of guys put on an act about long-distance operators. But nothing ever went off the ship."
"Well, I'll be gahdamn," said Parker. "It didn't go out! Whew!"
"But you're not all the way off the hook yet, you know," said Willy.
"How come?"
"You sent your editor a message this morning saying you had a big story for him. Remember? That one did go out."
"Yeah, that's right, I did send one," said Parker.
"Do you want to cancel that now and tell them that you went off half-cocked?" asked Willy. "That you've been out here a week and can't find a story?"
"No," said Parker. "I don't... I'll tell you, Wigglesworth, you showed me some good stuff around the ship; the Captain and the Admiral gave me some too. I got enough for a good story right now. If I get busy on it right away I can get it off in time to beat the deadline tonight... I'll see ya later, kid."
That afternoon Parker filed a long story to TIME about life in the Guadalcanal. It was full of colorful human interest angles about what goes on on the lower decks and had a lot of good solid stuff about the importance of sea power in the atomic age and on the fascinating new field of oceanography which the Navy was pioneering. It was cleared without changing a word, got a nice play in the next issue of Time, was condensed in the Reader's Digest, and the Navy League got reprints and mailed them to all its members.
That evening after Commander Cue had seen a copy of Parker's outgoing story, he sent for Willy and said, "Wigglesworth, as a PRO you are a genius. You are hereby appointed permanent press relations officer for this ship."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Cap'n," said Willy. "It's dangerous. I'm not cut out for the job and it scares me to think of what might happen."
Chapter Ten
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
The TIME story was quite a feather in Willy's bed as a public relations officer and pundit on naval strategy and tactics. He began to feel he might be a budding Samuel Eliot Morison or even Alfred Taylor Mahan. He also felt somewhat under obligation to Ace Parker, in a way. After all, you couldn't really blame Ace for the fast one he had tried to pull. The only reason Willy had been able to booby-trap him was that their minds both worked in the same devious channels when they felt that red tape was infringing their constitutional rights. So Willy felt that he ought to dig up some sort of lead for Parker to repay him for the sympathetic and penetrating piece he had produced, under Willy's guidance, about sea power.
Willy had shown Parker everything he could on the ship. So he turned his mind to the wonders of the sea and sky around them. There was plenty of good stuff there, if you just had the wit to recognize it. No spot-news stories but TIME's big brother, LIFE, might find a good picture story somewhere in the wind and wave. Suddenly an idea hit Willy - the Green Flash!
The Green Flash is a scientific fact that few people know about, and many of those who have heard of it don't believe it. When the sun sets behind a sharp sea horizon and .there is no haze whatever, its upper limb changes from flaming orange to brilliant green a second or so before it disappears.
It is a spectacular and astonishing thing when it occurs, but it isn't always predictable. Often atmospheric conditions aren't right and nothing happens.
Aboard ship is a good place to see it. But seafaring men are a skeptical lot and after someone in the know has assembled them a couple of times at sunset to see it and nothing happens, they are convinced from then on that the guy is a liar. It can also be seen from the western shore of tropical isles. But in the tropics most observers are half crocked by sunset so those who have not seen it attribute stories about it to the rum.
But it does happen. When it does, you are well repaid for the times when you looked for it expectantly but didn't see it.
Willy was one of the initiated, having seen the flash several times in the Mediterranean. He hunted up Parker and said, "Mr. Parker, I've got an idea that might make a story for LIFE. There would be some good colored pictures in it and you could write the story on it. Do you want to hear about it?
"I'll listen to anything you say, Wigglesworth," said Parker warily; "but whether I will believe it or not is a horse from another kettle of fish."
That afternoon Parker, Willy, and a number of his aviator pals assembled on the signal bridge near sunset to observe this phenomenon of the green flash. While the sun was still several diameters above the horizon, Willy explained the scientific facts of life about it.
"You see," said Willy, "the earth's atmosphere acts like a prism and refracts the sun's light. When you put a narrow beam of light through a prism, it splits up into all the colors of the rainbow. The same thing happens when the sun's rays shine through the atmosphere. But the sun's disc is half a degree wide, so you don't get just one narrow beam from it. You get a lot of beams and, although they split up, they get scrambled back together and come out white sunlight again while the sun is high. But when the sun is setting, the bundle of beams is getting narrower, and when just a sliver of the sun is left you see the green part of the spectrum. Actually, the last sliver turns ultraviolet, but you don't see that because it blends in with the blue of the sky."
"Why don't you see it every day, Dr. Einstein?" asked one of his listeners.
"Lots of times there's a little haze in the air that you can't see," said Willy. "Unless the air is perfectly clear, the sun just gets redder and redder as it goes down and you don't see the flash."
"How does it look for today, professor?" asked another skeptic.
"Good," said Willy. "We got a clear sharp horizon and no haze. At least I don't think there's any. The sun is only about a diameter above the horizon now and it's still too bright to look at it. That's a good sign."
As the bright disc touched the horizon and began fading to orange, all hands watched expectantly. When it was half gone and was flaming red, Willy said, "It will stay this color until there is just a little sliver left peeping over the horizon. Then, maybe, two seconds before it is gone, BOOM! It turns just as green as the starboard light."
All hands concentrated their gaze on the sinking sun. An expectant hush fell over the crowd. Curious signalmen joined the group and looked west too. The sun got smaller and smaller and redder and redder and then disappeared.
All eyes swung around and glared indignantly at Willy, whose face got almost as red as the sun. After a moment of silence, a lieutenant said, "I think you're full of crap."
All heads nodded gave agreement and the crowd drifted away, leaving only Parker with Willy.
"But it does turn green - sometimes," said Willy. "Today the air must not -"
"I believe you, Willy," interrupted Parker.
"Thanks, pal," said Willy. "I am touched by your faith in me."
"I looked it up in the encyclopedia," said Parker.
"Humph," grunted Willy. "Well, anyway, when it happens, you could get a series of real good color pictures out of it and I know a couple of nice gimmicks you could use too, if LIFE goes for the idea."
"Go ahead. I'm listening," said Parker, "I think there's a LIFE story here, all right"
"You can freeze the flash," said Willy, "and make it last for an hour or so if you want to."
"How do you do that?"
"Photograph it from a high-speed plane. There are plenty of planes these days that can fly around the world faster than the sun goes around it. So you put your cameras in a fast plane and loaf around till you get the flash just as the sun is going down. Then you head west and fly just fast enough to keep the sun peeking over the horizon at you. It will stay green. Then you can speed up a little, bring some more of the sun back up over the horizon, and it will go red. You can fiddle with your throttle and make it go red and green whenever you want to."
"That's a whale of a gimmick," said Parker. "You tinker with the sun like it was a tra
ffic light. Damnedest thing I ever heard of."
"You can see the flash at sunrise too," continued Willy. "It's harder to see it in the morning because you have to be looking at exactly the right place to catch it. At sunset you've got your eye on the sun as it goes down, so that's no problem. And, besides, at sunrise the kind of people who are interested in such things as the flash usually have too bad a hangover to concentrate."
"I think LIFE will grab at this," said Parker.
This was to be the Guadalcanal's last day at sea. Next morning at the crack of dawn she would launch her air group to fly to North Island and land about sunrise. Later the ships would come in and tie up to piers lined with happy wives, kids, sweethearts, jewelry salesmen, and bill collectors.
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