Half of Halladay’s idea had been right. As for the other half—
He heard the savage chatter of the sub-machine guns behind him, and knew that the Messerschmitts were diving. He heard the staccato chop of bullets striking, somewhere on the great wing,—but he could take a lot of that and still survive! And then he saw the ’Schmitt zooming lip before him, having missed its lunge. The riflemen by his side needed no orders now. Automatically, their rifles were at their shoulders, they had crashed out firing-holes in the glass, and they were shooting at the disappearing ship. This one had taken them by surprise and got away—but the next might not be so lucky!
The sub-machine guns behind chattered again, and the riflemen tensed for action. Then they slumped back, for action on their part was not needed! A gout of flame below showed where a Nazi pilot had pulled out of his attack-dive too late, and struck the unyielding earth!
Halladay tugged, kicked, and shoved on the slow controls, cursing the ship as he jockeyed it up and around the buildings and small hills in its path, always hugging the ground as close as he could get. Again and again the savage ’Schmitts pounced down on the apparently helpless prey—until to dance away again in astounded disappointment as their own great speed carried them away too fast to shoot it down. The flak bursts, lower now, exploded all around the G-38, but none close enough even to spatter it with shrapnel.
And suddenly the picture changed!
Four death-spitting Hurricanes, fast as the mad wind for which they were named, galloped down on the scene, followed the Nazi ships down and sent them to flaming doom. And more were coming, a dozen more deadly fighters. Behind him Halladay heard the exultant cheers of the man at the radio and knew the reason. Contact had been established!
The sky was filling with friendly planes—Hurricanes, P-40’s, Russian Stormovik dive-bombers, all joined together to convoy the huge, misshapen Junkers through to safety. Halladay, intent on his precarious job of piloting, dazed by the air battles going on all about him, hardly knew when they crossed the shattered town that was the mark of the shifting front. Only when the radioman’s repeated yells penetrated and he was conscious that he was being told to land, did he realize that he was at the end of the perilous voyage.
And when they had landed, had convinced the Russian soldiers who ran up to them with rifles at the ready that they were in truth escaped Englishmen, Halladay decided that this was the time to smoke his cigarette. He reached for it and stared uncomprehendingly when he found only the empty pack.
All the joy was taken out of his success when he realized he must have dropped it from his mouth in the fight at the airfield—until he saw the thin cardboard package that a friendly soldier with a red star on his helmet was offering him in sign language.
THE END
1947
X Marks the A-Bomb
The big-city reporter figured he’d ferret out a scoop story from the atombomb works. But when that secret landed in his lap, he found that the only one he’d live to tell it to would be the Old Nick himself.
YOU’D be surprised if you knew what’s going on. I was surprised right into District 17—but that’s getting ahead of the story. What story? I’m going to write this one down and tear it up, or maybe burn it, because there isn’t a paper or magazine in the country that could get away with printing it. They’d be dosed and maybe in jail, or maybe in District—oops! There I go again.
I could begin at the beginning, but when was the beginning? Was it Los Alamos in New Mexico, was it Oak Ridge, was it the first uranium pile under the University of Chicago football stadium, or was it Hiroshima going up like a matchhead?
I’ll skip ‘em all up to, say, V-J Day. Let’s make it V-J Day in the New York Daily Bulletin city room. I’m the handsome young man of forty-five arguing with the city editor about an expense account. Suddenly everybody goes crazy, the war is over, justice has triumphed, paper goes sailing around the room.
And I hear Arnheim, the obit writer, murmur gently, “So Allison did it …” There is a queer, abstracted look on Arnheim’s face, like a man waiting for you to pick up his dinner check.
About a week later, in the middle of an interview with the latest English novelist in on the Clipper, came the click. Percival was saying, “—nor can one deny the semian ingenuity of the Ammeddican professional clawsses—” and then the click came. Percival saw it in my face and stopped dead.
“Indisposed, old thing?” he asked, and whipped out a little leather-covered bottle. I emptied it—good Scotch—thanked him and raced for the taxi stand.
I was standing threateningly over Arnheim ten minutes later. Threats got me nowhere; he was tight as a clam in the R months. But I got him in a booth at the comer bar for lunch and shocked him by setting up the drinks. Arnheim never could say no to liquor, which is why he’s still an obit writer. Lunchtime was long over, and Arnheim was three sheets and a spinnaker in the wind when he broke down and drooled out the story, or as much of it as he knew.
The Allison he’d been babbling about was, of course, the late Hamish McGregor Allison, Ph.D., minor physicist, Columbia man, mourned by his colleagues at his untimely death early in ’43. The joker was that Allison wasn’t dead. Arnheim had written enough obits and checked enough sources to know a phony when it turned up. Everything was on paper in the Allison business. There were witnesses who couldn’t be located but knew all about it. There was a statement by a doctor who just happened to be unavailable. Nobody seemed to know when and where the funeral had been held. A phony.
What you get for nothing in the newspaper business you can stick in your eye. I had to fight for three hours with the city editor to get assigned to the Manhattan Project story. This was when the generals were finally talked down by the scientists and allowed a few reporters to look at the outside of some of the equipment. I wanted the assignment because of my lead on Allison, but didn’t mention it—yet. I had visions of a headline-like, A-Bomb Scientist Foils Spies in Death Plot. Maybe, I thought, there were dozens more like that from all over the country!
I GOT the assignment from under the science editor’s nose by arguing that it was a layman’s view the readers wanted. The next day I was on a special train leaving from Penn Station with an ME lieutenant sharing my seat. He was from Dixie and talked about houn’ dawgs. The three-car special was full of newspaper men and MP lieutenants, except for half of the rear car, which was partitioned off and was supposed to have Enrico Fermi and his escort of two majors and a sharpshooting master sergeant in it.
The windows were painted over and the MP’s wouldn’t let us gentlemen of the press talk to each other, so it was one of the lousiest trips I’ve ever taken. It lasted fifty-two hours—a diner was hooked on at decent intervals—and we must have taken some kind of roundabout route, because I’d swear we got out in Mississippi or thereabouts. The train stopped at a siding and we all got out and stretched.
It was a five-hundred acre clearing in a second-growth forest of pine and scrub oak. The strongest, tallest wire fences I’ve ever seen ringed about three dozen concrete block buildings of assorted sizes, and they were reinforced with more MP lieutenants with, alternately, tommy-guns and repeating shotguns loaded for bear.
We were assigned to one-man cubicles, each with a cot, a desk, and a typewriter, shower stall, and Modern Convenience. We would sleep in there, write our stories in there, and be loaded back onto the train in forty-eight hours. We would be guided through the works in parties of eight. There would be no conversation during the tours, or at mess, or in the cubicles.
Some character in an officer’s uniform but without insignia, an GWI or War Censorship boy, I thought, lectured us. MP guards would be stationed in the corridor of our quarters to prevent conversation; ask questions only of the guides; the National Defense Act was still in force; all stories written here would be censored before leaving the place; silence during meals again; have fun while you’re here but don’t abuse the privileges you’ve been granted.
Privil
eges!
We went to our cubicles and cleaned up for dinner. I half expected my MP to climb into the shower with me, but he didn’t. He just watched to make sure I didn’t try to sneak a nucleus into the cake of soap.
We were marched to the messhali and picked up a tray apiece as we went in. Here, I figured, is where we got a look at some of the personnel. The only personnel we got a look at was the line of cooks who hurled gobs of food into our trays; the rest of the five-hundred man hall was empty.
“Hot, isn’t it?” I said to the cook in charge of the mashed potatoes. He gave me a scared look as an MP’s hand fell on my shoulder.
“I’ll be good,” I said, and continued silently down the line. That potato cook had the only face in the camp that wasn’t chiselled out of granite. We ate and filed back to our cubicles. We could write or sleep or both until nine the next morning when the tours would start. I got a change of guards at about eight P.M. I guess the houn’ dawg man was as sick of me as I was of him.
“Look,” I said to my new boy, pointing out the window. “You call this security?”
“We do,” he said. “What’s the matter with it?”
“There ought to be a roof over the place. You can see the stars, so by celestial nevigation you can find out where this place is located!”
That tickled him, because he was a washed-out navigator who’d made the grade in the MP’s, We got into a nice conversation.
“Ever hear of anybody named Hamish McGregor Allison?” I finally asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Is he at this installation?”
“I saw you try to talk to him on the chowline.”
“The cook?”
‘“That’s right. How’d you know his name?”
“It was just a guess,” I said, my head Whirling. “Good night.” I tried to go to sleep. Of course I had studied photographs of Allison before coming out here, of course it was the same man.
I passed out at about two in the morning, still spinning like a top.
SO HELP me, they blew a bugle at six. A.M. They hauled off, took a deep breath and blatted the horn until we held our heads. The character in the officer’s uniform without insignia yelled along the corridor, “Everybody out! Everybody!”
We piled into the corridor and saw the MP guards drawn up in stiff attention, looking scared and white. The character was bawling them to hell and gone out. He stopped short when we appeared.
“You reporters stand out here in the corridor,” he ordered. “Your quarters are going to be searched.”
I sleep raw, personally, so I asked him if I could get some clothes.
“No,” he said coldly. “You may not.” And mine was the first room he and two MP’s began to search. The other MP’s watched us nervously; just how nervously I didn’t realize until every cubicle had been ransacked and we’d been allowed to dress and form outside.
The character addressed us in the chilly voice of a judge sentencing a fiend. “You men,” he said, “are in very grave personal danger. One or more of you has stolen—something—from this installation and hidden it. I shall he entirely within my rights if I put you all under confinement, ship you to Washington, and see that you stand trial. The trial, of course, will be by a military commission, and closed to the press and public, and will probably result in every one of you being shot as surely as if you were German spies.
“Actually, I am sure no danger to the country’s security was intended, but the Espionage Act, U.S.C. 31 and 32 amended, does not discriminate between malevolent theft and reportorial pilfering. I want the guilty person or persons, or anybody having any information, to step out now.
I stepped out. The character studied me icily and nodded to the rest. “Return to your cubicles,” he said. “Guards, don’t leave them alone.”
To me he beckoned simply. As we walked off two of the soldiers followed. The four of us went to the nearest building, and sat down in a bare little office.
“Tell your story,” said the man to me.
“Questions first,” I said. He seemed to swell and grow bright red, though actually he probably just flushed and sat a little straighter.
“All right,” he choked.
“Stop me if I’m wrong,” I said. “You maintain constant secrecy in this installation, and this is the first case of disappearance, coincident with the arrival of the reporters. You therefore assume that the reporters, in spite of their guarding, managed the theft. Right?”
“Right,” he said grimly.
“Wrong,” I said. “The thief is one of your personnel. He’s a minor physicist who faked death years ago, presumably on a tip about the Manhattan Project, and worked his way in as a cook. Up to now I’ve been assuming he was for the project; I see now that he’s against it. I don’t know if his angle’s sabotage or what, but I know the man. He hasn’t even changed his name, which was smarter than it seems on first thought.”
“Who is it?” the man yelled, His nerve had finally gone.
“What’s the hurry?” I asked.
He shot to his feet and took me by the lapels. “You—incredible—imbecile!” he grated. Then he let go and sat down with a sigh. “No,” he said. “Your just don’t understand the importance of it. Just tell me right now, taking my word that there’s reason for speed, who the man is.”
“I’m a reporter,” I said. “I don’t give anything for nothing. What’s the hurry?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said tiredly. “You’ll be sorry, but I’ll tell you.” He waved the MP’s out. “This place is the bomb depot. Every atomic bomb is delivered here when it’s assembled. We get five a month. Even a bush-league physic instructor with the—the part that was stolen—could—Oh, nuts! Tell me who it was!”
I’ve never seen a man trembling as he was trembling; it was like a tuning-fork; he was on the verge of collapse. So, when I thought it over, was I.
“One of the cooks,” I said. “Hamish McGregor Allison is his name.”
THE man tore out of the office without me, waving on the MP’s who were waiting outside. He ran for a barrackslike building and I ran behind the three. He yelled for more MP’s from the fence patrol, and they streamed after in a ragged wedge.
We charged into the barracks, neatly labeled Cooks’ Quarters, and the man, panting, ran his finger down a list of bunk numbers. Cooks all around us in various stages of undress were getting off their cots and babbling. The man strode to the twelfth bunk on the left and shook Allison awake.
Two MP’s held his arms while another searched him. He found a little, shiny gadget around his neck on a string. It was quickly passed to the man in the officer’s uniform who pocketed it at once.
He sat down on Allison’s bunk and said weakly, “Guardhouse. Four men in the cell with him. Bring his records to my office.”
The MP’s left with a silent, burningeyed Allison. We went back to the bare little office as a dossier arrived by jeep.
We looked over the dossier together; he seemed to have made up his mind about me—I didn’t know then just how.
He called in two captains and a major who blinked at me and got to work on the dossier, which included a birth certificate—Aberdeen, Scotland, 1900; naturalization papers, Cleveland, Ohio, 1923; marriage license, Cleveland, 1925; affidavits of restaurant owners in Cleveland, Dayton, and Columbus, 1925, 1927, and 1933. License of his own restaurant, “Mac’s Hamburger Spot,” Columbus, 1935. Death certificate of his wife.
The three officers studied the stuff for ten minutes in total silence. Finally one of the captains said, “Jap.”
The major gave him a look and the other captain promptly said, “Kraut. Film-grain, grammar, punctuation, margins, thoroughness—it’s Kraut.”
“Yes,” said the major. “It’s Kraut. Who let this through?”
“Lieutenant Gilbert,” said one of the captains, looking at the dossier’s jacket. “He’s been discharged.”
“A pity,” said the major. His fists clenched as if they were w
ringing something, and the three left.
“I suppose I should thank you,” said the man in the officer’s uniform. “Instead—”
An MP knocked and came in. “He’s talking, sir,” he said. We raced out and piled into the soldier’s jeep.
It took us to the guardhouse where Allison was sitting with his head in his hands, babbling and babbling at the floor. He didn’t seem to care whether anybody heard or not. He said over and over that he’d failed somebody named Caledonia, then it was the Fatherland he’d failed—After an hour’s babbling we got five minutes worth of sense out of it.
Allison was a Scotch separatist. He was as ready to commit murder for the freedom of Scotland as the Sinn Feiners had been for Ireland. Like the Sinn Fein in the last war Allison had been approached by German agents in this one. They’d arranged everything—his faked death, his faked record of employment.
He was totally unable to see the rights and wrongs of the war. The Germans were, he thought, for Scotland’s freedom so he was for the Germans. He was going to blow up London, he was, and he was going to blow up Manchester if the accursed English didn’t then give Scotland its independence.
Good gosh!
It takes all kinds of people to make a world. Did you know that there was an Irish Brigade in the army of Kaiser Wilhelm between 1916 and 1918?
The man in the officer’s uniform took down some names and addresses and did some long-distance phoning from his office. I was mentioned in one of the phone calls. Like this:
“What’ll we do about the reporter, Genera!?”
Silence.
“Yes, sir, Seventeen? We could shoot him … yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” Click.
It was ten-thirty A.M By eleven-thirty the reporters had been told to keep their mouths shut—excerpts from the Espionage Act of the Fiftieth United States Congress being read—and packed onto the train.
Collected Short Fiction Page 89