by Robb White
Moving very quickly and accurately, he wedged the magnets in place, removed the bolts holding the gimbals, and lifted the entire device out in one piece.
If Amos had not been staring at it he would not
have seen the two tiny magnets shoot out, one from each side of the casing, and click together.
Even as it was happening, Amos marveled at the beauty of the device. The two tiny magnets had been held out of sight in the casing wall by the stronger magnets of the firing mechanism. As soon as those fields were broken, the weaker fields of the little magnets could form again, pulling them together. And, Amos knew now, pulling the two bare wire ends out of their protective casing of wax so that, in the acid, the connection was made.
Amos had been zapped many times in that old barn, but now, because he was always waiting for it, expecting it, it never hit him very hard.
Not, he thought, as hard as it was hitting the chief.
Beautiful.
Hingman couldn't turn it loose. The electricity slugged him and shook him and wrenched his body. It drained his breath and yanked his mouth open, until at last he slammed the mechanism down on the bench, breaking it out of his hands.
Of all the class, only Max had the courage to laugh out loud. A big laugh, rumbling up out of that wide chest. The rest of them stood there, shaking with laughter, but holding it back.
Amos glanced across at John, who just smiled, held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged.
When the chief could get his breath, he turned on Amos. "Smart Ensign."
"About that phone call to Lieutenant Beach, Chief? Sea duty."
"You'll look real good in a mine sweeper," the chief said. 'Til see to it that you get the lead sweep—right out in front, where the mines are."
As he turned to go, the phone rang, the big gong mounted on a ceiling beam making a clanging, hollow noise that echoed around in Death Row.
It was dark by the time Amos got his bills paid and his clothes out of the laundry and was all squared away to go, with nothing to do but pack his suitcase.
In his room in the BOQ, Beach was sitting with his feet on the table eating a banana and listening to Glenn Miller on his portable.
Amos dumped the laundry on his bed and yelled at Beach over "Jersey Bounce," "Did Hingman call you?"
"Who?"
"Chief Hingman!"
Amos went over and lifted the needle off.
"Don't do that," Beach said, and put it back, skidding it across the record. But he turned the volume down.
"Hingman?" Amos said.
"Call me? No/'
"He didn't?"
Beach looked up. "He did not. Chiefs don't call me, Wainwright. I call chiefs."
"Did you call him?"
"I called him."
"What'd he say?"
"He said, 'Aye, aye, sir.' What did you expect him to say?"
Amos decided that this man really needed rehabilitation—with a ball bat. But he didn't have time for it now.
"The chief is supposed to get me orders for sea duty," Amos said, and immediately realized that he had said the wrong thing again.
"Oh, he is, is he?" Beach searched around among some papers under his feet on the desk. "Well, you've got orders. . . ."
Amos didn't hear the rest of it. He took the orders and skipped everything down to Paragraph 1.
1. Ensign Wainwright is hereby detached and ordered to report immediately to the Officer in Charge, COPRA, in whatever ship or port he may be.
"COPRA? What's that?" Amos asked, seeing now that his orders were stamped in red TOP SECRET.
"That's the trouble with the Navy," Beach said. "It's nothing but alphabet soup. CINCPAC, JICPOA, SOWESPAC. . . ."
"Is it a mine sweeper?" Amos asked.
But Beach was off on one of his standard gripes. "You think you've got problems. Well, just let me give you an example of the things they do to me every day, Wainwright. An ensign marches into my office with that TOP SECRET-PASS BY HAND case and allows me to see one paragraph of the message . . ."
"Yeah, tough," Amos said, "Is this COPRA sea duty?"
Beach wasn't listening. "The paragraph says—now listen to this—the commanding officer will personally select one officer, one radioman, first class, and two other rated men with the training required by Paragraph Three and have them report to VR-2 not later than 1800 tomorrow. You see what a bind that puts me inr
"Yeah, yeah," Amos said. "Tough. Where's VR-2?"
"The commanding officer is off on some secret mission, so how can he select anybody? And how can I? Since, being only a flunky around here, I'm not permitted to see Top Secret Paragraph Three. But— it's my duty to comply with the orders of my superior officers, isn't it?"
"Always," Amos said. "What's VR-2 fly?"
"Either way, I get the sharp end," Beach went on. "But that message came from CINCPAC, and he is senior to my captain, so I've got to stick my neck out and get you people moving."
Amos tried again. "Any idea what this COPRA is?"
"Must be the Civilian Office of Personnel Recruiting Activity."
"Oh, no!" Amos said. "Where's that?"
"Ottumwa, Iowa."
"Iowa?"
"Iowa, Nebraska, somewhere out there. VR-2 will know."
"I can't go there," Amos said in a low, helpless voice. "Hingman promised to send me to sea."
"Where did you get the idea that chief petty officers tell me who to send where, Wainwright?" Beach was really sore now.
But Amos had a brilliant thought. "You told me that I haven't got any orders sending me to this school. So, officially, I'm not here. And, since I'm not here, I can't be transferred to Iowa."
"Listen," Beach said. "I'm doing you a favor letting you leave here without a court-martial."
Amos slammed his cap on and headed for the door. "Just hold everything, Lieutenant. Going to Iowa isn't the deal I made with Hingman."
Beach turned the volume up. "Transportation's coming for you in about five minutes, mister," he shouted over the music. "So you'd better pack up and move out."
Amos stopped at the door. "If I don't. . ."
Beach turned the volume down and looked at him, his narrow mouth set tight. "I can already charge you with unwarranted assumption of authority and get you a general court-martial. Would you like for
me to add direct disobedience of the orders of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet?"
Amos came slowly back into the room. "No," he said quietly. He got his Val-Pak down and began throwing clothes into it. "Are you going to see to it that this trouble follows me out to Iowa?"
"It's my duty."
Amos stood looking down at him. "All I've been doing since the war started, Beach, is trying to get sent to sea. Is that a bad thing to do?"
"And all I've been doing is my job, mister."
"Can't you let this thing drop?" Amos asked. "After all, it's just one missing piece of paper."
"It's out of my hands," Beach said. "As of three hours ago you were detached from this command."
"Isn't Iowa bad enough?" Amos asked.
Before Beach could answer, the phone rang. He answered it and put his feet back on the table. "Transportation's waiting for you," he said to Amos.
"You won't drop this thing?"
"My report on you has been sent to your new commanding officer."
"So long, Beach," Amos said, picking up the Val-Pak. "Keep your feet on the ground, ol' buddy."
The island was the most beat-up place Amos had ever seen. It was long and narrow, with coral reefs on the seaward side and what had once been pretty, white sand beaches on the lagoon side. What solid ground there was had been pockmarked by bombs and shells so that there were huge craters everywhere, filled with stinking water. There had been palm trees growing there once, but now the trunks lay in tangles all over the ground, the stumps standing up forlorn and frayed. There had been buildings on the island, but they, too, had been bombed and burned into rubble.
There was a
sickening, sweetish smell of dead
people in the air. Bodies, mottled and bloated, were floating in the bomb craters.
The flies were unbelievable. As Amos trudged along, keeping to the beach, where the stench was not quite as bad and the walking was easier, the flies followed him like a black cloud. Wherever his body protected them from the wind, they piled up so that on his back and on the backs of his arms and legs they formed a black carpet an inch thick.
The flies were without fear, and if he stopped to scrape them off his back, they would swarm on his face. They were making him a little hysterical, because there was no way to fight them off.
No one he had talked to since getting out of the seaplane knew anything about COPRA. The troops on the island, Marines and Navy men, looked almost as beat up as the island itself. He had never seen such a strung-out, worn-out bunch of people. They worked like ragged zombies, hauling the mountains of supplies piled on the beach up onto higher ground.
Amos didn't look so good himself. He had left the States in his blue uniform: coat and trousers, cap with white cap cover, white shirt, black tie. That had been almost a week ago. No one seemed to know where he was supposed to go, but, instead of trying to find out, they just loaded him into any airplane going anywhere and dumped him off wherever it landed. After a few days with something to eat whenever he could snaffle a little, very little sleep, and (since they had lost his luggage on the first
flight) no bath or change of clothes and a shave only once in a while, Amos began to think the Navy had decided that if they just kept moving him around, somehow he would disappear and stop being a problem.
His shirt was filthy, he didn't smell good, he hadn't shaved for three days. He was hungry and tired and lonely.
When he had first come ashore, nobody seemed to want to talk to him, but at last one of the Marine zombies said, "Take your TS card to the beach-master—him." He pointed to a red-faced man wearing nothing but ragged khaki shorts, cowboy boots, and a pith helmet.
The beachmaster stopped yelling orders at people for a moment and looked Amos slowly up and down. "Now I've seen it all," he said.
"So have I," Amos told him. "I've got orders to report to COPRA. I think it's somewhere in Iowa."
"You're a little off course."
"Where am I?" Amos asked.
"Well, that's top-secret information, Ensign, but I can give you a hint. You're about six thousand miles west of Iowa."
"How do I get back?"
"There'll be planes in here as soon as we get an airstrip built. Or you could hitch a ride on one of these LSTs after I get them unloaded."
"What do I do in the meantime?" Amos asked. "Like eating and some place to sleep?"
"Sonny, I got enough problems without yours.
I . . ." Suddenly the man lifted his amplified megaphone and yelled, "Hey! Tell that knuckle-headed captain to open his doors before he hits the beach. OPEN THE DOORS!"
Amos turned and saw the huge, ungainly bulk of a landing ship, tank, nose straight into the sandy beach, the huge metal doors that formed the bow still closed.
"Oh, no!" the beachmaster said. "Now I'll have to tear them open with a bulldozer." He looked over at Amos. "I wish I was in Iowa."
"I don't," Amos said. "Thanks a lot."
As Amos turned and wandered away, the beach-master called out to him. "Hey, you in the blue suit!"
Amos turned back.
"Where'd you say you were going?"
Amos spelled it out for him. "C-O-P-R-A."
"Oh. Well, look, go on up to the north end of the island and look around up there."
"Okay," Amos said, not caring.
"Hey," the beachmaster said. "Where're your side arms?"
"My what?"
"Gun."
"I haven't got a gun," Amos told him, "I had a sword, but it got lost with everything else I had."
The beachmaster shook his head slowly and said, "This is going to be a long war." He went over to an opened crate on the beach. "Here," he said, lifting out a rifle wrapped in greasy brown paper. He tossed it over to Amos and reached into a second
crate. "Here's some ammo for it." He tossed over another greasy, but smaller, package.
As Amos unwrapped the gun, getting brown grease all over his hands, he said, "What am I supposed to shoot?"
"When you get past those flags up there, you'd better shoot anything that moves."
Amos walked away, not wanting him to see that he didn't even know how to load the gun. Then, partly hidden by a blasted palm tree, he stopped and wiped enough grease off the gun to find the slot where the clip would fit. Unwrapping the clips of bullets, he got one into the gun and put the rest in his pockets.
He was about to work the bolt when he thought of the grease. The barrel was packed with it. Using a sliver from a palm frond he pushed most of it out, but as he chambered the cartridge he hoped he'd never have to shoot this thing. There was still enough grease left in the barrel so that it would probably ram the bolt back into his face.
He started wiping the grease off the leather sling but then stopped and just put the sling over his shoulder, grease and all.
Walking along with the gun bumping against his thigh, the flies crowding on him made his flesh crawl, and the stench of death in his mouth and nose and lungs was making him sick.
What had happened to the Navy he had heard so much about? The Navy of clean, swift ships and smart sailors; the blue-gray Navy aircraft in the
clear, blue sky; the ominous, black submarines in the depths of the sea?
All the enthusiasm, the pride, and, he remembered now, the real patriotism he had felt, were gone. The Navy he had served for two years in NROTC at college seemed to have been some other Navy; perhaps, he thought, a Navy that had never really existed.
When he had been ordered to active duty, an old man in his home town had come to his house to present him with his naval officers' sword, a sword the old man had worn in World War One. The scabbard was a little moldy and the blade was rusty, but since it was a part of a naval officer's uniform Amos had gratefully accepted the gift and had taken it with him when his orders had come directing him to report to the Navy Department at Washington, D.C., in the last months of 1941.
The first shock was the look of those shabby little wooden buildings near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, all the pipes and electric wires hanging exposed on the walls—buildings that had been "temporary" in 1918.
He had reported in uniform and thought at the time that he looked very military, but no one else was in uniform and he was told by a man who seemed to be sore about everything that he was not to wear the uniform any more. "We're not at war, mister," the man had said, "so we don't want to look warlike."
The man had then picked up the phone and said to someone, "Who needs another ensign?"
Current Deaths needed another ensign.
Amos, in civilian clothes, reported for duty in the Current Deaths Section of the Bureau of Navigation.
Current Deaths was in a small office whose windows looked out over Arlington National Cemetery. Officially, the boss was an ancient lieutenant commander who had been graduated from Annapolis in 1918, but the section was actually run by an old lady named Miss Belchess, who had been the boss there for eighteen years.
The old man sat all day at his desk reading The Saturday Evening Post or swiveling around to watch the funerals that took place almost continuously in the cemetery. Miss Belchess spent her days arguing with somebody on the phone.
Amos was put to work filling out all the forms for enlisted men who had died for one reason or another.
At exactly three o'clock every afternoon the commander opened his top desk drawer, took out a mortar and pestle, a small bottle of some sort of fluid, and a brand-new indelible pencil. With a small penknife he split the pencil open. He broke the lead into the mortar, added a little juice, and using the pestle, ground the lead into a thick ink. He then filled a huge, orange fountain pen with the purplish juic
e. This process took one hour.
At four o'clock Miss Belchess laid the forms Amos had prepared during the day on the commander's
desk, lining them up like playing cards so that the space for his signature was the only part exposed.
The commander then signed the forms with a signature so exact that each was a copy of the other.
It seemed to Amos that, no matter how many forms there were, it took the commander exactly half an hour each day to sign them.
At precisely four-thirty, he put away the pen, stood up, said, "Good night, mates," and went out.
On the seventh day of December, 1941—a cold, gray Sunday in Washington—Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, was, without any warning, attacked by Japanese carrier aircraft. Many ships were damaged, many were sunk. Planes and other materiel were destroyed. Thousands of men were killed.
All hands in Washington were ordered to report for duty at once—in uniform.
All Amos had wanted that day was to get out of Current Deaths and into the real Navy.
The commander appeared in Current Deaths wearing his World War One uniform with the but-toned-up jacket and high, choking collar, the straight-up cap and high-laced shoes. He had grown so fat that he could not button the coat, which was perhaps just as well, for the buttons had almost rusted away, long streaks of rust running down the cloth. The once-gold braid on his sleeves had turned greenish, and the bill of his cap was cracked and peeling.
And then the lists of deaths came, as the ships that
had been attacked at Pearl Harbor began to report in.
Dozens of dead men. Then hundreds, and then thousands.
During the first weeks after the attack, Amos worked almost around the clock trying to track down through the records the location of every man on duty at Pearl Harbor, to sift out from the confused reports streaming in the actual fate of each man: dead, wounded, or missing.
It was hard, tedious, frustrating work made worse by Miss Belchess, who seemed to see in the deaths of these men only the fact that, by building up her position, she could advance her rating in Civil Service.