by Robb White
"If it is, it's the first time," the pilot said. "You must be out of your mind to ride in those boats."
Peter had never felt so lost and helpless in his life, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. "Oh, they're not so bad," he said. "At least when they get in trouble they don't fall ten thousand feet and splatter you all over the landscape like this contraption."
"Who's falling?" the pilot asked, a little indignant. "You've only got one place to go in those boats—down. I can go anywhere I like and this ain't no 'contraption.'"
"Sorry," Peter said, "but I'll take the boats anytime to one of these whatever you call 'em. A boat's pretty hard to see and pretty hard to hit."
"I lie in my sack at night and listen to you guys going out in those floating plywood bombs and I say 'thank the Lord I'm in the Air Corps,' and then I go to sleep." The pilot began fishing around in the cockpit until he found the ends of the seat belt. Without pulling his leg back into the plane or taking his foot off the instrument panel he buckled the ends around his "nervous stomach" and began to sing.
"Oh, there'll be mushrooms in the sky," he sang in a croaking voice. "Cah-chung cah-chung cah-chung."
It was bad enough just being in the plane, Peter thought, without this madman for a pilot.
"You ever see mushrooms in the sky?" the pilot asked.
"No."
"You will."
They had crossed the Huon Gulf, and Peter expected him to swing to the right and follow the peninsula; but, instead, he kept on a straight course which carried them back over the dark green jungle.
"Mushrooms in the sky," the pilot said. "With rocks in 'em. Cah-chung." Then he looked over at Peter. "We're going to get shot down," he said calmly.
Before Peter could answer, the sun suddenly disappeared, the sky turned black and, in the plane, there was a strong acrid smell of burning gunpowder.
And almost instantly there was a tremendous, earsplitting, stomach-jarring, bone-rattling explosion which sounded exactly like "cah-chung."
Following that were more and more cah-chungs, and the plane began to rock violently, thrown this way and that by the bursts of antiaircraft shells all around it.
Peter grabbed for the instrument panel but couldn't reach it as the plane was flung down, ramming him back into the seat.
As it came out of the black roaring smoke Peter saw that it was falling, totally out of control, and spinning as it fell. Above them he could still hear the antiaircraft shells exploding—cha-chung cha-chung blam blam blam. He tried to look up but couldn't, so looked down.
Below him—far below him—the sea and the jungle were whirling slowly and jerkily around; and as they whirled he whirled too, his body being slammed around in the seat, only the belt keeping him from being thrown out.
He was doomed, Peter decided. Nothing could save him now. The jungle, spinning like a green top, was rushing up toward him. And even the engine had been knocked out, he noticed, as the propeller suddenly appeared, the little blades spinning lazily around and around, driven, he decided, by the wind of their fall.
In the movies, he remembered, in a situation like this our hero always came up with some funny remark that showed how nonchalant and brave he was; and Peter felt that it was his duty to say something, but all he could say was, "That's what I mean about the PT boats. What do we do now?"
"Do?" the pilot asked. "Nothing."
Peter decided that he should have been able to figure that one out for himself. With no parachute he couldn't jump out; and with the plane out of control and powerless there was no way to level off and land—even if there had been some place other than the terrible jungle to land on.
The cah-chungs were faint and faraway now, and it seemed to Peter that the little noises he heard only made everything sound more silent. The wind was whistling eerily around the plane, the engine was making little, pitiful, coughing and panting noises, some gears somewhere were chattering oily, and from the radio a flat, unexcited voice was talking about the weather.
A man in a PT boat never would feel as helpless and awful as this, Peter decided. In the boats there would always be something you could do to try to save your life. You wouldn't have to sit like this, strapped into a seat, with no way in the world to keep this airplane from killing you as it spun on down into the jungle where the tall, hard trees would tear it apart and tear you apart too.
The jungle was so close Peter could see the individual trees sticking up at him like so many deadly and enormous spears. He could even see the fronds of the coconut palms and the vines. And they were rushing upward at him, reaching out for him.
In the last seconds of his life, Peter closed his eyes. Why look at it coming? he asked himself.
It felt like a giant had slammed a hand against his chest and rammed him backward. He waited for the sound of the plane being torn apart, the sound of the trees tearing into him, the feel of pain and blood, and the last seconds of life.
Nothing else happened. In fact, the engine began to run again.
But when he opened his eyes he saw that they were down in the jungle all right. A giant of a tree was rushing straight toward them—like a wall of green leaves, and gray, huge limbs and trunk, and those slimy vines.
How did that tree get into that position? Peter wondered. They should have been coming straight down toward the top of it, not slamming into it sideways.
And then the tree seemed to shrink an inch or two and disappear in a green flash under his feet.
And nothing was spinning around any more.
Peter took a deep breath and looked around. The plane was flying straight and level just inches above the tops of the trees, which were flashing under it like a green sea. When Peter looked back he could see the leaves waving around in the prop wash and the long vines coiling around like snakes.
"Listen to Tokyo Rose tonight," the pilot said. "You'll hear all about how we got shot down."
Peter just stared at him as the plane passed over the last of the land and flew out over the Bismarck Sea.
"I've been shot down that way nineteen times, according to Tokyo Rose."
"You did that—on purpose?"
"You know how it is," the pilot said, smoothing the wild hairs of his moustache with his fingers. "Those guys sit down there in that stinking jungle and seldom get a shot at us. Why not make 'em feel good? Make 'em feel like they've shot you down and accomplished something."
"Yeah," Peter said, "I guess you're right. But you know what I'd like for you to do sometime, ol' buddy … go riding with me on a PT boat."
"Not on your life," the pilot said. "Too dangerous."
10
Peter was beginning to get a little more faith in the airplane. Not much, but a little. And a little more faith in this wild man flying it. But Peter was scheming how to get this Army lieutenant aboard Slewfoot. A ride in the boat was what he needed to round out his life.
They were out over the Bismarck Sea now, flying close along the green shore of New Guinea. As Peter looked down at the surface of the sea he wished that he had flown over here before, for now he could see many rocks and shoals and coral reefs he had never seen before. He marveled as he looked at them that Slewfoot had lived so long without hitting any of them.
"You know, the closest I ever got to being really shot down," the pilot was saying, "was with a coconut."
If ever a warrior needed a Section Eight for insanity, this was the one, Peter thought, looking at the wind blowing through that moustache and making it wave in all directions.
"I was flying along minding my own business," the pilot went on, "when I jumped over some trees and down into a flat area—a farm or something—and there they were, running for their lives. But one of them stood his ground and threw a coconut at me. Hit me, too. Peeled off the left aileron and almost spun me in. It made me so mad I turned around and bombed him with my last can of Spam. Missed him, though."
"Don't you carry any guns at all?" Peter asked.
"I used t
o. But some flak bounced me around one day, and the gun went off and shot a hole through the radio. Through the roof, too, and when it started to rain it dripped all down the back of my neck. No more guns."
"Whoa!" Peter said suddenly. "That's where we went aground."
Looking at it from a hundred feet up and in the broad daylight he wondered how the 120 boat and then Archer had failed to see the coral reef. It was low tide now and the sea was washing over it, changing suddenly from a bluish green to sparkling white.
"What do we do?" the pilot asked.
Peter looked over at the deep, dark green of the jungle on New Guinea and then over at the thinner, sparser green of the islands. Although he could see no sign of the enemy he knew that many eyes were watching the dirty little plane as it floated along in the clear, sunshiny air. "We'd better not do too much circling around," he said, "or they'll know we're looking for something, and they might start looking too. We hit that reef we just passed. The wind has been steady out of the west so let's turn east and hold a steady course."
"That'll be up to you," the pilot said. "North, south, east, and west don't mean a thing to me."
"What would you do if you got lost?"
"Just find a railroad track and fly down it until I got somewhere."
Peter made a resolution not to make a habit of flying in airplanes with this pilot. He pointed to the east, and Carruthers swung the little plane around and settled her on course.
"That's Vadang straight ahead," Peter told him. "Swing wide of it. It's loaded."
"That's what I hear," the pilot said. "I also heard that one of those crazy PT-boat men wanted to go ashore on it—all by himself."
"With another guy," Peter corrected him.
"Was that you?" the pilot asked, amazed. "What are you, some sort of hero, or something?"
"No. Just crazy."
They were approaching Vadang, and Peter looked down at it with interest. Even in the bright light of the day he could see absolutely no sign of the enemy, no sign of machine-gun emplacements or revetments for the big guns he knew were there. It was just a pretty, peaceful, uninhabited-looking little island with white beaches and green jungle.
And there, on the beach of a little cove, was the yellow rubber raft.
The pilot saw it too and said, "That yours?"
"Yeah," Peter said.
"Let's take a look."
"No," Peter said. "Stay away from it."
"I can take you right down over it. They can't hit me."
"No," Peter told him. "Let's get out of here now."
The pilot looked at him, puzzled.
As the plane swung slowly away Peter looked down once more at the raft. Lying peacefully inside it was the dark, rectangular pouch.
"That all you want?" the pilot asked.
"That's all."
"Then let's go back and bug that antiaircraft battery on Huon. We can get shot down twice in one day."
"If you don't mind," Peter said, "I've got a very important appointment."
"Only take a minute," the pilot argued. "Think how happy Tokyo Rose'll be—shooting me down twice in one day."
"Let's disappoint her this time," Peter said. "I don't want to miss my court-martial."
"So they're hanging you, eh?"
"They might," Peter admitted.
That was the longest day he ever spent. And the longest night.
He didn't dare go back to his squadron area for fear of running into Archer, so he hitched a ride from the airfield over to the Six area where a dozen PTs were hiding up a little tributary. He wandered around there until he found a skipper he knew pretty well. The skipper was Mike Myers and had gone through Melville with him.
Peter was afraid to tell anyone, even Mike, the problem, but he arranged to ride Mike's boat on patrol that night and talked Mike into taking him up near Vadang. After the patrol started, Peter decided, he would tell Mike a little more. Not about the pouch, but enough to get Mike to cooperate with him.
The Squadron Six area was a lot better than his. Instead of muddy trails from the boats to their tents and mess halls and gas dumps, Six had wooden walkways above the mud. Their tents were better too. Peter's outfit had little, leaky tents whose canvas floors had disappeared into the mud long ago. Six's tents were big square jobs with screened sides, proper screened doors on hinges, and nice wooden floors high above the mud.
Mike invited him to nap in his tent for the rest of the day, and Peter accepted without any argument at alL He had not slept for thirty hours and needed it.
Peter stopped in the doorway of Mike's tent and looked around at the grandeur of it all. There were no wooden folding cots as his were. No. There were proper beds—two of them—with springs in the mattresses—and bedspreads. There were two chairs, also. And a field desk with a place to write letters under a gooseneck lamp.
It was a mansion! The wood frame walls were six feet high and screened on two sides, solid on the back and front. From there, good canvas with no holes in it formed a high roof, stretched on a real wood frame.
That wasn't all. From the ceiling of the tent hung a heavy galvanized bucket with, welded into the bottom of it, a real chrome-plated shower head. This could be lowered by a series of pulleys and ropes so you could fill it and then take a shower. The only thing wrong was that the tent was not high enough for you to stand under the bucket without bumping your head, so Mike had cut a square hole through the floor, lined it with wood, and you could stand down in this hole and take a nice shower.
There was more. On one side of the tent Mike had fixed a jeep windshield, hinged frame and all, as a shelf where he kept his shaving lotion and other toilet articles. And, hinged above the screened sides were twenty-foot slabs of precious plywood, which could be lowered with pulleys to close off the sides and keep the rain out.
High up on the wall, Mike had some sort of experiment going. On a shelf up there were dozens of glass bottles full of water with fish swimming around. All sorts of little fish, Peter saw. From each bottle a long length of small diameter plastic tubing—the slimy kind—went down to the floor where Mike had a little air pump. This was running now, making a faint plopping sound and sending streams of bubbles of air up through the tubes and into the glass bottles. As Peter took off his shoes and went to bed, he wondered how Mike found time enough to fight the war with all the work he had to do fixing up this palatial tent and taking care of all those fish.
Mike woke him about dusk, and they went down to the boat. "Pretty swank place you've got here," Peter told him.
"So we leave in about a week. So do you. I guess I'll have to eat all those fish."
"Where're we going?"
"On up the islands. Maybe to the Philippines."
"That's going to be a ride," Peter said.
After they got under way Peter got Mike down into the skipper's cabin and told him what had really happened. At first Mike couldn't believe it. "You mean Archer put the rafts over the side just because the boat was aground?" he asked incredulously.
"And—put the codes and charts in the rubber boat."
"What is he? Crazy? Or scared?"
"I don't know, Mike. I sometimes wonder if he's in the same world with the rest of us."
"The only cure for that guy is to throw the book of regulations over the side and let him figure out a few things for himself. Well, anyway, you're through with him now."
"What do you mean?"
"For losing the codes! He'll get put under the jail! Why do they send guys like that out here, Pete? And give 'em command of a boat when they've never heard a shot fired in anger. It beats me."
Peter then told him how he was going to get the codes back. When he finished, Mike stared at him as though he were crazy.
"You're going to swim over to Vadang? You won't make it, Pete. If the sharks don't get you, the Japs wilL"
"I'll stream some shark repellent as I go along. And I have no intention of strolling around. I'll get that pouch and get out of there."
Mike kept staring at him. "Why are you sticking your neck out, Pete?" he asked. "You didn't lose those codes, Archer did. Why be a hero for a guy like that?"
"It's not important who lost 'em, Mike. Let's just get 'em back before the Japs find 'em."
"So why doesn't Archer go get 'em back?"
"He doesn't even know they're gone."
Mike shook his head slowly. "I wouldn't do what you're trying to do for my best friend, much less a rock-head like Archer. Okay, hero, what do you want me to do?"
"Just get me in there without them seeing you. Then circle around, clear of the island, long enough for me to get 'em and get out."
"I can't go in much closer than a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred yards. Can you swim that far?"
"I got a merit badge for swimming."
"Did you get two merit badges? You've got to swim back, you know."
"No, I'll have the rubber boat."
"You're nuts," Mike said. "They'll see you in that boat and drill holes in you."
Peter hadn't thought of that and suddenly the whole adventure began to scare him. But, he asked himself, what else could he do? "I'll get back," he said. "You just keep coming around."
"I still think you're crazy, Pete. But if you make it—and I don't think you will—what you ought to do when you see that Archer again is to step right up and belt him in the teeth."
"Nothing would give me more pleasure," Peter told him, thinking about it.
The quartermaster stuck his head down the hatch and said, "Vadang coming up, Cap'n."
Peter stripped down to his shorts and went up on the foredeck.
The moonlight startled him. He had never seen it so bright, so clear. And the moon hung up there blazing on the water he had to swim through—almost like an enemy searchlight—with the close, bright stars all around the sky. Why, he wondered, couldn't it have rained this night the way it did almost every other night?
Mike called softly from the bridge, "This is as close as we can go, Pete. Any closer and we'll hit something and then all of us'll get it."
"Okay," Peter called back. "See you soon."