Джон Болл - Phase Three Alert

With a gesture that Gregory Peck would have recognized as beyond his powers, Sergeant Feinberg summoned the waiter, who was a moonlighting enlisted man, and ordered another round of drinks. When it came, Stovers picked up the tab because it was his turn.

“Tell me more; give me the details,” Sergeant Feinberg demanded.

“After we scraped across the deck once to see if there were any potholes in the way, we set down and had a look at it. You could still read the tail number clearly.”

“Did you get inside?” A gleam of unusual interest was visible on Feinberg’s face.

“Yes, we did. One of the deadheads wanted to chop a hole in the upper deck, but Ferguson wouldn’t allow it. He said it was still an airplane and entitled to respect.”

“That’s more sense than I gave him credit for,” Sergeant Feinberg said generously.

“Andy Holcomb thawed out the crew door with a small flare and we got inside. We looked around a bit, but there wasn’t too much to see. We recovered the navigator’s octant and a communications set. There’s a bet on about that.”

“Let me guess.” Sergeant Feinberg sampled from the newly provided glass and found it satisfactory. “Of course the bet is whether it can be made to work after all these years.”

“Specifically, the bet is whether Sergeant Murphy can get it going and bring in a recognizable signal on it. He can use a reasonable number of necessary parts, but he can’t rebuild it from the ground up.”

Sergeant Feinberg lit a cigar like a Spanish grandee. “It’s a losing bet, because Murphy won’t do it. My money says he could if he wanted to, but forget it. He’s only got a few weeks to go and then he’s out. He keeps track — hour by hour.”

“I never saw the countdown chart above his desk.”

“The only man without one. He objects to it because it depicts a nude female. Sergeant Murphy has principles; he belongs to a very conservative church.”

“But he still keeps track, you said, ‘hour by hour.’ Is he stir crazy? The Thule Twitches?”

“How well do you know Mike Murphy?” Feinberg asked.

“Not too well.”

Perry Feinberg blew a smoke ring that floated like the nebula in Lyra until the sergeant sent a thin jet of smoke after it and it dissipated. “Mike Murphy, apart from his family, has only two major interests in his life and the commanding one is gardening.”

“Gardening,” Stovers repeated.

“Gardening. He made a perfectly serious proposal to build a heated greenhouse, equip it with artificial lights, and raise some of our own fresh vegetables up here. He felt sure he could do it. Since the soil is virgin, he thought it would be fascinating to plant it for the first time. Most soil has produced thousands of crops — weeds if nothing else. The soil up here hasn’t produced anything since the ice age, possibly not since the earth was formed.”

“That is a thought,” Stovers agreed. “With no rotted older plants to put nitrogen into the soil, would it bear?”

“Ask Mike Murphy, maybe he has the answer to that one. Anyway, Mike can’t wait to get out of here; when he retires, he’s all set to go into the nursery business.”

“I still don’t see, though,” Stovers persisted, “why his plans to go into business would interfere with his fixing a radio set. That’s his job, isn’t it?”

“Not that World War II set; that would have to be a labor of love. Look at it this way: when a man is crouched down, with his fingers on the line ready to start a hundred-yard dash, that’s a helluva time to try and sell him any life insurance.”

Sergeant Holcomb appeared and joined the party without waiting to be invited. Mercifully, the jukebox was quiet, and across the room there was little activity at the bar. “I thought you’d like to have the word,” he said to Stovers. “Tomorrow we fly.”

“We just got here!”

“Well don’t count on too much crew rest, because we’re going back to the wreck we found yesterday.”

“Back to the wreck?” Stovers was genuinely nonplussed. “How did the boy wonder ever get permission to do that? Or did he set it up on his own?”

The waiter appeared and Holcomb ordered beer. “All I know,” he said, “is that Sergeant Withers in Ops had a message for him when he came in to call General Pritchard in the puzzle palace immediately upon arrival.”

Perry Feinberg leaned back in his chair with a considerable satisfaction showing on his broad face. “It’s time I let you guys in on something,” he began expansively. “For a while it was classified, but it couldn’t be anymore. Do either of you guys know Ed Scott? Well, he was at Sondrestrom during the war when it was Bluie West Eight. He was a corporal at that time and was in the communications end. One day the word came in that a high-priority B-17 flight was coming through. They caught an unexpected Phase Two and the bird had to overfly. The crew crash-landed somewhere north of Bluie on the ice cap. Fortunately some radio gear was still operational and they were able to put out a signal. They were saved after about four days. Colonel Balchen pulled them off.”

“The same B-17?” Holcomb wanted to know.

“I’m not sure, but it could be. When Ed finally told me about that incident, he remembered the name of the aircraft; it was called The Passionate Penguin.”

Bill Stovers took his time; when he did speak, it was without emphasis. “It’s the same airplane,” he announced. “I read the name on her nose when we were out there. That was it, The Passionate Penguin. ”

“Then…” Sergeant Feinberg paused clearly for dramatic effect, “you’d probably like to hear the rest of the story.”

“If it isn’t still classified,” Bill Stovers cautioned.

“A restricted flight over an established route covering friendly territory couldn’t still be under wraps after thirty years,” Feinberg replied, flicking an ash from his cigar.

“All right,” Stovers conceded.

“According to Ed Scott, who didn’t tell me until be was satisfied that it was no longer secret, the Penguin was carrying a package of important war dispatches, or so it was rumored, and when the crew was rescued, they left it on the airplane.”

“They couldn’t have been that careless,” Holcomb said.

“They weren’t careless; they came out lugging something they thought was their secret cargo. But they had the wrong container.”

Bill Stovers said nothing until he had lit a pipe and had it going to his satisfaction. “Probably they were given a fake container while the real one was marked ‘mechanical parts’; it was a familiar dodge and a very stupid one. Where’s Ed Scott now?”

“Japan,” Feinberg answered. “I’m going to write to him when I get back to my quarters. There’s a C-130 coming through tomorrow that’s going over the top to Alaska. At Elmendorf they can hand the letter to the flight engineer of the next C-141 headed for Japan. Scotty should have it in three or four days. If he answers promptly — and he will unless he’s on TDY — in a little more than a week I should know a lot more about the B-17.”

“It could just be,” Holcomb said slowly, “that with the hurry-up call from the Pentagon right after we found the old wreck, we might be going out to recover that secret shipment — even after so many years.”

“You are now the last man at this table to have thought of that,” Feinberg informed him. “Not that it’s secret anymore, but they might like to have it back, just the same.”

The glasses were empty and Holcomb bought a round.

“So when you go out there tomorrow,” Sergeant Feinberg continued, “I think I’ll come along. Just in case the boy wonder doesn’t have orders to pick up that container, I’ll latch onto it, if I can find it, and bring it back. The colonel just possibly might be interested.”