Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

“We’ll try our best to locate them, sir,” Lieutenant Muto promised.

“Good,” Fuchida said. “We caught the Americans by surprise here. They had better not do the same to us.”

“They won’t. We won’t let them,” Genda said. “If they want to take these islands back, they’ll have to go through everything we can throw at them-and we can throw a lot.”

THE BUZZ OF the Stearman’s engine grew thinner as Joe Crosetti eased back on the throttle. The runway swelled beneath and ahead of him. He checked his airspeed and angle of descent. Still a trifle steep… He pulled back on the stick, just a little, and the Yellow Peril’s nose rose a bit. Airspeed was okay, but he checked again to make sure his flaps were down. They were. They had been the last three times he checked, too.

Here came the runway. No time for second thoughts now. He just wanted to do things right. Ninety percent of the trouble in the last twenty feet… That wasn’t a second thought; his flight instructor had drilled it into him till it never left his mind.

Down! The Stearman bounced. Joe’s teeth clicked together. It wasn’t so smooth as he would have liked, but he was down. If he bounced once, he didn’t bounce twice. The little biplane taxied to a stop. Joe let out a long sigh and killed the engine. He unfastened his chute and his safety belt.

Lieutenant Ralph Goodwin strode across the tarmac to him. “Not bad, Mr. Crosetti,” he said. “Pretty smooth, in fact, up until the very last moment there.”

“Thank you, sir,” Joe said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I’ve seen people walk away from plenty worse after their first solo,” Goodwin answered. “How does it feel?”

Realization of what he’d done washed through Crosetti. “Swell, sir!” He wasn’t the first in his training squadron to solo, but he was ahead of more cadets than he was behind.

“All right, then,” Goodwin said. “Let’s see you walk away from it.”

Joe got out of the Yellow Peril. He gave the wing an affectionate pat. “When can I go up again?”

“Oh, it won’t be long,” the flight instructor said. “But you’ll be moving into a new squadron soon. They may transfer you to another base-they’ll have to check the openings here.”

As Chapel Hill had before it, Pensacola was starting to feel like home. “I hope they don’t,” Joe said.

“Wouldn’t hurt you if they did,” Goodwin told him. “You’ve got to be able to fly anywhere, not just at a place you know well. But you’ll take a step up, any which way. You’ve done what you can do on this baby. Time to see how you handle a Texan.”

“Yeah.” Joe knew he sounded less excited than he should have. He didn’t want to climb into another trainer, even a more advanced one. He wanted to get into a Wildcat and start shooting down Japs.

Longing must have been naked on his face. Goodwin laughed and clapped him on the back. “Don’t look down your nose at a Texan. The Aussies use the ones they make for ground-attack planes and light bombers-Wirraways, they call ’em. And there’s even talk that they’ll build a version with a cleaner airframe and a bigger engine and use it for a fighter.”

That struck Joe as a desperation measure. Of course, Australia was in pretty desperate shape these days. With Hawaii lost, the USA had a devil of a time getting supplies over there. And the Japs ruled the skies above the northern part of the country. Everybody wondered when they were going to invade, though it hadn’t happened yet.

“Come on,” Goodwin said. “Let me buy you a beer. You’ve earned one, by God. Just remember, you’ve got to walk before you can run. Now that you’ve soloed, you’re not taking baby steps any more.”

“Yes, sir.” Every word of that was true, and Joe knew it. Even so, he ached to be where the action was. He ached for there to be action. “Sir, when are we going to try and take Hawaii back from the Japs?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Goodwin replied. “I’ve got no idea-and if I did, I probably couldn’t tell you anyway. You want to be along for that, don’t you?”

“You bet I do-more than anything,” Joe said. “That’s why I signed up for this. And after what those bastards did to my uncle and his family-”

“You still have a chance, I’d say,” Lieutenant Goodwin told him. “Come on-let’s see about that beer.”

“Okay.” Unlike some of his buddies, Joe didn’t do a whole lot of drinking. For one thing, he was still underage. For another, he didn’t like the taste of the stuff all that much. But this was a ceremonial occasion.

Goodwin sat him down at the bar in the officers’ club and bought him a Budweiser. A couple of stools over, two lieutenant commanders were still going on about the alligator hunt of a few days past. A pair of officers had poured down more than might have been good for them and gone out into the swamp not far from the base vowing to come back with an alligator. Some time later, they’d proudly returned with a deceased snapping turtle tied to a broomstick. They’d taken it to market in Pensacola and got eleven cents a pound for it-plus ribbing that wouldn’t quit.

“Here’s to you, Joe,” Goodwin said, hoisting his own bottle of Bud. “And here’s to giving the Japs what-for.”

“Thanks.” Joe sipped cautiously. Once, when he was a little kid, his old man had let him take a swig from a bottle of beer. It had tasted nasty then. Am I poisoned? he’d squeaked. His father had laughed like hell. He still wasn’t crazy about the stuff, but it didn’t make him want to get his stomach pumped any more.

The colored man behind the bar asked, “This here the gentleman’s first solo?”

“That’s right,” Goodwin told him.

He slid a dime back across the bar. “On the house.”

“Thanks.” The flying instructor stuck the little silver coin in his pocket. “See, Mr. Crosetti? You don’t just save the country when you learn to fly. You save me money, too, so you’re really a hero.”

“Right.” Joe felt silly. Part of him recognized that this was a piece of the celebration, too. The rest was embarrassed all the same. He worked conscientiously at the beer. He supposed one was okay. If he had more than one, he didn’t think he’d be able to see straight for his afternoon classes. He had enough trouble keeping up in navigation the way things were.

When he went to the mess hall for lunch, Orson Sharp all but waylaid him. “How did it go?” his roomie demanded.

“I got up,” Joe answered. “I got down. I’m still here. I bounced the landing a little, but I’m still here.”

“All right!” Sharp grabbed his hand and squeezed it and pumped it up and down. Like everything else about the Mormon, his enthusiasm was perfectly genuine. He’d soloed the week before; his competence was perfectly genuine, too. He seemed delighted to have company, even though Joe was competition for a precious slot on a carrier. “We may be the first room where both guys have soloed.”

“Yeah?” Joe hadn’t thought about that. “I guess maybe we are. Pretty neat. Maybe we’ll stay together when we switch squadrons, too.”

“I think we’re stuck with each other,” Sharp said. “We’ll probably make ace the same day.”

“Yeah!” This time, the word burst from Joe’s throat with savage enthusiasm. And then something else occurred to him. “When you soloed, did your instructor try to buy you a beer?”

“Sure.” Orson Sharp was anything but self-conscious.

“What did you do?” Joe asked.

“I had a glass of apple juice instead,” Sharp answered calmly. “He said it looked like beer from a little ways away, but that isn’t why I did it.”