as it had in a Curtiss pusher. No help for it, though. This was the bus he had, so this was the bus he'd fly.
Fly he did, north and west. Every so often, Percy Stone would shout some thing at him. He caught perhaps one word in five. One of these days, somebody would have to figure out how to let pilot and observer talk back and forth and understand each other. That could be as important as perfecting the interrupter gear.
Endless hammering had finally let the Americans break out of the Niagara Peninsula. Threatened from west and east at the same time, the foe had evacuated the town of London, which had held so long and cost so many American lives. One fairly short push along the northern shore of Lake Ontario and Toronto would fall. That would bring the war in the north a long step closer to being won.
Under his flying goggles, Moss made a sour face. The limeys and Canucks, damn them, hadn't been idle while the U.S. soldiers pounded at their front door. They'd built a whole new series of lines behind the ones they'd had to abandon. Smash one and you found the next just as tough.
Moss was supposed to get Percy over the town of Berlin, south and west of Guelph, so the observer could photograph Canadian railheads and other targets for the U.S. artillery. Berlin was the name the town bore on his map, anyhow; the Canadians were calling it Empire these days. The region had been settled by Germans, a lot of whom, after the war broke out, had been resettled to Baffin Island and other such tropic climes lest they prove gladder to see Germany 's American allies than the forces of the British Empire.
Both the USA and Germany had trumpeted the Canadians' inhumanity to the skies. The Canadians and the British defended themselves on the grounds of the exigencies of war. (Moss suspected the argument sold newspapers down in South America. Past that, he didn't see much point to it.)
Because the weather was so clear and fine, the Canadian landscape-what had been farming country, now chewed to pieces by the war, torn and gouged and tied down with barbed wire-lay neatly spread out below the Wright 17. And, because it was so clear and fine, the biplane and its flightmates were all too easily visible to the enemy troops down below.
Black puffs of smoke started appearing in the sky, all around Moss and Stone. Moss started stunting the aeroplane, changing course and speed at random intervals to confuse the antiaircraft gunners and throw off their aim. The gunnery-the hate, everybody on the receiving end called it-was more a nuisance than anything else, but you didn't want to think you'd stay lucky all the time.
A shell burst a scant handful of yards below the Wilbur, which bounced in the air. Percy Stone picked that moment to shout 'Now!' over and over till Moss waved to show he understood. For the photographic run, the aeroplane had to fly level and straight.
Back there, the observer would be yanking the loading handle to bring the first photographic plate into position, then pulling a string every few seconds. Every time he did, the camera would expose the plate then behind the lens. Sliding the loading handle forward and back again brought the exposed plate down into an empty changing box below and to the side of the camera body and slid a fresh one into place, ready for the next pull of the string. The camera held eighteen plates altogether.
Stone yelled something else. Moss couldn't make out the words, but he thought it was about time to go around and return to the aerodrome on a track parallel to the course they'd flown so far. When he did that, the observer stopped screaming, so he supposed he'd been right.
'Done!' Stone shouted at last, and Moss gave the Wright all the juice it had to get out of the antiaircraft fire and head for home.
The aeroplane rolled to a stop on the landing strip. Moss killed the engine. For a moment, silence seemed louder than the roar had. He needed a distinct effort of will not to shout as he said, 'That wasn't so bad.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Any run where they don't send their aeroplanes up after you is a pretty good one, as a matter of fact.'
'Oh, I don't know,' Percy Stone said. 'I was sort of looking forward to the chance of shooting the tail right off my own bus.' His grin was so disarming, it almost let Moss forget that that was one of the things that could happen when an observer got overeager.
Moss climbed out of the cockpit and jumped down to solid ground. Stone followed more slowly and more carefully; he had to remove the camera and the precious exposed plates from their mounting. Moss liked the precise way he did things. 'This may work out pretty well,' he said.
Percy Stone's grin got wider and more wicked. 'Oh, darling,' he breathed, 'I didn't know you cared.' Laughing, the two men headed off toward the photographic laboratory together.
Sylvia Enos stared at the new form the Coal Board clerk handed her. 'Fill this out and bring it to Window C, over there, when you've finished it,' the clerk droned, almost as mechanically as a gramophone record. Sylvia wondered how many times a day he said the exact same thing.
She wished Brigid Coneval weren't down with the grippe. But Mrs. Coneval was, which meant Sylvia had had to bring George, Jr., and Mary Jane with her to the Coal Board office of a Saturday afternoon. She was just glad the office stayed open on Saturday afternoons; if it hadn't, she would have had to try to get time off from work to fill out this new and hideous form.
She sat down in one of the hard chairs that filled the open area in front of the Coal Board office windows. George, Jr., sat down next to her. She plopped Mary Jane into the chair on the other side. 'Be good, both of you, while I answer these questions,' she said.
Every time she had to fill anything out, it was a race against the clock. The children would get into mischief; it was only a question of when. To delay the inevitable, she gave her son a lollipop and her daughter a bottle, then took out a fountain pen and bent over the sheet full of tiny type to find out what sort of information they wanted from her now.
COAL RATION ALLOTMENT
REASSESSMENT EVALUATION
SURVEY REPORT,
The form said at the top. Sylvia sighed. It seemed to be a law- or perhaps a Coal Board policy-that every form had to be more complicated than the one it replaced. This one certainly lived up to the requirement.
She had no trouble filling out her own name or the address of the flat in which she and the children lived. Then the form asked for the names of all individuals residing at that address. That was all fine. But next it asked for the present status of each individual, and gave check-off boxes for MILITARY, CIVILIAN GAINFULLY EMPLOYED, CIVILIAN UNEMPLOYED OTHER THAN STUDENT, STUDENT, AND CHILD BELOW AGE.
None of those boxes fit her husband, and there was no OTHER line on which to explain. Painful experience had taught her nothing caused more trouble than filling out a Coal Board form the wrong way. She glanced at her children. They both seemed occupied. 'Wait here,' she told them. 'I have to go ask that man a question.'
When she got to the front of the line again, the clerk who'd given her the form looked as delighted to see her as she was to see the landlord on the first of every month. 'What seems to be your trouble?' he asked in a voice that said he knew she was bothering him on purpose.
She pointed to the check-off boxes. 'What do I do about my husband here?' she asked. 'He's a Confederate prisoner at-'
'Prisoners of war go under the Military heading,' the clerk said, more exasperated than ever.
'But he's not a prisoner of war; he's a detainee,' Sylvia said. 'A commerce raider captured him when he was out on Georges Bank.'
'Then he's a Civilian Gainfully-' The Coal Board clerk stopped. You couldn't say George Enos was gainfully employed, not when he was at a camp or wherever the Rebs kept their detainees down in North Carolina. But he wasn't unemployed, either. The clerk looked as if he hated Sylvia. He probably did, for breaking up the smooth monotony of his day. He turned and called, 'Mr. Colfax, can you please come here for a moment?' Being his superior, Mr. Colfax rated politeness. Sylvia barely rated the time of day.
She turned to look back at her children. George, Jr., was teasing Mary Jane with the lollipop. She could have told him that was a mistake. Mary Jane grabbed the lollipop and stuffed it into her own mouth. George, Jr., started to scream.
'Excuse me,' Sylvia said hastily. She took the lollipop away from Mary Jane, returned it to its rightful owner, swatted every available backside, and warned of measures yet more dire if the two of them didn't behave themselves. That done, she went back to the clerk. The next woman in line had come up to the window in the meanwhile, giving him an excuse to pretend she didn't exist. He seized on the excuse with alacrity.
