'London,' his wife said behind him. 'That's where I used to go when I needed something they didn't have in Arthur.'
To someone who'd grown up in Chicago, the idea of London, Ontario, as the big city was pretty funny. Jonathan Moss didn't say so. He knew the things that were likely to spark quarrels with his wife, and tried to steer clear of them. Too many quarrels started out of a clear blue sky for him to want to look for more. Instead, with a wave, he ducked out the door and was gone.
Snow plows had gone over the road that ran west from Berlin. Moss didn't care to think about what the rock salt the road crews had put down was doing to his undercarriage and his fenders, and so, resolutely, he didn't. He drove past the military airstrip outside of London and let out a nostalgic sigh. He hadn't flown an aeroplane since coming home from the Great War. Unlike a lot of fliers, he'd never had the urge. Now, though, it tugged at him.
Tug or no, though, meeting the urge would have to wait. He had a trial scheduled at occupation headquarters in London.
His client, one Morris Metcalfe, was accused of bribing the occupying authorities to look the other way while he did some black-market liquor dealing. Metcalfe was a cadaverous man with none of the bounce and energy Lou Jamieson displayed. Moss suspected he was guilty, but the military prosecutor didn't have a strong case against him.
Moss made that plain at every turn. At last, the prosecutor, a captain named Gus Landels, complained to the judge: 'How can I show he's guilty if all his lawyer has to do is say he's innocent?'
'How can I show he's innocent if all you have to do is say he's guilty?' Moss retorted, and thought the shot went home.
In the middle of the afternoon, the judge, a lieutenant colonel who looked as if he'd seen far too many cases, pronounced Metcalfe not guilty. Captain Landels looked disgusted. The judge pointed a finger at Morris Metcalfe. He said, 'My personal opinion is that there's more here than meets the eye. I can't prove that, and you're probably lucky I can't. But I won't be surprised if I see you in this court again, and if you don't get off so easy.'
Metcalfe looked back out of dead-fish eyes. 'I resent that, your Honor,' he said-he'd spent enough time in U.S. courts to know and use the proper form of address.
'I won't lose any sleep over it,' the judge replied. 'Case dismissed-for now.'
After a limp handshake, Metcalfe disappeared with hardly a word of thanks for Moss. Captain Landels, noting that, let out a derisive snort. Moss shrugged. His only worry was extracting the balance of his fee from Metcalfe. But he thought he could do it. Like the judge, he believed the other man would need his services again before too long.
He went out to reclaim his Ford from the secure lot where he'd parked it-like Berlin, London had one. He was starting back to his home town when a flight of five fighting scouts-just plain fighters, they were calling them nowadays-zoomed down to land at the field outside of London.
He almost drove off the road. A block later, he did drive off the road- down a side street, toward the airstrip. Those lean, low-winged shapes drew him as a lodestone draws nails. They were as different from the machines he'd flown in the Great War as a thoroughbred was from a donkey. He tried to imagine what one of them would have done to a squadron of his kites. It would have knocked down the whole squadron without getting scratched; he was sure of that.
The rifle-toting guards at the airstrip weren't inclined to let him enter. His U.S. identification card finally persuaded them, though one rode along to escort him to the commandant's office. He caught a break there. The man in charge of the field, Major Rex Finley, had served in Ontario during the war. 'I remember you,' Finley said. 'I was at the party after you made ace. You'd forgotten it was your fifth kill.'
'That's me,' Moss agreed cheerfully. 'I'd forget my own head if my wife didn't nail it on me every morning.'
Finley chuckled. 'I know the feeling. Well, what can I do for you, Mr. Moss?' He bore down on Moss' civilian title.
'I saw the new fighters coming in for a landing,' Moss said. 'They're… quite something.'
'The new Wright 27s? I should say so.' Finley rubbed at his mustache, a thin strip of dark hair clinging tight to his upper lip. 'And?'
'Could I sit in one?' The naked longing in Moss' voice startled even him. He hadn't felt anything like that since he'd fallen for Laura Secord long before she fell for him. 'Please?'
Major Finley frowned. 'I shouldn't. It's against about half a pound of regulations, and you know it as well as I do.' Moss didn't say anything. He'd done all the pleading he could do if he wanted to keep his self-respect. The field commandant made a fist and smacked it into his other hand. 'Come on. Officially, you know, you don't exist. You were never here. Got it?'
'Who, me?' Moss said. Finley laughed.
They walked out to the airstrip together. Major Finley said, 'I've heard you spend your time getting Canucks off the hook.'
To Moss' relief, he sounded curious, not hostile. 'I do try,' the lawyer answered. 'It needs doing. Even if you lost the war, you need decent representation. Maybe you especially need it if you lost the war.'
Sandbagged machine-gun nests protected the field. The soldiers in them looked very alert. Pointing to one of those nests, Finley said, 'I'd be happier about having somebody representing the damn Canucks if all of 'em were convinced they had lost the damn war. But we both know it isn't so. That bomb over in Manitoba, and the big one in your town a couple of years ago…'
'Oh, yeah,' Moss said. 'That one almost caught me. Still, don't you think things would be worse if the Canadians decided the whole system was rigged against them?'
Shrugging, Finley answered, 'Damned if I know. But then, they don't pay me to worry about politics-which is all to the good, far as I'm concerned.'
Moss only half heard him. By then, they'd come up to the closest Wright 27. The air above the engine mount still shimmered with released heat. Two machine guns on this side of the mount fired through the prop; Moss assumed there were two more on the far side. He'd never flown an aeroplane that carried more than two machine guns. With four, he would have felt like the Grim Reaper in the sky. And yet he knew the armament was nothing out of the ordinary these days.
'You never piloted a machine that wasn't canvas and wire, did you?' Rex Finley asked, setting an affectionate hand on the blue-painted aluminum skin of the wing.
'Nope,' Moss answered. 'Started out in a Curtiss Super Hudson pusher, ended up in our copy of Kaiser Bill's Albatros. This is all new to me. Looks like a shark with wings. All you'd need to do would be to paint eyes and a mouth full of teeth on the front end.'
'Not a half bad idea,' Finley said. 'Well, go on up.'
The fighter, Moss discovered, had a mounting stirrup just in front of the left wing. He used the stirrup to climb up onto the wing. The aeroplane rocked under his weight. If he'd climbed onto the wing of one of the aeroplanes he'd flown in the Great War, though, odds were he would have stuck his foot straight through the doped fabric. The Wright 27 had a closed cockpit, for better streamlining and because the wind at the high speeds at which it flew would have played havoc with a pilot's vision, goggles or no. After some fumbling, Moss found the latch and slid back the canopy.
'Good thing I haven't got fat, or I'd never fit in here,' he remarked as he settled himself in the seat.
Major Finley slammed the canopy shut above him. The cockpit smelled of leather and sweat and oil. Its being closed made it feel even more cramped than it really was. The instrument panel bristled with dials. Along with the altimeter, compass, airspeed indicator, inclinometer, and fuel gauge he was used to, instruments monitored engine performance in a dozen different ways, ammunition supply, propellor pitch, and the electrical system. The machine also boasted a wireless set, which had its own profusion of dials. You'd need to go to college all over again to understand what half this stuff does, Moss thought dizzily.
But the essentials hadn't changed. There was the stick, and there was the firing button on top of it. His right thumb found that button with unconscious ease. The gunsight in the fighter made what he'd used during the Great War seem a ten-cent toy by comparison.
He jerked when Finley rapped on the thick-armored? — glass with his knuckles. The base commandant gestured to show he should get out. With an odd reluctance, he nodded. Finley pushed back the canopy. Moss felt
