fuselage wasn’t that hard. Moving the two together and positioning them just so was an unmitigated bitch.
“Easy there, you pack of fuzzy runts!” Ben roared. “Stop! Belay! Quit lowering the damn thing!” He was heaving on a tagline, trying to torque the tail ever so slightly to the left as a fuselage descended toward a wing. What seemed a gallon of sweat had just burst through his eyebrows and gushed into his eyes. “Just hold on a second, wilya?” he said less forcefully. “Here, take this a minute,” he growled to a swarthy, 3rd Pursuit Squadron Lemurian beside him, handing over the rope. “Keep the same tension,” he warned, then trotted over to a bench where his grimy T-shirt was wadded into a ball, retrieved it, and sopped up the sweat on his face. Walking around the port wing, he studied how the fuselage looked as it neared the leading edge. “Okay,” he said grudgingly, “that’s not so bad. Start her down again, but take it easy!”
He was trying something new on this one. Instead of attempting to bolt two free-swinging structures together, they’d blocked up the wing with the landing gear already down and locked. This way, the procedure wasn’t quite the… kaleidoscope of motion the first attempts had been, but now all the adjustments had to be applied to the fuselage as it came down.
“Easy does it!” he crooned, watching the gap narrow. “Hey, you back at the tail, a little more left!”
“My left, you left?” cried the ’Cat he’d given the rope.
“You lef… Your left, you nitwit!” He studied the correction. “Okay, keep her coming… down… down…” There was the slightest gasp of painted aluminum coming together, then a creaking groan as the wing began bearing weight. “Stop!” he shouted. He sighed heavily and wiped his face again. “There! See if you can wiggle the front bolts in; then we’ll let her down some more for the rest.”
Two ’Cats scampered under the big, flared cowl. “Ow!” one cried.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Watch where you put your hands; that skin’s hot! You other fellas, soon as that’s secure, get some shade and water!” He turned back to the bench.
“You Colonel Mallory?” asked a tall, thin man he’d never seen.
“Yeah… Say! You must be Jack Mackey! Adar told me to expect you.”
The man saluted. “Second Lieutenant Jack Mackey, reporting as ordered, sir!”
Ben returned the salute, then waved it aside, grinning. “You can forget that stuff unless there’s Navy tpes around. You like Jack or Mack?”
“Mack.”
“Mine’s Ben,” Mallory said, sticking out his hand. They shook. “Where’s your pal?” he asked. “They said there’d be two of you.”
Mack tilted his head. “He’s over there, with the ‘Navy type’-Mr. Sandison. He told me to come see you. Sergeant Dixon’ll be along. He’s the best crew chief in the business. Stayed over there to make some suggestions, I think.” He shook his head. “He really needs to take it easy, sir.”
“The way I heard it, the Japs gave you a rough time,” Ben said grimly.
Mack forced a brittle smile. “The way I heard it, things haven’t been too rosy around here either.”
Ben nodded. “I guess neither one of us knows the half of it, do we?”
“No, sir.”
“C’mon, let’s go collect Sergeant Dixon and Mr. Sandison and find some shade.” He raised his voice. “Hey, you ’Cats, take five… or ten. Catch some shade, but don’t run off! We still have work to do, and then more ground school!” Several Lemurians, mostly cadets, had gathered around the two humans, their large eyes going back and forth between the speakers. Ben suddenly noticed a few of them blinking.. . well, not hostility, but something close.
“Hey, what’s with you guys?” he asked, surprised. He focused on one, a “Navy” jg whose name had somehow become “Soupy.” He was already a pilot with PatWing 1. “What gives?”
“With respect, Col-nol, that’s what we want to know.”
“Huh?”
Soupy looked at the fighter they’d been working on, his ears slightly back. “We hear scuttlebutt. These guys may be just the first of more ‘old world’ Amer-i-caans show up here. That’s swell, but I went to Chill-Chaap, bust my ass, fight swamp lizards, puke on crummy ship. I keep bust my ass, build Pee-Forties.” Soupy’s tail swished. “I don’t volunteer for all that to watch some skinny guy, just show up, fly my plane!”
For a moment, Ben was speechless. Sure, he’d been ecstatic to learn there were other pursuit pilots in the world, real ones, with combat experience. The resource they represented was priceless. He didn’t know how many there were yet; one more was twice as many as they’d had… but Soupy had a valid point.
“That’s not your plane, Lieutenant,” he finally said, “it’s mine! Look up there on the nose and you’ll see where I chalked an M when we first opened the crate back at Chill-Chap. M means ‘Mine.’ It means ‘Mallory.’ As a matter of fact, you open up any of those crates and you might as well imagine an invisible M scratched on every one, because they’re all mine! You want to chalk an S, or paint a naked picture of your girl on one”-there were chitters of amusement-“you’re going to by God earn it in the air!” He shook his head. “I guarantee you’ve earned a shot-all of you have-but so have Lieutenant Mackey and any other experienced pilots who show up here, because right now, they know more than you.” He looked at Mack. “That’s going to change. If you or anyone else wants to fly these ships we’ve worked so hard to save, you’re first going to help me teach these ’Cats every single thing you know about them. After that, it’s up for grabs, and don’t expect it to be a shoo-in. ’Cats are natural born acrobats, and I’ve seen them translate that into flying.” He looked at Soupy and e others gathered round. “That’s the deal.”
Soupy was nodding. “Okay, Skipper. Just so long as it fair. Good to meecha, Lieuten-aant Maa-kee.”
“Uh… thanks,” Mack said, watching the “deputation” depart.
“Oh boy,” said Ben, chuckling. “Let’s hit the shade,” he shouted, so Bernie could hear. Once under a grove of trees with palmated leaves beyond the line of crates, Ben offered Mack a rough-looking, but comfortable lounge chair and poured him a mug of cool water from a carafe nestled in a damp cloth. He saw Sandison approaching, walking slowly and accompanying another thin man.
“You really going to give those… Lemur… ’Cats a shot at those ships?” Mack asked. Ben looked at him. “I meant every word.”
“You think they can handle it?”
“What do you think? Who flew that ungainly goose that brought you here from the Philippines?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not?” Ben took a breath and scratched his nose. “Look. I know you’re new here, but here’s the Word on Lemurians: it doesn’t matter what they look like, what color they are, or whether they’re guys or gals; they’re people just like you and me, and you’ll treat them that way.”
“I already got that word from Lieutenant Tucker-not that I needed it. It’s pretty obvious how things stand. Hell, there’re Japs on our side! That’s weirder than… anything else I’ve seen.”
Ben nodded sincere understanding, even though he still had only a vague idea what Mack and the other survivors of that hellish ship had been through. “Good. Just make sure you spread the word if more of your guys get here. This isn’t the States, with ‘colored’ drinking fountains, or India, China, or even the Philippines. ’Cats generally have a good sense of humor. You can razz ’em for being short, stripey, furry, or having tails, and they’ll throw it right back at you for being freakishly tall, ‘naked,’ ugly… or not having a tail, but it’s all in fun. Always. We’ve been through too much together as real, honest to God friends for any of that other crap to even much occur to anybody, them or us, and that’s the way it stays, clear?”
“Clear, Colonel.”
“Good.” Ben shrugged. “Besides, we still have the Grik, and plenty of ‘bad’ Japs to hate.”
Bernie Sandison and a winded Sergeant Dixon arrived. “I think the sergeant here will be a big help assembling these machines,” Bernie said distractedly. “He’s done it before, and knows a lot of the mistakes they made in the Philippines when the E models showed up.” He shook his head. “What a nightmare. No wonder the Air Corps got plastered! Even if they got on a Jap’s tail, the guns wouldn’t fire! The assembly instructions with the planes tell you how to put them together, but they don’t say squat about really making them work.”
“Then I’m very glad to see you, Sergeant Dixon,” Ben said, but he noticed Sandison was still bothered by something.
“Thank you, sir,” Dixon replied. “Glad to be here.”
Ben cocked his head. “What’s the matter, Bernie?” he asked.
“Well… it’s that damn Silva! He was supposed to be on the ‘Buzzard’ with these guys. I need him here! He’s the one who came with the idea for the breechloaders we’re working on. He’s just going to waste out there…”
