“Let Rita try it,” Amy urged.
“Don’t you want to?”
“No. Let Rita.”
“Come over here, Rita Moravia.” The pilot did as she was bid. She watched the captain manipulate the controls as he explained what each was. “The thing you gotta watch is that the controls work backwards as you look at the plane head-on. Turn around and fly it by looking over your shoulder. Then left will be left and right will be right.”
Rita obediently faced away from the house and looked back over her shoulder. Toad waved. Jake handed her the radio control box. As David and Amy tried to offer simultaneous advice, Rita clum- sily swung the plane back and forth and worked the nose hesi- tantly. She overcontrolled as David groaned, “Not too much, no no no.”
But the wind was dying. She got-the nose too high trying to maintain altitude: the plane stalled and the nose fell through. The plane shot forward away from the house, toward the street. David scrambled, but Rita stalled it again and the left wing and nose dug into the sandy lawn before the running boy could reach it The rubber bands let loose and the wing popped free of the fuselage, minimizing the damage. “Nasty,” David declared.
“My dinner!” Callie exclaimed, and charged for the door. “You did great for a first solo,” Amy assured Rita. The pilot pulled the girl to her and gave her a mighty hug and a kiss on the cheek. She got a big hug in return.
“She ain’t banged up too bad, Cap’n,” David called.
Up on the roof Toad was laughing. He blew Rita a kiss.
After dinner Callie shooed Jake and Toad off to the screened-in porch while she cleaned up the dishes. Rita and Amy helped.
“So what did your parents think of Toad when they met him, or have they yet?” Callie asked Rita.
“We went to visit them two weekends ago. Mother invited a few of their closest friends over to meet the newlyweds. Then she cor- nered Toad, and making sure I was in earshot, she asked him, ‘Now that you’re married, when is Rita going to give up flying?’” Rita laughed ruefully, remembering. “How well do you know Toad?” she asked Callie.
“Not very well. I met him for the first time last year in me Mediterranean.”
“Well, he looked at Mother with that slightly baffled. Lord of the Turnip Truck expression of his, and said, ‘Why would she do that? Flying is what she does.’ I could have kissed him right there in front of everyone.” Rita chuckled again.
“Doesn’t your mom want you to fly,” Amy piped, her chin rest- ing on a hand, her eyes fixed on her new heroine.
“My mother is one of these new moderns who have elevated the elimination of risk to a religious status. She serves only food certi- fied safe for laboratory rats. She writes weekly letters to congress- men urging a national fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, helmets for motorcyclists, gun control — she has never been on a motorcy- cle in her life and to the best of my knowledge has never even seen a real firearm. Her latest cause is a ban on mountain climbing since she read an article about how many people per year fall off cliffs or die of hypothermia. This from a woman who regards a walk across a large parking lot as a survival trek.”
“I’m not afraid of things,” Amy assured Rita.
“It’s not fear that motivates Mother. She thinks of government as Super-Mom, and who better to advise the politicians than the superest mom of them all?”
“Flying is risky, inherently dangerous. I can understand your mother’s concern,” Callie said as she rinsed a pot. “Flying is some- thing I’ve had to live with. It’s a part of Jake and his life, a big part. But I’ve had very mixed emotions about his being grounded.” As she dried the pot she turned to Rita. “You or Toad may be killed or crippled for life in an accident. After it happens, if it happens, it won’t matter whose fault it is or how good you are in a cockpit. I know. I’ve seen it too many times.”
“Life is risky,” Rita replied, “Life isn’t some bland puree with all the caffeine and cholesterol removed. It doesn’t just go on for ever and ever without end. amen. For every living thing there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. And life is chance. Chance is the means whereby God rules the universe.”
The flier thought a moment, then continued, choosing her words carefully. “I have the courage to try to live with my fate, whatever it may be.”
“Do you have enough?” Amy asked, dead serious.
“I don’t know,” said Rita. She smiled at the youngster. “I hope so. I havent needed much courage so far. I’m healthy, reasonably intelligent, and I’ve been lucky. But still, I gather courage where I find it and save it for the storms to come.”
20
Through the years Jake Grafton had become a connoisseur of air force bases. Visiting one was like driving through Newport or Beverly Hills. With manicured lawns, trimmed trees, well-kept substantial buildings and nifty painted signs, air force bases made him fed like a poor farm boy visiting the estate of a rich uncle. In contrast, the money the admirals wheedled from a parsimonious Congress went into ships and air- planes. The dedication of a new cinder-block enlisted quarters at some cramped navy base in the industrial district of a major port city was such a rare event that it would draw a half dozen admirals and maybe the CNO.
The Tonopah facility, however, didn’t look like any air force base Jake had ever seen. It looked like some shacky, jerry-built temporary facility the navy had stuck out in the middle of nowhere during World War II and had only now decided to improve. Per- haps this base was just too new. Bulldozers and carthmovere sat scattered around on large, open wounds of raw earth. No trees or grass yet, though two trenchers appeared to be excavating for a sprinkler system. When the wind blew, great clouds of dust embed- ded with tumbleweeds swept across the flat, featureless desert and through the stark frames of buildings under construction, and the wind blew most of the time.
Security was as tight as Jake had ever seen it in the military. Air policemen in natty uniforms with white dickeys at their throats manned the gates and patrolled chain link fences topped with barbed wire while they fought to keep their spifiy blue berets in place against the wind. The fences were woven with metal strips to form opaque barriers. Signs every few yards forbade stopping or photography. You needed a pass to enter any area, and prominent signs vibrating in the wind advised you of that fact
The place reeked with that peculiar aroma of government in- trigue: Important, stupendous things are happening here. You don’t want to know! We who do also know that you couldn’t handle it. Trust us. In other words, the overall effect was precisely the same gray ambience of don’t-bother-us superiority that oozes from large post offices and the mausoleums that house the departments of motor vehicles, social services, and similar enterprises throughout the land.
Even the sergeant at the desk of the Visiting Officers’ Quarters wanted to see Jake Grafton’s security documents. He made cryptic notations in a battered green logbook and passed them back with- out comment as he frowned at Helmut Fritsche’s facial hair. After all, didn’t Lenin wear a beard?
As he escorted Jake and Fritsche down the hall toward their rooms. Toad Tarkington said, ‘This place is really dead. Captain. The nearest whorehouse is fifty miles-away.”
Fritsche groaned.
“Tonopah makes China Lake look like Paris after dark,” Tar- kington told the physicist with relish. “This is as far as you can get away from civilization without starting out the other side.” He lowered his voice. “There’s spies everywhere. The place is crawling with ‘em. Watch your mouth. Remember, loose lips sink—“
“Loose lips sink lieutenants,” Jake Grafton rumbled.
“Yessir, them too,” Toad chirped.
That evening Jake inspected the Consolidated Technologies air- plane. Under the bright lights of the cavernous hangar, it was being tended by a small army of engineers and technicians who were busy checking every system, every wire, every screw and boh and rivet Adele DeCrescentis watched a man fill in a checklist. Each item was carefully marked when completed. Rita Moravia walked back and forth around the aircraft, looking, probing, asking more questions of the company test pilot who stood beside her. Toad Tarkington was in the aft cockpit, going over the radar and coro- puter one more time as a nearby yellow cart supplied electrical power and cooling
