“Precisely there.”
“Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “Is this the first carrier you’ve been on, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you think of her?”
“It’s a waste of billions of dollars when there are people in the world starving.”
“You may be right, ma’am. I always figured that maybe somebody said something like that to Joshua when he was standing there looking at the walls of Jericho and thinking about tooting his horn. But my suspicion is that the folks in Jericho were thinking they hadn’t spent enough bucks on the walls. I reckon it all depends on your point of view.”
She glanced at him with her brows knitted, then turned and began walking aft. Tarkington followed slowly, and the rest of the group lowered their cameras and trailed after them.
They passed the bow catapult control bubble and the upright JBD and approached the island. It had looked small and unobtrusive from the bow, but as they neared, it took on the aura of a ten-story building festooned with radar dishes and radio antennae.
The lieutenant led his five through an oval door — they had to step over the combing — and into a ladderwell. Their footsteps echoed thunderously against the metal walls as they trudged up flight after flight of steep stairs (ladders, the sailors called them), swimming against a steady stream of people trooping down. The ship was so stupendously large, yet the passageways and ladders were narrow, with low ceilings, and crammed with pipes and wires and fire fighting gear; the ship’s interior was incongruously disconcerting to visitors unfamiliar with warship architecture. Some people found themselves slightly claustrophobic inside this rabbit warren of bulkheads and ladders and people charging hither and yon on unimaginable errands. Toad paused on several landings to let his charges catch up and catch their breath.
Six stories up they exited onto a viewing area their guide quaintly referred to as Vulture’s Row. Several other groups of journalists were also there. Everyone with a camera snapped numerous photos of the planes parked neatly in rows on the deck below and the junior officers answered technical questions as fast as they were posed. Several of the tour guides were pilots who expounded with youthful enthusiasm on the thrills associated with flying off and onto the carrier.
“Are you a pilot?” the Frenchman with a Japanese camera asked Lieutenant Tarkington.
“No, sir. I’m an RIO — that means Radar Intercept Officer — on F-14s. Those are the sharky-looking jobs down there with the wings that move backwards and forwards.”
The Frenchman stared. “Ze wings?”
“Yeah, the wings move.” Tarkington pretended to be an airplane and waggled his arms appropriately. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Judith Farrell roll her gaze heavenward.
“Oui, oui. Formidable!”
“Yep, sure is,” the irrepressible Tarkington agreed heartily.
When their turn came, Tarkington led his followers into “Pri-Fly,” a glassed-in room that stuck out of the top of the island over the flight deck and offered a magnificent view. Here, he explained, the air boss, a senior commander, controlled the launch and recovery of aircraft. As Tarkington drawled along a helicopter came in to land, settling gently onto the forward portion of the landing area. Several of the group took pictures of the air boss standing beside his raised easy chair with all his radios and intercom boxes in the background.
Tarkington’s group then packed themselves into the minuscule island elevator for the ride down to the flight deck level. Somehow the lieutenant ended up jammed face-to-face with Judith Farrell. He beamed at her and she stared at his Adam’s apple. The machinery was noisy and the whole contraption lurched several times. “Nobody’s died in here since last week, ma’am,” he whispered.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘ma’am,’” Farrell said, refusing to whisper.
“Yes, ma’am.”
When the door opened, they went down another ladder to the O-3 level and then through a myriad of turns to a ready room. The tourists were greeted by an officer who gave a little explanation of how aircrews planned and briefed their missions in ready rooms like this throughout the O-3 level. He showed them the closed-circuit television monitors around the room on which the only show playing during flight operations was the launch and recovery of aircraft on the “roof,” the flight deck. And he got some laughs with his explanation of the greenie board that hung on one bulkhead. Every pilot in this squadron had color marks recorded for each of his carrier approaches, which his squadron mates witnessed in glorious detail on the television monitors. Green was the predominate color and symbolized an OK pass, the best grade possible. Yellow was a fair grade and a few red spots recorded no-grade or cut passes. Apparently a pilot’s virtues and sins were recorded in living color for all to see.
Back in the passageway one of the reporter-photographers delayed the group almost three minutes as he repeatedly snapped an apparently endless, narrow passageway that ran fore and aft. At this level the openings in the frames that supported the flight deck were oval in shape and only wide enough for people to pass through in single file. “Knee-knockers,” Tarkington called them. The passageway appeared to be an oval tube receding into infinity. The photographer got a shot of a sailor in the passageway over a hundred yards away that later appeared in a German newsmagazine. The picture demonstrated visually, in a way words never could, just how large, how massive, this ship truly was.
“It’s very noisy,” one of the visitors said to Toad, who nodded politely. The hum and whine of the fans inside the air conditioning system was the background noise the ship’s inhabitants became aware of only when it ceased.
“What is that smell? I’ve noticed it ever since we came aboard,” Judith Farrell said.
“I don’t really know,” Toad replied as he examined her nose to see if it crinkled when she sniffed. “I always thought it was the oil they used to lubricate the blowers in the air-conditioning system, or the hatch hinges, or whatever.” All the other visitors were inhaling lungfuls. “You don’t notice it after awhile,” Toad finished lamely.
The photographer was finished. They went down another set of ladders and back to the wardroom where they had begun the tour.
“I sure am glad you folks could come out today for a little visit,” Tarkington said as he shook hands with the men. “Hope we didn’t walk you too much or wear you down. But there’s a lot to see and it takes a little doing to get around.” He turned and gazed into Judith Farrell’s clear blue eyes. “I just might get up Paris way sometime this summer, ma’am, and maybe you could return the hospitality and give me a little tour of Gay Paree?”
She favored him with the smallest smile she could manage as she ensured he had only her fingertips to shake.
“I hope you enjoyed your tour,” Captain Grafton said to the group.
“Very much,” the Italian woman replied as heads bobbed in agreement.
“There’s more Kool-Aid,” Grafton gestured toward the refreshment table, “if you’re thirsty. Please help yourselves. The boats will be leaving in about five minutes to take you back to the beach. Your tour guides will escort you to the quarterdeck. If you have any unanswered questions, now is the time to ask them.”
“Are nuclear weapons aboard this ship, please?” The question came from one of the Frenchmen.
“The American government can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard any ship.”
“But what if a war begins?” Judith Farrell asked loudly.
Grafton’s face showed no emotion. “In that event, ma’am, we’ll do the best we can to defend ourselves in accordance with American government policy and our commitments to NATO.”