The radarman scrambled out of the trench and dashed toward the Nissen hut, which was beginning to burn. “Group Captain Hipple!” he shouted, and then called in turn the names of the other men with whom he’d been working. A dreadful fear that he would hear no reply rose in him.
Then, one by one, the heads of the RAF officers popped up out of the trench close by the hut. Only the top of Hipple’s cap was visible; be really was very short. “That you, Goldfarb?” he called. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Goldfarb said. “Are you?”
“Quite, thanks,” Hipple answered, scrambling out spryly. He looked around at the hut, shook his head. “There’s a good deal of work up in smoke. I’m glad we salvaged what we did.” As the other officers got out, he waved Goldfarb over to see what he meant.
The bottom of the slit trench was covered with manila folders and the papers that had spilled out of them. Goldfarb stared from them to Hipple and back again. “You-all of you-stopped to grab papers when the air raid alarm went off?”
“Well, the work upon which we are engaged here is of considerable importance, don’t you think?” Hipple murmured, as if he hadn’t imagined doing anything but what he’d done. He probably hadn’t. Had Goldfarb been in the Nissen hut with the others, the only thing he would have thought about was getting to cover as fast as he could.
Groundcrew men had already emerged from their shelters. They swept and pushed chunks of tarmac off onto the winter-brown grass to either side of the newly hit runways, or else tossed them into the craters the bombs had made. Others started dragging up lengths of pierced steel planking material to put over the holes until they could make more permanent repairs.
Flight Lieutenant Kennan pointed toward the burning aircraft. “I do hope that’s not one of our Pioneers.”
“Not in that revetment, sir.” Flight Officer Roundbush shook his head. “It’s only a Hurricane.”
“Only a Hurricane?” Kennan looked scandalized; he’d flown one during the Battle of Britain. “Basil, if it weren’t for Hurricanes, you’d have had to trim that mustache of yours down to a toothbrush and start learning German. The Spitfires grabbed the glory-they look like such thoroughbreds, after all-but Hurricanes did more of the work.”
Roundbush’s hand went protectively to the bushy blond growth on his upper lip. “I beg your pardon, sir. Had I realized the Hurricane stood between my mustache and war’s desolation, I should have spoken of it with more respect-even if it is as obsolete as a Sopwith Camel these days.”
If possible, Kennan looked even more affronted, not least because Roundbush was in essence right. Indeed, against the Lizards a Sopwith Camel might have been of more use than a Hurricane, simply because it contained very little metal and so was hard for radar to pick up.
Before Kennan could return to the verbal charge, Group Captain Hipple said, “Maurice, Basil, that’s quite enough.” They shuffled their feet like a couple of abashed schoolboys.
Wing Commander Peary jumped back down into the trench, started rummaging through file folders. “Oh, capital,” he said a minute later. “We didn’t lose the drawings for the installation of the multifrequency radar in the Meteor fuselage.”
At the same time as Goldfarb breathed a silent sigh of relief, Basil Roundbush said, “I had to save those. David would have smote me hip and thigh if I’d left them behind.”
“Heh,” Goldfarb said. He wondered if Roundbush was using that pseudo-Biblical language to mock his Jewishness. Probably not, he decided. Roundbush made fun of everything on general principles.
“Shall we gather up our goods and see who will give us a temporary home?” Hipple said. “We shan’t have a hut of our own for a while now.”
Planes were taking off and landing on the damaged runways by that afternoon. By then, Goldfarb and the RAF officers were back at work in a borrowed corner of the meteorological crew’s Nissen hut. The inside of one of the temporary buildings was so much like that of another that for a few minutes at a time Goldfarb was able to forget he wasn’t where he had been.
The telephone rang. One of the weathermen picked it up, then held it out to Hipple. “Call for you, Group Captain.”
“Thank you.” The jet engine specialist took the phone, said, “Hipple here.” He listened for a couple of minutes, then said, “Oh, that’s first-rate. Yes, we’ll be looking forward to receiving it. Tomorrow morning some time, you say? Yes, that will do splendidly. Thanks so much, for calling. Goodbye.”
“What was that in aid of?” Wing Commander Peary asked.
“There may be some justice in the world after all, Julian,” Hipple answered. “One of the Lizard jets which strafed this base was later brought down by antiaircraft fire north of Leicester. The aircraft did not burn upon impact, and damage was less extensive than in most other cases where we have been fortunate enough to strike a blow against the Lizards. An engine and the radar will be sent here for our examination.”
“That’s wonderful,” Goldfarb exclaimed; his words were partly drowned by similar ones from the other members of his team and from the meteorologists as well.
“What happened to the pilot?” Basil Roundbush’ asked, adding, “Nothing good, I hope.”
“I was told he used one of the Lizards’ exploding seats to get free of the aircraft, but he has been captured by Home Guards,” Hipple answered. “Perhaps it might be wise for me to seek to have him placed here so we can draw on his knowledge of the parts of his aircraft once he gains some command of English.”
“I’ve heard the Lizards sing like birds once they get to the point where they can talk,” Roundbush said. “They’re supposed to be even worse than the Italians for that. It’s odd, if you ask me.”
Maurice Kennan walked into the trap: “Why’s that?”
“Because they all come with stiff upper lips, of course.” Roundbush grinned.
“You’re one of the brightest Britain has to offer?” Kennan said, groaning. “God save us all.”
Goldfarb groaned, too-Basil Roundbush would have been disappointed if he hadn’t-but he was also smiling. He’d seen this kind of chaffing at the radar station in Dover at the height of the Battle of Britain, and then again with the Lancaster crew testing airborne radar. It made men work better together, lessened their friction against one another. Some, like Group Captain Hipple, didn’t need such social lubrication, but most mere mortals did.
They labored on until well past eight, trying to make up for time lost to the Lizard raid. They didn’t catch up; Goldfarb spent most of his time looking for the papers he needed, and didn’t always find them. The other four men, being more concerned with engines than radar, had grabbed those file folders first and his as an afterthought.
When Fred Hipple yawned and stood up from his stool, that was a signal for everyone else to knock off, too: if he’d had enough, they didn’t need to be ashamed to show they were worn. Goldfarb felt it in the shoulders and in the small of the back.
Hipple, a man of uncommon rectitude, headed for the refectory and then, presumably, for his cot-such, at least, was his usual habit. Goldfarb, though, had had a bellyful-in both the literal and figurative senses of the word-of the food the RAF kitchens turned out. After a while, stewed meat (when there was meat), soya links, stewed potatoes and cabbage, dumplings the size, shape, and consistency of billiard balls, and stewed prunes got to be too much.
He climbed onto his bicycle and headed for nearby Bruntingthorpe. Nor was he surprised to hear the rattling squeak of another bicycle’s imperfectly oiled chain right behind him. Looking back over his shoulder in the darkness would have been an invitation to go straight over the handlebars. Instead, he called, “A Friend In Need-”
Basil Roundbush’s chuckle came ahead to him. The flight officer finished the catch phrase: “-is a friend indeed.”
A few minutes later, they both pulled up in front of A Friend In Need, the only pub Bruntingthorpe boasted. Without the RAF aerodrome just outside the hamlet, the place would not have had enough customers to stay open. As things were, it flourished. So did the fish-and-chips shop next door, though Goldfarb fought shy of that one because of the big tins of lard that showed up in its refuse bins. He was not nearly so rigid in his Orthodox faith as his parents, but eating chips fried in pig’s fat was more than he could stomach.