He would have gone on embroidering that theme for quite a while, but an orderly poked his head into the officers’ lounge, spotted him, and brightened. “Lieutenant Moss, sir?” he said. “Major Pruitt needs to see you right away, sir.”
“I’m coming.” Moss got to his feet, a process that proved more complicated than he’d expected. “I’m coming. Lead on, Henry.”
Henry led on. As Moss left, Dudley called after him: “Requisition a couple extra redheaded tool mufflers for me, pal.” They both laughed. Henry the orderly grinned in a nervous sort of way, not getting the joke.
Major Shelby Pruitt raised an eyebrow when he saw the state Moss was in. That was all he did. The weather was too lousy to let aeroplanes get off the ground, so the pilots had little to do but sit around and drink. The salute Moss gave him was crisp enough, at any rate. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease,” Pruitt said. He passed Moss a little velvet box with a snap lid. “Here. As long as you’re celebrating, you can have something to celebrate.” Moss opened the box. Two sets of a captain’s twin silver bars sparkled in the lamplight. He stared at them, then at Pruitt. The squadron commander grinned at him. “Congratulations, Captain Moss.”
Moss said the first thing that popped into his head: “What about Dud, sir?”
He made Hardshell Pruitt smile. “That does you credit. His are in the works. They should have come in with yours, but there’s some sort of paperwork foul-up. I’d have saved yours to give them to the both of you at the same time, but I can’t. You’re both getting shipped out, and to different places, and they’ve laid on a motorcar for you in an hour. As soon as you leave here, go pack up what you have to take with you. The rest of your junk will follow you sooner or later, maybe even by the end of the war.”
Things were moving too fast for Moss to follow. He thought-he hoped-they would have been moving too fast for him to follow had he been sober. “Sir, could you explain-?” he said plaintively.
“You’re a captain now.” Pruitt’s voice was crisp, incisive. He used it as a surgeon uses a scalpeclass="underline" to slice through the fat to the meat. “You’ll be a flight leader for certain, maybe even a squadron leader if casualties keep on the way they’ve been going.”
“We keep flying Martins against these Pups, sir, we’ll have a lot of casualties,” Moss said with conviction.
“I understand that,” Major Pruitt answered. “Well, it just so happens the Kaiser’s come through for us. Wright is building a copy of the Albatros two-decker; a German cargo submarine finally made it across the Atlantic with plans and with a complete disassembled aeroplane. The orders detach you to train on the new machine.”
“That’s-bully, sir,” Jonathan Moss breathed. “Can we really fight the limeys in this new bus?”
“Everybody seems to think so,” the squadron leader answered. “The copied Albatros isn’t quite as fast as the Pup, but it’ll climb quicker and it’s just about as maneuverable. And we’ll have a hell of a lot more of them than the limeys and Canucks will have Pups.”
“Good-we’ll make ’em have kittens, then,” Moss said. When sober, he was sobersided. He wasn’t sobersided now.
Hardshell Pruitt also grinned. “Go pack your bags, Captain. Pack the undowithoutables and don’t worry about anything else. I want you back here at 2130, ready to move out for London. Here are your written orders.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Moss looked at the pocket watch he wore strapped to his wrist. Like a lot of fliers, he’d started doing that because of the difficulty of groping for a watch while wearing a bulky flight suit. Learning at a glance what time it was had proved so convenient, he wore the watch on a strap all the time now. “See you in forty-five minutes, sir.”
He seemed to float several feet above the muddy ground as he made his way back to the tent he shared with Dudley and with Phil Eaker and Thad Krazewski, who’d taken the place of Orville Thornley, who’d taken the place of Tom Innis. A match got a kerosene lantern going. The space around his cot was as full of junk as more than a year’s settling in and an easygoing view of military regulations would allow.
One green-gray canvas duffel bag didn’t seem enough. He wondered if he could lay hands on a White truck, or maybe two. He shrugged. He’d manage, one way or another. And whatever he left behind wouldn’t go to waste. Some would, as Major Pruitt had said, follow him wherever he went. The other fellows in the flight were welcome to the rest.
He heard Eaker and Krazewski coming. Eaker said, “Jonathan’ll be glad we sweet-talked the cook out of a corned-beef sandwich for him. I’ve never seen anybody as keen for the stuff as he is.”
The two young fliers came into the tent and stared. Grinning, Moss said, “I will be glad for the sandwich, boys. It’ll give me something to eat while they take me wherever I’m supposed to go.”
“Sir?” they said together, twin expressions of blank surprise on their faces.
Moss wanted to tell them everything. The whiskey in him almost set his mouth working ahead of his brain. He checked himself, though. Saying too much-saying anything, really-wouldn’t be fair to Dud Dudley, who had to stay a while longer because of his botched paperwork.
What Moss did end up saying was, “They’re shipping me out. I’m going into training on a new aeroplane.”
“That’s wonderful, sir,” they exclaimed, again in unison. Krazewski clapped his hands together. With his wide cheekbones, blue, blue eyes, and shock of wheat-blond hair, he would have made a gorgeous woman. He made a hell of a handsome man, and the Canucks and limeys hadn’t managed to kill him yet. He asked, “Does Lieutenant Dudley know, sir?”
That’s Captain Dudley, Moss thought, but Dud doesn’t know it yet. “I’ll tell him as soon as I finish packing,” Moss said. He didn’t say anything about all the stuff he wouldn’t be able to pack. His tentmates would go through it soon enough, almost as if he’d died.
He had intended to head for the officers’ lounge as soon as the duffel bag was full. That didn’t happen, because Dud Dudley came in when he was trying to stuff a tin of shaving soap into a bag already full to the point of seam-splitting. “A fine day to you, Captain Moss!” he exclaimed in a voice to which whiskey gave only part of the glee.
He’s heard, Jonathan realized. Hardshell must have decided he couldn’t keep it a secret. “A fine day to you, Captain Dudley!” he returned. The two men solemnly-well, not so solemnly-shook hands while Eaker and Krazewski gaped all over again.
“Too damn bad we’re going to different aerodromes to train,” Dudley said, which reconfirmed Moss’ guess. The flight leader slapped him on the back. “I’ll miss you, you son of a bitch. We’ve got to look each other up if we both come through this stinking war in one piece.” He scrawled his name and address on a scrap of paper. “Here. This is me.”
Moss found his own scrap and borrowed Dudley’s pen. “And this is me. I’ll miss you, too, Dud. And I’ll miss these two sorry ragamuffins-” At that, the pilots who would stay behind gave him a pair of raspberries. He shook hands with both of them, too, then slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. He mimed collapsing under the weight, which wasn’t far from being true, and tramped back toward Major Pruitt’s tent.
A Ford was waiting there for him, the motor running. The driver took the duffel, gave him a reproachful stare at its weight, and tossed it into the automobile. “Hop in, sir,” he said. “Off to London.”
The drive was less than a delight. The Ford’s headlamps were taped so they gave out only a little light; the enemy’s aeroplanes would shoot up anything that moved at night. The road would have been bad even had the driver been able to spot all the potholes. Not spotting them meant he and Moss got to fix several punctures along the way. They didn’t do better than ten miles an hour, which made a hundred-mile journey seem to take forever.