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He closed the window as quickly as he had opened it.
He looked at von Dattenberg, and said, “God must have heard you. You’re shaking and look a little pale, but we’re still alive.”
“I suspect He heard us both.”
—
Colonel Carlos Habanzo and Wilhelm Grüner were waiting for Cronley and von Dattenberg when they came through the door of the Lodestar.
Cronley saw the airplane had stopped on some kind of a wooden structure, and after a moment he realized what it was: the wall of a building.
“What did you do, tear down a building?” he greeted them.
“Actually, two buildings,” Grüner answered. “You’re sitting on two walls. The other two are down there by the bulldozer. The roof is over there.”
He pointed.
“I thought Don Cletus would be coming,” Habanzo said in obvious disappointment.
Shall I go back and get him? Cronley thought but did not say. His mouth ran away with him anyway. “I’m expendable, Colonel. Cletus is not.”
That earned him a dirty look.
Grüner picked up on that and quickly asked, “You brought your cold-weather gear?”
Cronley nodded. “It’s in the airplane.”
“You’re going to need it. If there’s a heater in the Cub, I couldn’t find how to turn it on.”
“You test-flew it after you put the wings on?”
“No. I’ve never flown one. I decided to wait for you.”
“Well, let me take a piss and have some lunch, and then I’ll give it a test hop.”
“Better yet, why don’t we kill two birds with one stone?”
Where have I heard that before?
“What two birds?”
“We get in both airplanes, and fly to the coast and make a couple of test runs, different altitudes, different speeds, et cetera, which shouldn’t take more than an hour, and then we come back here and, over lunch, talk over how we’ll search after lunch.”
Jimmy didn’t like it but couldn’t find the words to say why.
“Would it be all right if I took my piss first?”
“Take it here, on the wall.” He pointed at the material under the Lodestar. “And watch. It’s very interesting. It freezes just about as soon as it hits the ground.”
“I gather we don’t have air-to-air radios?”
“If we do, I don’t know to turn them on,” Grüner said. “Clete made changes to the Storch communications panel. American stuff I’ve never seen before. Have a look.”
After seeing that his Little Yellow Stream did indeed freeze just about the instant it hit the wall, Jimmy went to the Storch. By the time he managed to get into the cockpit he regretted not putting on his Admiral Byrd gear before doing so. He was chilled and began shivering.
But he found what he was hoping to find: A selection switch that offered several choices.
It’s a switch unlike any other on the panel, and labeled in English, which clearly suggests it’s Siggie Stein’s handiwork.
