Besides, I thought I could beat the game by being smart. I knew a lot of boys who hadn’t been able to, and I knew they had had good heads on their shoulders.
Two weeks later I stepped out of a taxi in front of the hangar at the airport. Some experimental military airplanes were sitting outside. It was good to see military airplanes again. There is something about military airplanes—something businesslike.
I entered the hangar office. The engineers were waiting for me. I knew most of them from working with them before. They were all still just pink-faced kids. But I knew they were bright kids. They knew their stuff and had all had quite a lot of experience.
They greeted me with a queer sort of smile on their faces, the way you greet somebody you know is being played for a sucker. Maybe they were right. Undoubtedly they were. But I resented that smile in a mild sort of way.
Bill was there. I had known Bill since before he had become their chief test pilot. He had that same queer smile on his face.
“Hey, Bill,” I said to him, greeting him with a quizzical smile answering his own, “why don’t you dive this funny airplane?”
“I got smart and chiseled my way out of this one,” he said.
“It is a sap’s game,” I agreed with him. “But starvation is dangerous too.” He laughed, and we all laughed.
He studied me for a minute. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years. Finally he said soberly, “You’ve grown older, Jim.”
“Yeah, I’ve grown older, Bill,” I answered him banteringly, “and I want to grow a lot older too. I want to have a nice long white beard trailing out in the slip stream some day. So I hope you guys are building good airplanes for diving. By the way, let’s go out in the hangar and take a look at the crate. After all, I’m mildly interested in it, you know.”
We all went out into the hangar. There was the ship, suspended from a chain hoist with its wheels just off the cement in the middle of a large cleared area. It was silver and gleamed even in the somewhat darkened interior. It looked sturdy and squat and bulldoggish, as only a military fighting ship can. I was glad it looked sturdy.
A group of mechanics were swarming around it and over it and under it. They all looked up as we approached the ship. I knew most of them. I was introduced to the others. You could see that they felt toward that ship as a brood hen feels toward her eggs. They didn’t want me to break it. I didn’t want to break it either.