ensign jack steel sat on the edge of a life raft whittling a stick. a strange place to whittle, one might say, on the deck of a great u. s. aircraft carrier in mid-pacific. but jack loved to whittle.
“what do you make when you whittle?” someone once asked him. “shavings—just shavings—that’s all,” had been his prompt reply. then, feeling that this was not a real answer, he went on to say, “i whittle and think. thinking is what really counts.”
jack was thinking now, not thinking hard—just letting thoughts drift in and out of his mind. there was enough to think about, too; they were in jap waters right now. something was bound to happen soon, perhaps at dawn. jack would be away before dawn, for his was a scout plane. back at the faraway training base at kingsville he had put in his bid for a dive bomber.
2
“ah! a dive bomber!” he had said to stew, his buddy. “there’s the plane for me! you climb to twelve thousand feet, you get near the target, you come zooming down at four hundred an hour, you let go your bomb, and—”
“wham!” stew had exclaimed.
“yes,” jack had agreed. “then you get out of there fast, as if old nick himself was after you.”
in the navy you don’t talk back; so when the powers that be read off jack, or “jackknife johnny,” as some of the boys called him, for a scout ship, a scout ship it had been—and still was.
and now, jack thought, i wouldn’t trade my little old scout plane for any ship that flies. to go skimming away before dawn, to watch the “dawn come up like thunder” in those tropical waters, then to skip from cloud to cloud, eyes ever on the sea, looking for the enemy—ah, that was the life!
“nothing like it!” he whispered as he carved off a long shaving and allowed it to drop silently on the deck.
a moving shadow loomed up before him. he knew that shadow—“old ironsides,” as the boys called him—lieutenant commander donald stone, boss of the carrier black bee, jack’s ship, was on his way to the bridge.
“must get a swell view of our task force from up there, eh, commander?” jack spoke before he thought. he’d always been that way.
3
“eh? what? oh, it’s you, jackknife johnny.” the commander gave a low laugh. “well now, on a night like this you don’t see much—a bit of white foam after each ship, and a blink of light now and then—that’s all.”
“it’s enough, sir,” said jack. “you know what’s there—cruisers, destroyers, and maybe a tanker. your mind must fill in the picture.”
“oh! it does! it really does!” the commander agreed. “want to come up and see for yourself?” he invited.
“that would be keen, sir!” said jack, dropping to his feet.
“come on up then,” the commander urged.
as jack mounted the steps to the commander’s bridge, twenty-five feet above the flight deck, he thought how strange life aboard a carrier would seem to those who had never put to sea as a navy pilot. routine was strictly adhered to. when a flight of planes came in from a practice flight, they came down in perfect formation like a flock of wild geese landing on a pond.
strict discipline, yes, he told himself, yet here i am following our commander to his bridge, and it doesn’t seem a bit strange; for he’s one of us. we’re all one, all dressed in khaki, all tanned, trained to the last degree, ready to act as a unit to beat the japs.
4
“life on a carrier surely is grand, sir!” he said aloud.
“yes, son,” the hardy old commander rumbled. “there’s never been anything like it before.”
“never has, sir,” jack agreed.
“and now,” said the commander as they reached the bridge, “there’s your navy task force on a moonless night. have a seat. take it all in. i’m going to do a little meditating on the reality of the absolute.” he laughed, and jack laughed with him. jack didn’t know who or what the absolute might be, but he did know that the commander was giving him a real treat, and that was enough for him.
it was strange sitting up there feeling the throb of the ship’s mighty engines, looking away at the blacker-than-black sea, and knowing that they were racing along at twenty knots an hour toward some sort of real trouble.
“spooky,” he thought.
and indeed, it was just that, for they were definitely in jap waters. everyone expected a fight at dawn. if some jap snooper plane or submarine sighted them now, there would be a mighty battle.
5
to the right and a little ahead he caught a white gleam on the water. “that’s the black knight,” he told himself. the black knight was a fast and powerful cruiser. three other cruisers, always close to the carrier but not too close, sped along with them. six destroyers lay farther out.
“what a lot of power, sir!” jack said aloud as the commander strode past him.
“what? yes, a lot of striking power,” the commander agreed. “we’re likely to need it, too. they say the jap navy won’t come out and fight. you can’t count on that. they’re sly rascals, those japs. they might pounce on us with double our striking power any time. they....”
“what’s that, sir?” jack broke in.
“what’s what?” the commander paused.
“don’t you hear it, sir?” jack asked. “it’s like the howl of a dog, or a train whistle far away.”
“all i hear is that banjo on the after deck,” the commander laughed low.
“it’s not that, nor anything like it.” jack was in dead earnest. “it’s nothing on this ship. it comes from far away, sir. listen hard.”
“you have good ears,” said the commander. “radio ears, perhaps. they say there are people who can pick radio messages right out of the air with their unaided ears. i’ve never believed that, but—say!” his voice rose. “i think i do hear something out there!”
“sure you do, sir!” jack exclaimed. “it’s getting louder, closer!”
6
for a space of seconds the two of them, the aged commander and the boy, stood there listening with breathless attention.
“this may be serious!” the commander exclaimed at last, as he dashed for the intership telephone.
jack heard him barking words into the phone. he at last exclaimed loud enough to be heard, “good boy, steve! keep a sharp watch!”
jack wondered who steve was, but more than that he wanted to know what made that high-pitched, screaming whistle that had increased in volume until it fairly filled the sky.
“it’s a bomb!” he exclaimed at last. “sounds just like the ones those jap dive bombers threw at us!” he wanted to race down the companionway to seek a safer spot. and then again he did not, for was not this a first-class mystery? and was not the commander standing by? you had to be a real sailor.
“could be a bomb from some stratosphere plane,” the commander, who had returned to his post, agreed. “but i doubt it.”
“what is it then, sir?” jack asked.
“some jap trick i’d say,” the commander rumbled. “they may be closer than we think. the germans claim they’ve got planes loaded with tnt that they guide by radio. it might be one of those.”
7
from below came the murmur of many voices. all over the ship men were calling, “what is it?” “what’s going on?” “here it comes!” “here she comes!”
jack wondered if they would be ordered to battle stations, but no order came.
“it’s high up and coming fast.” there was a suggestion of huskiness in the commander’s voice.
“it will pass over quickly, sir,” jack declared. “unless....”
“yes,” the commander agreed.
to jack, whose mind often conjured up strange things, all that lay about him—the night, the black sea, the tiny lights blinking in from nowhere, and the eerie scream from the night sky—seemed part of another world.
the commander took a more practical view of it. “maybe a meteor,” he grumbled.
“a meteor!” jack was startled.
“yes, a shooting star that’s burned its way through the earth’s atmosphere.”
“but i don’t see—”
jack did not finish, for all of a sudden he realized that the thing, whatever it might be, had passed directly over their heads and was now speeding east.
“it—it’s gone by!” jack exclaimed. “danger’s over.” he experienced intense relief.
8
“i wonder,” was the commander’s strange reply.
“whew! that was fast, sir!”
“fast?” the commander added in a lower tone. “faster than any plane you’ve ever flown, jack my boy!”
“i wouldn’t doubt it, sir,” jack laughed.
“or ever will fly,” the commander added.
in this last statement he was entirely wrong, as future events were to prove.
“who’d want to ride a meteor, sir?” jack asked with another laugh.
“meteor? oh, yes. quite a wild guess on my part,” said the commander. “a meteor speeding through the air would glow with the heat created by friction. you didn’t see anything, did you?”
“not a thing, sir. whatever it might be, it’s black as night itself.”
“well, that’s that.” the commander sighed a moment later when the last faint whistle had died away in the night.
“just one of those things, sir,” jack agreed. at that he wondered whether he had spoken the truth. or will there be more of them, many more? he wondered. and will one of them at last make contact with the broad side of the old black bee?
“boy, oh boy!” he whispered to himself. “that would be something!”
a moment more of vast, black silence, and he was excusing himself to go down the ladder to join his buddies.
“got to turn in, sir,” he explained.
“that’s right,” the commander agreed. “tomorrow may be a great day for us all. you never know.”
