Part 8 (1/2)
”You mean pitdogs, like in Wales, in the old days?”
”No, no. In the First War. All those early fighters. Baron Von Richthofen, the German, Albert Ball, the Englishman, Rene Fonck, the Frenchman. And all the rest. Werner Voss and Ernst Udet, and Rickenbacker and Luke Short.”
Joe nodded at last. ”I remember now. They'd have a Vickers or Spandau mounted so as to fire between the propeller blades. As I recall, that German, Richthofen, had some eighty victories to his credit.”
”O.K. They called them dogfights. One aircraft against another. You're going to reintroduce the whole thing.”
Joe was staring at him. Once again the Telly reporter sounded completely around the bend.
Freddy was impatiently patient. ”We'll mount a gun on your sailplane and you'll attack those two gliders Cogswell says General McCord has.”
Joe said, ”The Sov-world observers would never stand still for it. In fact, there's a good chance that using gliders at all will be forbidden when the International Disarmament Commission convenes next month. If the Sov-world delegates vote against use of gliders as reconnaissance craft, the Neut-world will vote with them. Those Neut-world delegates vote against everything.” Joe grunted. ”It's true enough gliders were flown before the year 1900, but not the kind of advanced sailplanes you have to utilize for them to be practical.
Certainly there were no gliders in use capable of carrying a machine gun.”
Freddy demanded, ”Look, what was the smallest machine gun in use in 1900?”
Joe considered. ”Probably the little French Chaut-Chaut gun. It was portable by one man, the rounds were carried in a flat, circular pan.
I think it goes back that far. They used them in the First War.”
”Right! O.K., you had gliders. You had eight portable machine guns.
All we're doing is combining them. It'll be spectacular. You'll be the most famous mercenary in Category Military and it'll be impossible for the Department not to bounce you to colonel and Low-Upper. Especially with me and every Telly reporter and fracas-buff magazine we've bribed yelling for it.”
Joe's mouth manifested its tic, but he was shaking his head. ”It wouldn't go, anyway. Suppose I caught one, or both, of those other gliders, busy at their reconnaissance and shot their tails off. So what? The fans still wouldn't have their blood and gore. We'd be so high they couldn't see the action. All they would be able to see would be the other glider falling.”
Freddy stopped dramatically and pointed a finger at him in triumph.
”That's where you're wrong. I'll be in the back seat of your sailplane with a portable camera. Get it! And every reporter on the ground will have the word, and his most powerful telescopic lens at the ready. Man, it'll be the most televized bit of fracas of this half of the century!”
VIII
When Major Joe Mauser entered the sw.a.n.k Agora Bar, the little afternoon dance band broke into a few bars of that tune which was beginning to pall on him.
_”... I knew her heart was breaking, And to my heart in anguish pressed, The girl I left behind me.”_
Nadine looked up from the little table she occupied and caught the wry expression on his face and laughed.
”What price glory?” she said.
He took the chair across from her and chuckled ruefully. ”All right,”
he said, ”I surrender. However, if you think a theme song is bad, you'll be relieved at some of the other ideas my, ah, publicity agent had which I turned down.”
She said, ”Oh, did he want you to dash into some burning building and save some old lady's canary, or something?”
”Not exactly. However, he had a nightclub singer with a list of nine or ten victories behind her--”
”Victories?”
”Husbands. And I was to be seen escorting the singer around the nightclub circuit.”
”A fate worse than death? But, truly, why did you turn him down?”