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a reason to call him coward. Stubbornly he banished the whole complex of
thought. Easier to go along with it.
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And so a couple of disjointed days later, just after midnight of August 9th,
he found himself preparing for the strike. Around him Fitch and Matthews and
Haddock were doing the same. How odd were the everyday motions of getting
dressed when you were off to demolish a city, to end a hundred thousand lives!
January found himself examining his hands, his boots, the cracks in the
linoleum. He put on his survival vest, checked the pockets abstractedly for
fishhooks, water kit, first aid package, emergency rations. Then the parachute
harness, and his coveralls over it all. Tying his bootlaces took minutes; he
couldn t do it when watching his fingers so closely.
 Come on, Professor! Fitch s voice was tight.  The big day is here.
He followed the others into the night. A cool wind was blowing. The chaplain
said a prayer for them. They took jeeps down Broadway to runway Able.
Lucky Strike stood in a circle of spotlights and men, half of them with
cameras, the rest with reporter s pads. They surrounded the crew; it reminded
January of a Hollywood premiere. Eventually he escaped up the hatch and into
the plane.
Others followed. Half an hour passed before Fitch joined them, grinning like a
movie star. They started the engines, and January was thankful for their
vibrating, thought-smothering roar. They taxied away from the Hollywood scene
and January felt relief for a moment until he remembered where they were
going. On runway Able the engines pitched up to their twenty-three hundred rpm
whine, and looking out the clear windscreen he saw the runway paint-marks move
by ever faster.
Fitch kept them on the runway till Tinian had run out from under them, then
quickly pulled up.
They were on their way.
WHEN THEY GOT TO ALTITUDEJanuary climbed past Fitch and McDonald to the
bombardier s seat and placed his parachute on it. He leaned back. The roar of
the four engines packed around him like cotton batting. He was on the flight,
nothing to be done about it now. The heavy vibration was a comfort, he liked
the feel of it there in the nose of the plane. A drowsy, sad acceptance hummed
through him.
Against his closed eyelids flashed a black eyeless face and he jerked awake,
heart racing. He was on the flight, no way out. Now he realized how easy it
would have been to get out of it. He could have just said he didn t want to.
The simplicity of it appalled him. Who gave a damn what the psychiatrist or
Tibbets or anyone else thought, compared to this? Now there was no way out. It
was a comfort, in a way. Now he could stop worrying, stop thinking he had any
choice.
Sitting there with his knees bracketing the bombsight January dozed, and as he
dozed he daydreamed his way out. He could climb the step to Fitch and McDonald
and declare he had been secretly promoted to major and ordered to redirect the
mission. They were to go to Tokyo and drop the bomb in the bay. The Jap War
Cabinet had been told to watch this demonstration of the new weapon, and when
they saw that fireball boil the bay and bounce into heaven they d run and sign
surrender papers as fast as they could write, kamikazes or not. They weren t
crazy, after all. No need to murder a whole city. It was such a good plan that
the generals back home were no doubt changing the mission at this very minute,
desperately radioing their instructions to Tinian, only to find out it was too
late . . . so that when they returned to Tinian January would become a hero
for guessing what the generals really wanted, and for risking all to do it. It
would be like one of the
Hornblower stories in the
Saturday Evening Post
.
Once again January jerked awake. The drowsy pleasure of the fantasy was
replaced with desperate scorn. There wasn t a chance in hell that he could
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convince Fitch and the rest that he had secret orders superseding theirs. And
he couldn t go up there and wave his pistol around and order them to drop the
bomb in Tokyo Bay, because he was the one who had to actually drop it, and he
couldn t be down in front dropping the bomb and up ordering the others around
at the same time. Pipe dreams.
Time swept on, slow as a second hand. January s thoughts, however, matched the
spin of the props;
desperately they cast about, now this way now that, like an animal caught by
the leg in a trap. The crew was silent. The clouds below were a white scree on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]