Rocket Science

Chapter Seven

“I’ve had enough of you damned Germans!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I slammed on the brakes, bringing the Cadillac to a screeching halt in the middle of Osage Street.

“Vernon, honey, are you okay?” Lois leaned across the big front seat to lay a hand on my shoulder.

There was no way I could answer her right then. My entire body twitched. I turned around and looked in the back. No Germans there, just an axe and a shovel. Mr. Bellamy was using the other axe on the willow tree, I remembered. I opened the door and got out, walking around the car to inspect it, careful as a pre-flight. I knew perfectly well there wasn’t anything to find, but I had to do it. Hidden loudspeakers. Trick wiring. Some bizarre practical joke on the part of Doc Milliken and maybe Sheriff Hauptmann.

Lois trailed behind me, arms folded across her chest and her face set.

With a grunt of frustration, I yanked open the trunk. Nothing there but a spare tire and some blankets. No bodies, thankfully. I stuck my head in anyway, studying the back of the trunk, where it met the rear seat of the car. Just some flecks of seat insulation. Pulling myself out of the trunk, I grabbed the bumper and used it to ease myself down to a kneeling position, weight on my good leg. I bent my head to scan the underside of the car. Nothing under there either.

I hadn’t expected to find anything, but I really wanted to. Standing up, hands on my hips, I looked around the block of Osage where we were stopped. Not a soul in sight — everyone was down the street and around the corner at the fire. I put my hand in my pocket. The twisted thing I’d taken from the f-panzer was just as warm as it had been before. It hadn’t lost the static tingle that it had acquired after I started messing with the buttons.

Such a fool I had been to do that.

My stomach flopped, and my skin crawled, the scabs on the back my head from Mr. Bellamy’s birdshot itching terribly. I tugged the little piece of equipment out and studied it again. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen — too small, no power source — but this little doo-dad had to be a radio. The Nazi agents were talking to me over the aircraft’s own equipment. Of course they would know their own frequencies. They were tracing me.

Taunting me.

Threatening.

I was certain that I hadn’t turned on any of the electronic equipment in the f-panzer. I wondered if Floyd had done so, if they had gotten to me through him.

“Vernon?” Lois’ voice interrupted my paranoid line of reasoning as she hit a rising pitch — a bad sign, with women. The loving concern of a few minutes earlier had evaporated. “Vernon Dunham, you are acting like a crazy person.” She grabbed my elbow, yanking me off balance.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I caught myself against the raised trunk lid of the Cadillac. “It’s just that I thought—”

“I don’t care what you thought.” She was all the way into shrill now, shouting, her face flushed under her makeup. “Either you’re too upset to be out driving around, or you are inexcusably rude. Now which is it?” She tapped her foot, the very picture of a Woman Waiting for an Answer.

And this was one of those female questions to which a mere man like me had no correct response.

“Was geschieht?” said the masculine voice in my ear. He was definitely speaking German.

“Shut up!” I yelled.

“Don’t you tell me to shut up, Vernon Dunham.”

Lois had gone from shrill and angry to hard and quiet. I was really in the soup now. I stared at my feet as Lois continued to yell at me.

“I don’t have to take that from you or anybody else. I don’t care what kind of fancy car you swiped.” She kicked the fender of Doc Milliken’s Cadillac.

“Was ist die Bedeutung von ‘shut up’?” asked the voice.

I pled my case, reaching to take Lois’ hands in mine, but she shrugged me off. “Honey, you don’t understand. I’m not trying to shut you up. This is so much more complicated, about my dad and everything else that’s been happening.” The airplane, it was the airplane that stood between us.

Lois turned on her heel and walked away, tossing her hair.

“Lois,” I called after her. “Please.”

She stopped and glared at me over her shoulder. “You are obviously very distressed right now. I will make a point of forgetting what happened this morning. But the next time you call for me, Vernon Dunham, there had best be a dozen roses and an extremely sweet apology or that will be the end of that.”

She walked up Osage toward Broadway without looking back again. I sat down on the rim of the open trunk of the Cadillac.

“Wer sind Sie?” asked the voice.

Where are you? Who are you? My college German refused to be dredged up sufficiently to remember the list of question words. And this was an awfully retarded Nazi agent, I thought, to be in the middle of America and babbling away in German. The old bat down at the library would have understood, I was sure, but not me.

“Speak English!” I yelled into the thin air. “If you’re going to ruin my life, at least let me understand you while you’re doing it.”

“Englisch?”

“English.”

“Sie sind Engländer?”

Well, that was clear enough. “Red-blooded American, by God.” Like most guys, my language got worse as I got more and more angry. It was probably just as well that Lois had left. Just one more thing she’d hold against me, otherwise.

“Amerikaner?”

“Damned straight. From right here in Kansas.”

“Wo ist ‘Kansas’?”

I shut the trunk and got back in the car without answering further. This had become ridiculous. I restarted the Cadillac and pulled over to the side of the road before someone came along and asked me what I was doing. I wanted to keep driving away from the fire, from Lois’ anger, from the voice, but I didn’t know where to go next.

I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before Sheriff Hauptmann had me tailed on a full-time basis. I obviously needed the protection, with everything happening around me. He seemed suspicious of me, as well, so maybe I was lucky he hadn’t taken me in after all.

Heck, at this point I’d be suspicious of me. No matter what I did now, it looked bad. Including standing in the middle of Osage Street arguing with invisible Nazis. Lois was a good enough egg, even if she was never quite my girl. I could hope she’d write that off to an episode of shell shock, so to speak, and not go blabbing to Doc Milliken out of concern for my sanity.

But the question of what to do next deviled me. I didn’t feel like seeking out the voice, which had fallen mercifully silent. That thought reminded me of the metal thing from the f-panzer, which lay heavy in my pocket. I drew it back out and looked at it again.

It was just as small and twisted as ever. Just like the aircraft, it had the unmistakable look of having been designed that way. By someone who didn’t think like I did. I turned it over. No seams, no access doors — although something like that could easily have been concealed in the visual complexity of the design.

Yes, this had to be a radio set. Somehow, this was the device the German was using to talk to me. I didn’t understand how it spoke in my ear without Lois hearing it, but that was just engineering as far as I was concerned. Like the questions I could ask about its miraculously small size, the lack of a power source, absence of an antenna — there must be hundred of those little problems. Regardless, this was a handset for talking to the aircraft.

Satisfied that I had understood the answer to one small conundrum of so many, I shoved the Nazi radio back in my pocket and drove over to the State Street Lounge. I needed a drink, something I never did.

I knew I was just a pale echo of my father.

Even though it was Sunday morning and the parking lot was empty, I knew from listening to Floyd chatter that the place would probably be open. The lighted sign in the window said “CLOSED,” just as the law required for the Lord’s Day, but the door was unlocked.

When I went inside, I found Midge wiping down tables. She was a small-boned woman, almost girlish, with black hair and big mole on one cheek. She looked like a three-quarter scale model of a Hollywood pin-up girl, especially in the red-trimmed white dress she was wearing instead of a uniform. I could see what Floyd liked about her.

“Oh, hey,” she said, flipping the grubby towel over her shoulder. The place was empty except for the two of us. “You’re Floyd’s friend, right?”

“Yes.” I had my hands in my pocket, feeling foolish and nervous. “Vernon Dunham.”

Midge popped her gum at me. “What can I do for you, Vernon Dunham?”

I had the sudden wish that she’d kiss me the way she kissed Floyd. It was the same wish I’d had for years, that the world would love me the way it loved him. He had two good legs, service medals, and a personality the girls went gaga over. Me, I limped, was too smart for my own good, and never seemed to say the right thing to anyone.

“I want a drink.” I’d said. Somewhere deep inside my heart, I apologized to Mom.

Pop went the gum. “We’re not open Sundays. Against the law to serve liquor, wine or beer.”

“I heard if I tipped big enough you’d give it to me.”

She smiled, lipstick as pink as her gum. It clashed terribly with the red trim of her dress. “Tip big enough, a fellow could get a lot of stuff around here.” Midge ran one tiny hand along the hem of the v-neck of her dress, flipping the fabric back just slightly.

It could have been a casual gesture, but it wasn’t. Despite myself, I felt a firm, hard rush to my groin, and my breathing got faster.

I was a virgin. I’d never gone with a girl who went for those games. I’d never seen Lois in less than a bathing suit, and didn’t expect to unless we got married. Which had never seemed likely.

Now, this little dark-haired woman was offering me something I’d dreamed about since junior high school, for just a bit of money. I probably had enough cash.

My hand drifted to my back pocket as Midge smiled at me.

Oh God, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t talk dirty with a girl like this, even though I knew exactly what she meant, exactly what I wanted. I could buy those kisses I’d longed for, and as much more as I could afford, just like I could buy that drink I’d longed for.

Then I’d be like Floyd and Dad. No one else might ever know, but I would. It wasn’t any big deal to Floyd, and with Dad, well, who could tell, but I would feel different, crossing a line I could never come back from.

Even worse, what if she was teasing me? It wouldn’t be the first time a girl had gotten my goat, just to laugh about it later.

“I, I… no thanks,” I blurted, my face red and hot.

She leaned forward and blew me a kiss, flipping her dress open far enough to show me the edges of a lacy white brassiere. “Your loss, honey.”

Face hot, breath heaving, groin aching, I stumbled through the door. Behind me, Midge laughed, her voice pealing like little silver bells.

In the parking lot, I banged my head against the steering wheel of the Cadillac until most of the pressure in my sinuses went away. Not to mention the pressure elsewhere. What did I stand for? What did I want? I had been ready to do one stupid thing, trying to drink away my troubles. It took the offer of another stupid thing to wake me up. I felt like I’d walked to the edge of the bridge and thought about jumping.

“By God,” I muttered to the dashboard, “I will never find myself on the inside a bottle. I will not be like Dad.”

Dad.

His name blew Midge right out of my thoughts like last year’s leaves. Last night I had been willing to let him go to the hospital alone. He was unconscious, but Doc Milliken had said Dad wasn’t in great danger. Every time I saw the old man, I got angry all over again with him, but now, since finding him in the trunk of my car, I pitied him.

My heart ached for him.

I really wanted to go look for him in Wichita, but there was no point. A hundred and fifty thousand people lived there, and I didn’t even know the name of the coffee shop where Deputy Truefield had lost him. For that matter, I realized, I didn’t know which hospital Doc Milliken had sent Dad to. There were several hospitals in Wichita. Why hadn’t he told me? That was strange.

What I could do for him was to drive out to Dad’s house and look around myself. Ollie Wannamaker had told Sheriff Hauptmann that the place looked like it had been tossed. I could well imagine what Ollie thought he saw, but I knew Dad’s habits, especially how he had been since Mom died. Unlike Ollie, I’d be able to tell which part of the mess was new and which was just housekeeping Dunham-style. Gosh only knew what Ollie might have missed in the chaos.

I started the Cadillac and headed out toward Wichita Highway. I passed just a few blocks from the police station, which made me wonder if there was any point in telling the entire story to Ollie — Nazis, airplane and all. Or maybe even approaching Chief Davis for help. I could throw myself on the mercy of the Augusta police department. If I was lucky, they’d put me in jail just to keep me safe.

But that wasn’t the right thing to do either. Anything I said to Ollie Wannamaker, or anyone else on the Augusta force, would get back to Sheriff Hauptmann within a day or two. And my confidence in Hauptmann was slipping fast. He kept acting strangely around me — nothing obvious, but enough to tip me that something was up. He was obviously working with CID to crack this Nazi thing and find the murderers of the late Captain Markowicz. Not to mention the real-live fake Captain Markowicz.

There was some angle that involved me, which was why he was looking through my notebooks. But obviously he wasn’t going to let me in on whatever was going on. Besides, Ollie had acted pretty odd when I talked to him about Floyd yesterday. Something was definitely happening around me, something that involved Dad and Floyd. It had to involve me.

That meant I was either under suspicion or I was being used for bait. I knew I wasn’t a Nazi, but the whole thing with the aircraft could be getting me in really big trouble. I still wanted to talk Floyd into turning ourselves in, but we’d been interrupted by the fire and I’d bet it would be this evening before he and I got a chance to discuss it. And then who to turn ourselves in to? There must have been an FBI office in Wichita. At this point I would much rather turn ourselves in there.

And then I’d lose the aircraft. I’d never see it again — they would haul it off to Wright Field or someplace even more secret out in the deserts of the west, and tear it apart.

I shook my head. Damnation, but that was a beautiful piece of machinery.

Even worse, if I wasn’t under any suspicion, that meant Sheriff Hauptmann really was using me for bait. I didn’t like the idea of Hauptmann hanging me out to dry in order to catch a few Nazis.

I laughed out loud at myself. My imagination was running away from me — things were bad enough with Dad and the fire at Mrs. Swenson’s boarding house. I didn’t need to conjure phantoms to make them worse. Heck, I could just go back to the beginning of the problems of the last two days and demand my envelope back from Mrs. Sigurdsen. But I figured my chances of that working out were slim. Regardless of whether the Head Librarian was one of the Nazi gang, she could probably break my neck by sheer force of character. The only reason I didn’t suspect her of beating Dad was that I couldn’t imagine her being willing to make that much noise.

Besides which, the library wasn’t open on Sundays. God-fearing folk generally went to church, while the rest of us slept in or read the paper. At least I hadn’t gone home last night. I’d probably be dead now if I had, killed in the fire or beaten by whoever set it, just the way they had beaten Dad.

There was a chilling thought.

My musings were interrupted by an odd sensation from the pocket into which I slipped the German radio handset — it was getting very warm, like the time in junior high school when Floyd had set my pants on fire. Was it the invisible German, coming back for more? He had been silent since asking me about Kansas.

I pulled the car off the road by the Whitewater River dike along the west edge of town. Augusta stretched behind me, sleepy in the autumn Sunday afternoon, except for the angry black pillar of smoke that still boiled into the sky from my destroyed home. The Whitewater flood plain stretched in front of me — willow trees, water meadows, ducks lifting off.

Fishing into my pocket, I pulled out the silvery handset. It was sufficiently hot to the touch that I dropped it on the seat. I didn’t know how much hotter it would get, and I didn’t want to scorch Doc Milliken’s leather upholstery, so I grabbed the floor mat from the passenger side foot well and laid that on the seat. I flipped the handset over onto the mat with my fingertips, blowing the heat off them afterward.

“Change of plans,” I said. This thing needed to go back to the f-panzer pronto. The heating up bugged me, but it was too small to be a bomb. I didn’t feel like I was in any particular danger. Rather, it appeared to be an electronics malfunction. Not immediately worrisome, but too much trouble to deal with here in the car. At the very least, it meant my German friend wouldn’t be bugging me any more. Maybe I could find a way to explain it to Lois after she cooled off, too.

At any rate, whatever the problem with the handset was, I didn’t need to haul this thing around the county with me. It would take some more time out of my day, but I had to take the silvery thing back to the Bellamys’ place. If it got hotter on the way, I’d deal with that. I didn’t want to submerge it in water, but at the least I could set on some open ground and wait to see if it burst into flames or something. Assuming nothing like that happened, I could drop the handset off, then go check around Dad’s place for myself.

I owed him that much.

I had to u-turn the Cadillac across Wichita Highway in order to head back through town. As I put it in gear, a high-pitched squeal gave me an instant headache. I’d never in my life heard an automobile make a noise like that. The car bucked and stalled, straddling the center of the highway.

Thank God it was Sunday morning — there was no refinery traffic, and most people were in church. And today, the rest of them were off fighting that fire. Even before I could touch the starter, it turned over on its own and the engine started up again.

That was weird. I knew quite a bit about engines from my work at Boeing, and that wasn’t possible. The engine hadn’t been dieseling, and the car wasn’t moving fast enough to restart itself. This had been the starter turning over, and starters didn’t just fire on their own. It seemed like the handset’s electrical problems were contagious.

The Cadillac’s horn started honking, echoing across the dike and the trees in the bottomland beyond. The car bucked again as I tried to switch it off — I hadn’t liked the sudden start and wanted to let everything cool down, until all the static discharge left the system or whatever was wrong had a chance to settle. Even as big as it was, I figured I could push the Cadillac to the other shoulder if need be. But now the engine wouldn’t shut off.

Then the radio came on, popping and hissing. There was another high-pitched, ear-splitting squeal. The tuner knob began to slowly turn by itself, as if an invisible hand had laid fingers upon it.

My hair prickled up, bumps rising on my arms. I wanted to leap from the car, but at the same time I was fascinated. I had never seen, or heard, anything like this. My spine shivered as the speakers wailed, the radio passing through the whole range of frequencies. Gospel music from Wichita, a news bulletin, an ad for fertilizer, a bellowing radio preacher, big band music, two different farm reports. It hit the end of its range and the knob reversed, the invisible hand starting back down again.

The radio settled down to a Negro gospel service out of Wichita. I reached for the knob, but it was stuck on that frequency. I turned the Cadillac off. This time the car died, just like it should. I pressed the starter. It cranked right up again, radio blurting back to life on the same gospel station.

Except for the radio being stuck on at the one station, the Cadillac now seemed willing to run again like a normal automobile. I finished the u-turn and headed back through town. What had made it behave this way? The engineer in me wanted to imagine weird magnetic fields, electrical disturbances in the atmosphere, but I knew that couldn’t be true. Hundreds of cars and trucks drove up and down Wichita Highway every day. Maybe thousands. Heck, it was a U.S. Highway, 54, that got long-haul traffic all the time. Somebody would have noticed if it was built over a huge hunk of magnetic ore, or an Indian burial ground, or something.

Or something. Right.

I drove slowly, keeping the speed down so that if I lost control again I wouldn’t kill myself or anyone else. With the glaring exception of the radio, the car continued to behave normally.

Forget magnetic anomalies, it was the handset from the f-panzer. That thing had to be a radio, although I could not imagine how a handset could be made so small. I’d seen plenty of radios in my work at Boeing. Miniaturizing the tubes alone would be an engineering challenge on par with the biggest projects ever considered. And it wasn’t just tubes. Circuit design, fabrication, the works. Whoever had buried my aircraft in the Arctic ice had also built a transceiver that was a miracle of engineering, a transceiver that the Nazi gang here in Butler County was using to track me and somehow take control of my car. Not to mention whisper in my ear.

That idea was plumb crazy. Radio didn’t work that way. In principle, you could use radio waves to send control signals for mechanical processes, but that would require extensive special equipment at the receiving end — servomotors and so forth. No one could build a receiver that would take over the electrical system of an ordinary automobile.

Which, of course, was what had just happened to me. On the other hand, no one could build that receiver in the first place, so if they could do one impossible thing, why not do another?

Hands clenched on the wheel, I made it through the middle of town, averting my eyes as I drove past the turn to the State Street Lounge. I didn’t think I could ever set foot in that place again.

Even though I felt like a circus freak — see the Unlucky Man, displayed for your edification ladies and gentlemen — no one on the streets of Augusta gave me a second glance. Gaining confidence in the Cadillac’s continued good behavior, I gradually accelerated as I headed out past the eastern edge of town.

The radio still stuck loudly on one station, I listened to colored folks praying and singing all the way back to the Bellamy place.