“I grew up, as every child must,” Sally began. “Until I was fifteen we
weren’t rich, not terribly poor either so—”
“Middle class,” the examiner murmured. “Best people in the world.”
“And then something happened,” Sally announced.
“What was that?”
“I was in a meadow looking for a meadowlark’s nest when a radio fell
from the sky.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance be kidding me—” Marjory Mills’s eyes opened
wide.
“No—” Sally sat up straight. “No, I wouldn’t. It wasn’t a big radio,
only a tiny one.”
“How far did it fall?”
“About seventy thousand feet.”
“Only about fourteen miles. Not much of a tumble after all.” Once again
Marjory Mills’s eyes were wide.
“It didn’t hit the ground very hard. It wasn’t broken.”
[Illustration: Ensign Mills Interviewed Sally]
“No, I suppose not.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” Sally talked rapidly. “It was attached to what was
left of a large, paper balloon. As it went up, taking the radio with it,
the balloon expanded. It got larger and larger. At seventy thousand feet
the balloon burst and the radio came down.”
“I see,” said Marjory Mills.
“No—you don’t see. At least, I’m quite sure you don’t.” Sally half
apologized. “The radio had been sent up by a very nice old man who
wanted to know about the weather. As it went up, the radio, a sending
set, broadcast certain information about the weather. Don’t ask me how
because I don’t know all about that. All I knew at the time was that
attached to the radio was a card and on the card was written: ‘If the
finder of this radio will return it to C. K. Kennedy at Ferndale he will
receive a five dollar reward!’”
“And you needed a new spring dress, so you returned the radio.”
“Exactly! How did you ever guess that?” They joined in a merry laugh.
“But I’m not joking.” Sally’s face sobered. “It’s every bit true.”
“Of course,” was the quick response. “Tell me the rest.”
“Well, you know, that nice old man, C. K. Kennedy, had lived in my own
town for three years and I’d never heard of him. He owned a tiny house
down by the river. Back of the house was his shop, where he invented
things.”
“Oh! Then he was an inventor!”
“Sure he is! When I brought him the radio I asked him why he sent it up
into the sky. He told me all about it, how he could learn all sorts of
things about how cold it would be, when it would rain, and all that just
by sending up radios to listen in for him.
“That’s the way it started.” Sally heaved a sigh. “Old C. K.—everyone
called him that and I never knew his first name—he was so kind and told
me so much that I went back again, lots of times.
“By and by I started helping him. Just doing little things. I told
people how good he was with radios and they started bringing them to be
fixed. We came to have quite a business. As soon as high school was over
I worked there all the time.”
“You must have made quite a lot of money.”
“Oh, no, not so much. You see,” Sally leaned forward, “we were like some
very fine surgeons. We charged what people could afford to pay.”
“I see.”
“And there are lots more poor people than rich ones.”
“Always.”
“When a little lame boy came in with a very cheap radio that got the
stations all jumbled up, we put in more transformers and tubes,
practically made a new radio out of it. Then it worked fine.”
“And then you charged him—”
“Just a dollar.”
“But when a rich man brought you his big fussy radio that would get
Berlin, Tokio, London, and maybe Mars, you charged him—”
“Plenty!” Sally laughed.
“Yes, your old C. K. must have been a fine man, but what about the
inventions?”
“Oh, that—” Sally frowned. “He’s such a sensitive old man, C. K. is. We
invented something quite wonderful—that is, _he_ did. That was quite a
while ago. I didn’t know much about it but we could ride about at night
in his rattly old car, and every now and then he’d stop and say: ‘See!
Some young fellow off there is operating a sending radio.’ We could have
driven right up to his door if we wanted to, but we never did.”
“It was a radio-spotter!”
“Yes, and C. K. said it was the best one ever made.”
“What came of it?”
“Nothing. You see, C. K. was very fond of his country. He thought Uncle
Sam should have his invention. So Mother and I fixed him up the best we
could—he just wasn’t interested in clothes—and we sent him off to
Washington. And,” Sally sighed deeply, “he just couldn’t stand waiting.
They kept him waiting three days. Then, because he was old and a little
bit shabby they thought he didn’t know much, so—”
“So nothing came of it?”
“Just nothing. C. K. came back discouraged and downhearted, but pretty
soon we were working as hard as ever. And now,” Sally’s eyes shone, “you
just ought to see—”
The light in Sally’s eyes faded. Just in time she caught herself. She
had been about to betray the secret of the black box up there in her
room.
“I—I can’t tell you,” she apologized. “I just must not. It’s his
secret.”
“Of course. That’s all right,” Marjory Mills agreed. “That really
doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters just now is, how do you fit
in with the WAVES?”
“Yes—yes—that’s it.” Sally leaned forward, eager and alert.
“I’ll just go down our little list,” Marjory Mills smiled. “You can tell
me which category you’d like to try for the sixty-four dollar question.
Now, listen carefully and tell me when to stop. Here they are:
Secretarial Work, Typing, Bookkeeping, Aviation Ground Work, Parachute
Rigging, Operating a Link Trainer—” To all this Sally shook her head.
But when the examiner read, “Communication, including radio,” she sat up
with a start to exclaim:
“That’s it!”
“Yes,” Marjory Mills agreed. “That, beyond a doubt, is it. Ultimately
you’ll go to a special school for perfecting your training. You’ll need
to know about sending and receiving in code, blinker signaling, flag
signaling, and a lot more.
“But first,” she settled back in her chair, “you’ll have to stay right
here in Mt. Morris College, learning; for the most part, things that
have nothing to do with communication.”
“Oh, must I?” Sally cried in sudden dismay.
“You’ll love it.” Marjory Mills’s words carried conviction. “When it’s
all over you’ll agree, I’m sure, that we’ve made a real sailor out of
you and that you would not have missed it for anything.”
“And after that, special school?” Sally asked eagerly.
“After that perhaps you’ll find yourself in an airplane directing tower,
saying to the pilots of great Flying Fortresses: ‘Come in, forty-three.
All right, sixty-four, you’re off’, and things like that. Thrilling,
what?”
“Wonderful, and after that perhaps I’ll be on some small airplane
carrier in a convoy crossing the Atlantic.”
“Yes, just perhaps. There is a law before Congress now which, if passed,
will permit us to send WAVES on sea voyages and to service overseas. The
WACS are already there.”
“Oh! Congress must pass that law.” Sally half rose in her chair. Again
she was thinking of her secret in the black box. “They just must pass
that law.”
“Don’t hope too much,” the examiner warned. “‘Ours not to reason why—’”
“‘Ours but to do or die’,” Sally finished in a whisper.
And so her interview came to an end.
* * * * *
In the meantime Nancy McBride was going through her examination with
much the same result. She too was a radio bug. She and her lame brother
had been radio hams since she was a dozen years old. Though she had
lived in another small city, she and Sally had been good friends for
some time. That was why Sally had dared trust her with C. K.’s secret
and one of her much treasured black boxes.
“Oh!” she had exclaimed on seeing Nancy on the train that carried her to
Mt. Morris and her new home. “You’re really going to be a WAVE!”
“Surest thing!” Nancy had thrown her arms about her. “And you, too!”
“That’s right,” Sally agreed. “Oh, boy!” she had whispered when they had
found a seat together. “Do you take the load off my mind!”
“Why? How come?” Nancy demanded in great surprise.
“Shush, it’s a secret.” Sally’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s a deep
secret. You know old C. K.?”
“Yes, of course. He’s given Bob—that’s my brother, you know—and me a
lot of fine suggestions.”
“Well, he and I have been working on something for weeks and weeks. It’s
a lot too deep for me, but it’s a radio that works with wave-lengths
shorter than any that have been used yet. You know what that might
mean?”
“Yes, I—I guess so. You could send messages to someone having the same
sort of radio and no one else could hear them.”
“Not a soul.”
“Wonderful! Did you get it worked out?”
“Yes, only a few days before I was to leave, I took one portable radio
to a place twenty miles away and talked to C. K. back there in his shop.
We could hear each other plainly. That was a great day for C. K.”
“And for you.”
“Yes, but a greater one came when he took me into his shop that day
before I left and said: ‘Sally, I want you to take these two black boxes
with you.’”
“‘But, C. K.,’ I said, ‘those are your two secret, secret radios, your
choicest possessions!’
“‘I can make more of them.’ That’s what he said. Then he went on, ‘Once
I tried to give one of my inventions to our country. I failed and later
someone stole it from me. Now, Sally, it’s your turn—’”
“How strange!” Nancy whispered. “What did he mean?”
“That’s what I asked him,” Sally whispered excitedly. “He said I was to
take these radios with me, that I was to get someone who could be
trusted to help me and, as I found time, to test the radios, listen in
for any other radios that might be using those wave-lengths, do all I
could to see what could be accomplished with them to aid our country.”
“That,” Nancy said, “is the strangest thing I ever heard.”
“Not so strange after all,” Sally said soberly. “He knew I was going
first to a school close to the sea where I might listen for messages.
Then, too, I am to be a WAVE. Perhaps I shall travel in a convoy across
the sea. What a chance that will be to try out the radios!”
“Yes, what a chance!”
“Nancy,” Sally whispered tensely, “will you be the one who can be
trusted? Will you join me in testing C. K.’s radios?”
“Why, I—” Nancy hesitated. “Yes! Yes, I will. You are my friend. C. K.
is my friend. I also love America, and want to help, so why not?”
And that is how it came about that, as they walked slowly back to their
staterooms on a ship that was a ship in name only, Sally and Nancy
talked of radio and of the day when they would be full-fledged WAVES
serving their country.
“And here’s hoping they put us on an honest-to-goodness ship!” Sally
exclaimed.
“Here’s hoping,” Nancy echoed.