In the meantime, with a worried look still on her face, Barbara sat at a
small table drinking hot chocolate while her companion, in the chic blue
WAVES suit, enjoyed a coke.
“Hot chocolate will make you fat,” said Belle Mason, Barbara’s new
friend.
“I’m fat already,” Barbara smiled. “An even hundred and fifty.”
“You’re big, not fat,” her companion corrected. “That’s not a bad weight
at all for your height. What are you to do for the WAVES?”
“That’s just it.” Barbara’s frown deepened. “I don’t know much about
anything but cooking, housework, and laundry.”
“Home laundry?”
“No, steam laundry. I know you’ll think I was silly, but just out of
high-school I went into a laundry to work. I’ve never done anything
else.”
“You liked it, of course, or you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“Yes, I like the nice, clean smell of the shiny white sheets and pillow
cases, and the cozy, warm feeling of everything. I like to run the
sheets through the mangle, fold them just right, then run them through
again. I like to stack them up, just right, in clean white piles.
“Oh, I guess I’m hopeless,” Barbara sighed. “Just an old hag of a
laundry worker. What can the WAVES do with a creature like that?”
“You’ll be just wonderful!” her companion beamed.
“Won-wonderful!” Barbara stared.
“Sure! They’ll make a parachute rigger out of you.”
“Parachute rigger? What’s that?”
“You know that all fighting airmen wear parachutes, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course!”
“And that those parachutes often save their lives, in fact, have already
saved thousands of lives?”
“Yes, but—”
“Parachutes don’t just grow on trees like walnuts. They have to be made
with great care and arranged with greater care. The rigger is the one
who packs them into their bags.”
“Oh! I’d love that!”
“Sure you would. And it’s a tremendously important job. One slip is all
it takes. If a parachute is folded wrong, some fine fellow comes
shooting down, down, thousands of feet to his death. But you—you love
to do things just right, even bed sheets.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you’ll be the best there is. Good parachute riggers are hard to
get. Of course,” Belle went on, “you don’t just fold parachutes and pack
them. You select large ones for large people.”
“And small ones for small people!”
“Sure! In some of them you pack iron rations, food for a day or so. In
others you’ll put light pneumatic rubber rafts and fishing line—that’s
in case the flier might land in the sea.
“Then, of course, there are paper balloons to be rigged for dropping
food and medicine, and small silk ones for dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Yes, of course, the dogs of war.”
“Real dogs?”
“Certainly! Dogs have played an important part in all wars. They carry
messages, keep the night watches, and warn their masters of approaching
enemies. Yes, they have their parachutes, and many of them beg to have
their chutes strapped on.”
“Do they really like dropping from the sky?”
“Oh, don’t they, though? And that reminds me. I don’t want to frighten
you but, because of the great importance of their work, and so they will
realize to the full just how important it is, there is talk of having
each parachute rigger make at least one parachute landing.”
“What! You mean—” Barbara appeared to shrink up in her chair. “You mean
I’ll have to drop from way up in the sky?”
“You might be asked to.”
“I’d die.” Barbara’s face paled.
“Oh, no you wouldn’t. Thousands are doing it every day.”
“I’m so big, I’d go right on down into the earth.” Barbara laughed,
nervously.
“Oh, no! Parachutes are made to fit their owners. Some are made for
dropping five hundred pound antiaircraft guns. But don’t let that worry
you,” Belle hastened to add. “You may never be asked to jump.
‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ I didn’t think that up,
but it’s good all the same.”
“One thing still worries me—” Barbara said a moment later.
“What’s that?”
“My interview. My roommate just went to take hers.”
“You may forget that.” Belle smiled an odd smile. “You’ve practically
had yours already.”
“I? Had mine?”
[Illustration: You Mean I’ll Have To Drop From the Sky?]
“Sure. I’m one of the examiners. This is my hour off. When your time
comes, just ask to be examined by Ensign Belle Mason. We’ll get it over
with in a jiffy.
“And now—” Belle stood up. “I must get back to my post and help solve
other cases that are really difficult. It’s nice to have had a talk with
you.”
“It—it’s been wonderful.” Then Belle Mason was gone.
That evening after they had eaten their dinner in an attractive college
dining room, the two girls, Sally and Barbara, walked slowly back to
their room.
Already Sally was beginning to know what her examiner had meant when she
said, speaking of the life at Mt. Morris, “You’ll love it.”
Sally had never even dreamed of a college education. There was not
nearly enough money for that, but now here she was a student in a real
college.
“It’s quite an old college, isn’t it?” Barbara said.
“One of the oldest in New England,” Sally agreed. “And one of the most
beautiful. See how the sun shines through those great, old elms.”
“And how the ivy clings to the red brick walls. It’s wonderful. I could
almost forgive the war, just because it’s given us a new sort of life.
But, oh, gee!” Barbara exclaimed. “Just, think of having to drop from
way up there in the sky!”
“Who said we had to?” Sally demanded sharply.
“Not all of us, just me, perhaps.”
Barbara told her of the impromptu interview.
“Well, if you have to go up, I’ll go with you,” Sally declared.
“You wouldn’t!”
“Why not? If I’m to work with radio, I may be sent up as a radioman for
a bomber. Then I’ll want to know just how to step out into thin air.”
“All right!” Barbara exclaimed. “It’s a date. If I step through a hole
in the sky, you’re to come stepping right after me.”
“It’s a date,” Sally agreed.
That evening Barbara went to a movie with one of the girls who had come
in on the same train. Left to herself, Sally sat for a long time in her
dark room just thinking.
Those were long, long thoughts. She had been there long enough to
realize as never before what a change was to come into her life.
“I’m in for the duration,” she thought with a thrill and a shudder. How
long would the duration be? No one knew that. One thing was sure. Life,
all kinds of life, grows broader.
“It’s like a river on its way to the sea,” she thought. The life of the
WAVES was sure to be like that. Just now they were not asked to go
outside the United States. How long would this last? Not long, perhaps.
“I almost hope it won’t,” she told, herself. And yet she shuddered
afresh at the thought of life aboard a transport or a destroyer with
wolf-packs of enemy subs haunting the black waters.
“But there’s C. K.’s radio,” she told herself. “A sea trip would give me
a grand chance to try it out.”
That this radio was a marvelous invention she did not doubt, yet the
modest, over-careful old man had forbidden her to mention it to a single
person who might be interested in its use and promotion.
“I may discover flaws in it,” had been his word. “There is always plenty
of time. You just take these two sets and try them out, test them in
every way you can. Then let me know what you discover.”
“‘Let me know what you discover,’” she whispered. She had made a
discovery of a sort, that very afternoon. Something very like a radio
message in code had come in on her secret wave length, where it was
thought no messages had ever been sent.
“I’ll try it again,” she told herself. Springing to her feet, she
dragged the black box from its hiding place.
With the lights still off, she turned on a switch to watch the many
tubes glow red. After twisting two dials and adjusting one of them very
carefully, she listened intently and, after a moment’s wait, was
thrilled once again by the low “put—put—put (wait) put—put (wait)
put—put—put” again.
After turning a dial half around, she listened again. The sound came,
but this time very faintly.
Yes, even as she listened, there came another “put—put—put.” It was
louder and of a different quality of sound.
“Ah!” she breathed. “Two of you!”
So she worked for an hour. At the end of that hour she knew there were
four “put-puts” out there somewhere. Were they radios of American
planes, enemy subs, or ships of our allies? She had no way of knowing.
Snapping off two switches, she turned on a third. After ten seconds of
waiting she whispered into her mouthpiece:
“I’m alone. Come on down, can you?”
After that she whispered: “That’s swell!”
Two minutes later Nancy came tiptoeing into the dark room.
“What’s the meaning of all this darkness and secrecy?” she whispered
low.
“It’s for effect,” Sally laughed. “Close the hatch softly and sit down
here beside me on the deck. I’ve something for you to hear.”
Sally turned on the radio. Then as the “put-put” began, she turned the
dial to catch the different grades of sound.
“That’s someone broadcasting in code,” she declared.
“Sounds more like a mouse chewing a board,” Nancy laughed.
“All the same, it’s code of some sort.” Sally insisted. “And I’m going
to figure it out. Trouble is, it comes in low and indistinct.”
“An outside aerial would help, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s one on top of this building.”
“There is?” Sally exclaimed. “Then we’ll run a wire up to it. But how
will we get it up there without being seen?”
“Let’s see.” Nancy counted up to six on her fingers. Then she slipped
out through the door.
She was back almost at once with the good news that her room was
directly over Sally’s. “We can run the wires along the heat pipes,” she
explained. “There’s even a pipe running from my room to the attic,
though I can’t see why.”
“Even then we’ll not be on the roof,” Sally mourned.
“There are two gable windows on each side of the attic,” Nancy said.
“All you have to do is to get up to the attic. You can step right out on
the roof from a window.”
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me you have a key to the door at the
foot of the attic stairway?” Sally laughed.
“No, but I have quite a way with locks. I think it can be arranged,”
said Nancy. “But, Sally,” she protested. “You’d think we were sweet
sixteen and in a boarding school instead of grown young ladies sworn in
to serve America—”
“We’ll serve America in a big way,” Sally insisted stoutly, “if only we
get this secret short wave doing its bit. You just wait and see! And I’m
going to get my connection with that aerial on the roof sooner than
soon.”