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That had started right after he was assigned to the 509th. January, on the other hand, liked Tibbets even less than he liked Fitch. They all thought Tibbets was the greatest. Then they all started in about Tibbets' flying ability, even Fitch. "Won't matter to the old bull," Matthews said. "They keep busting under the takeoff load." "They let those Wright engines out too soon," Haddock said seriously. "You hope," January said under his breath. "He'll want to show that he wouldn't go down if it happened to him."
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He pointed at the wrecked B-29s that marked the end of every runway, planes whose engines had given out on takeoff. "He'll kill an engine at takeoff, I bet you anything," Fitch said. "What do you think he'll do to the general's man?" Matthews asked. Lewis and his crew were naturally unpopular, being Tibbets' favorites. "Why don't the strike plane have a name, though?" Haddock was saying.įitch said, "Lewis won't give it a name because it's not his plane, and he knows it." The others laughed. January sidled back to his mates to view the takeoff with them. The general's man had arrived, and now he was down there in the strike plane, with Tibbets and the whole first team. Their commander Colonel Tibbets had gone and bitched to La May in person, and the general had agreed the mission was theirs, but on one condition: one of the general's men was to make a test flight with the 509th, to make sure they were fit for combat over Japan. Word was out that General Le May wanted to take the 509th's mission away from it. Today, the first of August, there was something more interesting to watch than the usual Superfortress parade. The last quartet of this particular mission buzzed across the width of the island, and January dropped four more pebbles, aiming for crevices in the pile. January had observed hundreds of B-29s roar off the four parallel runways of the north field and head for Japan.
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From Mount Lasso they had an overview of the whole island, from the harbor at Wall Street to the north field in Harlem. He wandered away, back to the cairn he had been building. January, who was thirty-seven, didn't go for it.
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The rest of the crew were all in their mid-twenties like Fitch, and they liked the captain's bossy roughhouse style. Fitch was a bulky youth, thick-featured, pig-eyed-a thug, in January's opinion. "He's best because I make him be best, right, Professor?" "That's why he's the best," Matthews joked. He passed the flask on to Lieutenant Matthews, their navigator. He could drink it any way he pleased up here, out from under the eye of the group psychiatrist. Anyone who read more than the funnies was Professor to Fitch. "Practicing your bombing up here, eh, Professor?'' January wandered over and took the flask. The others grouped near Captain Fitch, who passed around his battered flask. What Captain January thought of the development he didn't say. When their pilot Jim Fitch joined them it became an official pastime, like throwing flares into the compound or going hunting for stray laps. Captain January had gotten sick of it, and after he lit out for the hilltop a few times some of his crewmates started trailing him. The men of the 509th had played a million hands of poker, sitting in the shade of a palm around an upturned crate sweating in their skivvies, swearing and betting all their pay and cigarettes, playing hand after hand after hand, until the cards got so soft and dog-eared you could have used them for toilet paper. It was a mindless pastime, but so was poker. The largest cairn had four hundred stones in it. In July of 1945 on Tinian island in the North Pacific, Captain Frank January had taken to piling pebble cairns on the crown of Mount Lasso-one pebble for each B-29 takeoff, one cairn for each mission. You may also be interested in Kim Stanley Robinson's related story, " A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" (external link). It has been selected and introduced for us this week by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson. This week's story was first published in Universe 14 (ed.