• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4563 0

Collyer; a chess player ought to be good with a knife, whittling sounds philosophical too and they say chess is a philosopher's game, or maybe it was a mechanic who will be a corporal tomorrow or a corporal who will be a sergeant tomorrow even if it is over because they can give a corporal another stripe even on the way home or at least before he is demobbed. Or maybe they'll even still keep the Air Force since a lot of people came into it out of the cradle before they had time to learn to do anything else but fly, and even in peace these ones will still have to eat at least now and then-' still backing away because Bridesman was still waving him back, still keeping the Alclis aligned; '-out here three years, and nothing, then one night he sits in a locked hangar with a penknife and a lapful of wooden blocks and does what Ball nor McCudden nor Mannock nor Bishop nor none of them ever did: brought down a whole German general: and get the barnacle at Buckingham Palace his next leave-except that there wont be any, there's nothing now to be on leave from, and even if there was, what decoration will they give for that, Bridesman?--AH right,' he said, 'all right, I'll cover my face too-'

Except that he wouldn't really need to now; the line of fire was already slanting into the ground, and this much farther away it would cross well down his chest. And so he took one last sight on the Aldis for alignment and bowed his head a little and crossed both arms before his face and said, 'All right.' Then the chattering rattle, the dusky rose winking in miniature in the watch-crystal on his lifted wrist and the hard light stinging (They were pellets of some sort; if he had been three feet from the muzzle instead of about thirty, they would have killed him as quickly as actual bullets would have. And even as it was, he had leaned into the burst, not to keep from being beaten back but to keep from being knocked down: during which-the falling backward-the angle, pattern, would have walked up his chest and he would probably have taken the last of the burst in his face before Bridesman could have stopped wednesday it.) bitter thock-thock-thock-thock on his chest and the slow virulent smell of burning cloth before he felt the heat.

'Get it off!' Bridesman was shouting. 'You cant put it out! Get the Sidcott off, damn it!' Then Bridesman was wrenching at the overall too, ripping it down as he kicked out of the flying boots and then out of the overall and the slow invisible smoldering stink. 'Are you satisfied now?' Bridesman said. 'Are you?'

'yes, thanks,' he said. 'It's all right now. Why did he have to shoot his pilot?'

'Here,' Bridesman said, 'get it away from the bus-' catching up the overall by one leg as though to fling it away until he caught hold of it.

'Wait,' he said. 'I've got to get my pistol out. If I dont, they'll charge me with it.' He took the pistol from the Sidcott's knee-pocket and dropped it into his tunic pocket.

'Now then,' Bridesman said. But he held on.

'Incinerator,' he said. 'We cant leave it lying about here.'

'All right,' Bridesman said. 'Come along,'

Til put it in the incinerator and meet you at the hut,'

'Bring it on to the hut and let the ba'I'man put it in the incinerator,'

'It's like the cracked record again, isn't it?' he said. Then Bridesman released his leg of the Sidcott though he didn't move yet.

Then you'll come along to the hut,'

'Of course,' he said. 'Besides, I'll have to stop at the hangars and tell them to roll me in.---But why did he have to shoot his pilot, Bridesman?'

'Because he is a German,' Bridesman said with a sort of calm and raging patience. 'Germans fight wars by the rule-books. By the book, a German pilot who lands an undamaged German aeroplane containing a German lieutenant general on an enemy aerodrome is either a traitor or a coward, and he must die for it. That poor bloody bugger probably knew while he was eating his breakfast sausage and beer this morning what was going to happen to him. If the general hadn't done it here, they would probably shoot the general himself as