For several hours, therefore, McDonough could do pretty much as he liked with his prize. After only a little urging, Martinson got the Erie dispatcher to send an oxyacetylene torch to the Port Jervis side of the tunnel, on board a Diesel camelback. Persons, who had subsequently arrived in the Aeronca, was all for trying it immediately in the tunnel, but McDonough was restrained by some dim memory of high school experiments with magnesium, a metal which looked very much like this. He persuaded the C.O. to try the torch on the smeared wings first.
The wings didn’t burn. They carried the torch into the tunnel, and Persons got to work with it, enlarging the flak hole.
“Is that what-is-it still alive?” Persons asked, cutting steadily.
“I think so,” McDonough said, his eyes averted from the tiny sun of the torch. “I’ve been sticking the electrodes in there about once every five minutes. I get essentially the same picture. But it’s getting steadily weaker.”
“D’you think we’ll reach it before it dies?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I want to.”
Persons thought that over, lifting the torch from the metal.
Then he said, “You’ve got something there. Maybe I better try that gadget and see what I think.”
“No,” McDonough said. “It isn’t tuned to you.”
“Orders, Mac. Let me give it a try. Hand it over.”
“It isn’t that, Andy. I wouldn’t buck you, you know that; you made this squadron. But it’s dangerous. Do you want to have an epileptic fit? The chances are nine to five that you would.”
“Oh,” Persons said. “All right. It’s your show.” He re-sumed cutting.