Nothing is quite so concentratedly heavy as an electronics chassis with a transformer mounted on it, and four of them make a back-wrenching load.
The adjutant was already hauling the servicing platform across the concrete floor to the cowling of the Piper Cub.
“Get your stuff set,” he said. “I’ll fuel her up and check the oil.”
“All right. Doesn’t look like she needs much gas.”
“Don’t you ever stop talkin’? Let’s move.”
McDonough lowered his load to the cold floor beside the plane’s cabin, feeling a brief flash of resentment. In daily life Martinson was a job printer who couldn’t, and didn’t, give orders to anybody, not even his wife. Well, those were usually the boys who let rank go to their heads, even in a volunteer outfit. He got to work.
Voices sounded from the shack, and then Andy Persons, the commanding officer, came bounding over the sill, followed by two sleepy-eyed cadets. “What’s up?” he shouted. “That you, Martinson?”
“It’s me. One of you cadets, pass me up that can. Andy, get the doors open, hey? “There’s a Russki bomber down north of us, somewhere near Howells. Part of a flight that was making a run on Schenectady.”
“Did they get it?”
“No, they overshot, way overtook out Kingston instead.
Stewart Field hit them just as they turned to regroup, and knocked this baby down on the first pass. We’re supposed The rest of the adjutant’s reply was lost in a growing, echoing roar, as though they were all standing underneath a vast trestle over which all the railroad trains in the world were crossing at once. The sixty-four-foot organ reeds of jets were being blown in the night zenith above the fieldanother hunting pack, come from Stewart Field to avenge the hydrogen agony that had been Kingston.