It was that engineering discovery which put tomb-tappers into the back seats of the CAP’S putt-putts when the war finally beganfor the images in the toposcope goggles did not stop when the brain died.
The world at dawn, as McDonough saw it from three thousand feet, was a world of long sculptured shadows, almost as motionless and three-dimensional as a lunar landscape near the daylight terminator. The air was very quiet, and the Cub droned as gently through the blue haze as any bee, gaining altitude above the field in a series of wide climbing turns. At the last turn the plane wheeled south over a farm owned by someone Martinson knew, a man already turning his acres from the seat of his tractor, and Martinson waggled the plane’s wings at him and got back a wave like the quivering of an insect’s antenna. It was all deceptively normal.
Then the horizon dipped below the Cub’s nose again and Martinson was climbing out of the valley. A lake passed below them, spotted with islands, and with the brown barracks of Camp Cejwin, once a children’s summer camp but now full of sleeping soldiers. Martinson continued south, skirting Port Jervis, until McDonough was able to pick up the main line of the Erie Railroad, going northeast toward OtisviUe and Howells. The mountain through which the Otisville tunnel ran was already visible as a smoky hulk to the far left of the dawn.
McDonough turned on the radio, which responded with a rhythmical sputtering; the Cub’s engine was not adequately shielded. In the background, the C.O.‘s voice was calling them: “Huguenot to L-4. Huguenot to L-4.”