Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

ship-from my home town, at the Academy with me, shipmates before then in USS UTAH,

shoreleave drinking companion, only other officer in the ship who believed in

rocketry and space flight and read ‘those crazy magazines.” My number-one pa/And I

was forced to tell him: “Bud, you’re either somewhere northeast of us, give or take

twenty or thirty degrees, or somewhere southwest, same wide range of error, and

signal strength shows that you must be at least fifty miles over the horizon,

probably more; I’ve got no way to scale the reception.”

Bud chuckled. “That’s a lot of ocean.”

“How much gas do you have?”

“Maybe forty minutes. Most of the fighters don’t have as much. Hold the

phone; the skipper’s calling me.”

So I tried again for a minimum-no luck-swung back. “Lex loop to Victor Fox

Two guard.”

“Gotcha, boy. Skipper says we all ditch before the sun goes down. First I

land, then they ditch as close to me as possible. I’ll have hitchhikers clinging to

the float a/l night long-be lucky if they don’t swamp me.”

“What sea?”

“Beaufort three, crowding four.”

“Cripes. No white water here at all. Just long swells.”

“She’ll take it, she’s tough. But I’m glad not to have to dead-stick a

galloping goose. Gotta sign off,~ skipper wants me, it’s time. Been nice knowing

you.”

So at last I knew-too late-which lobe they were in, as it was already dark

with the suddenness of the tropics where I was, whereas the sun was still to set

where they were. That eliminated perhaps five hundred square miles. But it placed

them still farther away. . . which added at least a thousand square miles.

Suddenly out of the darkness endless searchlights shot straight up; the

Fleet C-in-C had canceled war-condition darken-ship rather than let Victor Fox Two

ditch- which was pretty nice of him because all those battleship admirals were

veterans of World War One, not one of them had wings, and (with no exceptions worth

noting) they hated airplanes, did not believe that planes were good for anything but

scouting (if that), and despised pilots, especially those who had not attended the

Academy (i.e., most of them).

I was still listening on Bud’s frequency and heard some most prayerful

profanity. At once Bud had a bearing on the battle line; our navigator had our

bearing and distance to the battle line; my talker to the bridge gave me the course

and distance VF-2 needed to home on, and I passed it to Bud. End of crisis-

-but not quite the end of tension. The squadron just barely had enough gas

to get home, and more than half of those pilots had never checked out on night

carrier landings.. . with no margin of fuel to let the landing officer wave a man

off for poor approach if there was any possible chance that his tail hook could

catch a wire. I am happy to report that every pilot got down safely although one did

sort of bend his prop around the crash barrier.

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Bud did almost have to make a dead-stick landing with a galloping goose. As

he was the only one who could land on water if necessary, he had to come in last.. .

and his engine coughed and died just as his tail hook caught the wire.

In one of Jack Williamson’s stories a character goes back in time and makes

a very slight change in order to effect a major change in later history.

Bud is Albert Buddy Scoles, then a lieutenant (junior grade), now a retired

rear admiral, and is the officer who in 1942 gathered me, Isaac Asimov, and L.

Sprague de Camp into his R&D labs at Mustin Field, Philadelphia, later solicited

help from all technically trained SF writers and, still later, just after World War

Two, set up the Navy’s first guided missile range at Point Mugu.

I do not assume that history would have changed appreciably had VF-2 been

forced to ditch.

But let’s assume a change in Buddy Scoles’ career just sufficient that he

would not have been in charge of those labs on 7 December 1941. It would not have to