Arkwright (7 page)

Harry's apartment was small but not uncomfortable; the living room furniture was old yet well made, the rugs a little worn out, the bookcases as stuffed as one would expect of a lifelong reader. Like his late friend Nathan, Harry was evidently a widower. Kate noted several framed photos atop the fireplace mantel, pictures of Harry with a woman who could only have been his wife, the most recent of them only a few years old. It wasn't hard to guess that he'd moved here after she passed away.

“Gramps is in the bathroom,” Jim said as he showed Kate in. “I just dropped in for a visit. I'll be off soon.” A meaningful glance at an antique wall clock. “Almost time for me to go to work.”

“This late in the day?”

“I'm an ER physician at Pennsylvania Hospital, just a few blocks away.” A shrug and a grin. “Evening shift this week … lucky me.”

She was about to reply when the bedroom door opened and Harry emerged. He wasn't in his wheelchair today but instead stood upright, leaning upon a wheeled stroller. “My grandson, the doctor,” he said as he pushed the stroller into the living room. “When my ticker gives out and they rush me in, his nurse gets to be the one to say…”

“‘It's dead, Jim.'” His grandson rolled his eyes at what was apparently an old joke. “Not for a while, Gramps.”

“Yeah, but I hope I'm around to hear it. God, I love that line.”

“Yeah, you should have written for
Star Trek
.” Jim helped his grandfather to an armchair near the window and then picked up his overcoat from the nearby couch. “Can I get you anything before I leave, Miss…?”

“Kate … just Kate. No, but thanks, anyway.” She couldn't help but give him her best smile. “Very nice to meet you, Jim.”

“Pleased to meet you too.” He paused to bend over Harry and give him a quick kiss on the top of the head. “Tomorrow, same time?”

“Sure. Bring some women next time.” Harry cast a mock-surprised look in Kate's direction. “Oh! Never mind—I've got one already!”

“Watch out for him,” Jim said to Kate. “He's a dirty old man.” Then he headed for the door. “Bye.”

Harry waited until the door closed behind him before he turned to Kate. “I'll have you know that he's single, straight, and very much available.”

Kate had already noticed the absence of a wedding ring. “I'll keep it in mind.”

“Just saying.” Harry pushed away his stroller, stretched out his legs. He wore a baggy cardigan and old jeans and looked a bit frailer than he had at the funeral. Kate wondered if it had been Jim's idea to move his grandfather into senior citizen housing near the hospital. “So … still persuing the life and times of Nathan Arkwright, are we?”

“I read his book—what there is of it, anyway. He didn't get very far, but he did talk about how he met … um, the Legion of Tomorrow.”

Harry grinned. “Like the name? I know it's kinda childish, but that's what we've called ourselves ever since.”

“I'm a little surprised, I guess, that you've continued to get along after all these years. I can understand why you and Grandpapa still know Maggie—she became your agent, after all—but he makes it sound like you and he were rivals from the start.”

“Well, yeah, we were, sort of. I made my first sale to
Startling Stories
just a few months before he broke into
Astounding,
so we came in at the same time. But Nat was never drafted, so he was able to keep writing while most of us—Bob Heinlein, Ted Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Sprague de Camp—either got shipped off or were otherwise involved in the war effort. Your grandfather did his bit by working as an engineer at the navy shipyard here in town—he and Bob shared an office, in fact—but otherwise, he remained a civilian.”

“So he came to Philly?”

Harry nodded. “After he got his degree, he moved here for a while. That was when—”

He suddenly stopped. Looking out the window, he was quiet for a few moments. “Damn,” he said quietly. “You'd have to bring that up, wouldn't you?”

“I'm sorry, but I don't—”

“Did he mention that Maggie and I were an item for a little while?” Kate shook her head, and Harry shrugged. “Guess that's something he didn't feel was worth mentioning. Or maybe it was a little too close to something he didn't like to talk about.” He sighed and went on. “Yeah, anyway, Mags and I started seeing each other just before the war. Nat was in Boston by then, but a degree from Central High was the furthest my formal education went. My folks couldn't afford to send me to college, so I went to work in my dad's machine shop instead. But every now and then, I'd take the train to New York on the weekends to see Maggie, and it wasn't long before we became pretty serious about each other. But then Pearl Harbor happened, and since my family's always had some navy blood, I didn't wait for Uncle Sam to draw my number. I kissed my best girl good-bye, went to the nearest recruitment office, and got in the fight.”

He gestured toward the shelf where Kate had noticed pictures of him and his wife. “See that one on the end?” he asked, pointing to a small black-and-white snapshot of a group of bare-chested young men standing beneath the wing of a B-29 Superfortress. “That's my Seabee group in the South Pacific. I spent the summer of '45 on a small island in the Marianas.” He paused meaningfully. “Does the name Tinian ring any bells for you?”

“No, it—” Then she remembered history, and her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. You mean you were there for…?”

“Yes, I was. And so was George.”

 

8

The Army Transport Command C-53s from Albuquerque began arriving in late afternoon. One at a time, only a couple of minutes apart from each other, the Dakotas touched down on the broad, two-mile-long landing strip navy construction crews had spent the last few months bulldozing and paving down the length of the small island. The transports followed three B-29s that had flown in earlier that day from Kirtland Air Force Base in Texas; just offshore, the USS
Indianapolis
lay at anchor, having arrived from San Francisco shortly after dawn.

It was July 26, 1945, and Harry Skinner had a gut feeling that something big was about to happen.

PO First Class Skinner leaned against a jeep, idly smoking a Lucky as he watched the most recent plane taxi toward a nearby row of hangars. The largest hangar was specially air-conditioned, and although no one except flight crews and aircraft engineers were now being allowed in there, everyone knew what they were doing. A B-29 from the 509th Composite Group,
Enola Gay
, was parked inside, and it was rumored that its bomb bay had been specially converted to carry a larger-than-usual payload.

Harry had an idea what it was, but he carefully kept his mouth shut. It wasn't just the fact that he didn't want to draw the ire of navy intelligence officers. Over the past few years, he'd discovered that it wasn't wise to show how smart he was. Most of the guys he worked with were much like himself, working-class kids from the East Coast; they were often poorly educated, and some of them had just enough brains to operate a bulldozer or a crane. Harry didn't want to have to try explaining his suspicions to them; they probably wouldn't have understood or believed him, anyway.

The last C-53 came to a halt in front of
Enola Gay
's hangar, its twin props winding down. Unlike the others, this one apparently carried passengers; Harry could see them through the side windows. He watched as a ground crewmen pushed a ladder to its hatch, and he immediately stood up and buttoned his shirt when he recognized the first passenger to emerge from the plane. General Curtis LeMay had visited Tinian many times over the past several months and was notorious for chewing out enlisted men for sloppy appearance even though they were working in the island's broiling heat. Harry dropped his cigarette and was about to make himself look busy when he caught sight of one of the men who followed LeMay down the ladder.

“Oh, man,” he muttered. “That can't be.”

Yes, it was. George Hallahan.

George wasn't in uniform but instead wore civilian clothes, a fedora pulled low over his head. He was standing beside the plane, waiting for the rest of the passengers to disembark, when Harry walked across the field toward him. George turned around just as Harry was about to tap him on the shoulder, and at first it seemed as if he didn't recognize him. Then his mouth fell open, and a smile stretched across his face.

“Harry Skinner … well, I'll be damned.”

“George, you old…” Harry was about to grab his friend in a bear hug, but then he caught a sidelong glance from General LeMay and stopped himself. “What are you doing here?”

The smile faded slightly; too late, Harry realized that he'd said the wrong thing. “Can't really talk about it,” George murmured as he offered a handshake. “I'm … well, a consultant. Call it an inspection.”

Harry nodded. That was probably as accurate a description as George could give without revealing too much. “It's been ages,” he said as they shook hands. “Last time I heard from you, you were still at MIT.”

“Yes, well…” The smile returned, albeit a bit more tentatively. “I received my doctorate just in time to be recruited for an advanced research program.”

“Uh-huh. I see.” Harry looked past him. LeMay was no longer paying attention to them. “The same sort of operation I've been working on here, I take it.”

George didn't reply at once but instead glanced over his shoulder at the other passengers coming off the plane. For the moment, no one was looking their way. “Let's take a little walk,” he said quietly. “You can show me the field.”

They strolled away from the C-53, heads lowered as if they were examining the runway apron. Nearby was a long, shallow pit that the Seabees had excavated in the concrete hardstand; its purpose was to allow a ground crew to load an unusually large payload into a B-29's underbelly. Harry guided George toward it.

“No one's come right out and told us what's going on,” Harry said, keeping his voice low as he pointed out the pit, “but I think I know.”

George hesitated. “I'm under security restrictions not to discuss what we're doing,” he said at last, “so I can't say anything, but—” He stopped to think about it a little. “Let me ask you something. Have you been keeping up with
Astounding
lately?”

The question, seemingly off topic, caught Harry by surprise. “Uh … yeah, sort of. My dad sends it to me. Mail always takes a while to get here, so I'm a few issues behind, but—”

“Did you read a story called
Deadline
? It was by Cleve Cartmill, and it was in the March issue last year.”

Harry had to think back a bit. “Isn't that the one about the two alien races who are fighting a war, and one of them devises an atomic—”

“That's the one.” George cut him off before Harry could say something he shouldn't. “Reread it if you get a chance, and keep in mind that it caused enough concern among some of my colleagues that army intelligence officers paid John Campbell a little visit to ask how Cartmill might have gotten his information.”

Reading the story again was out of the question. Magazines sent from home tended to get passed around the barracks before ending up as toilet paper; Harry seldom kept the issues of
Astounding
and
Amazing
his father put in the mail. Nonetheless, he whistled under his breath. “No kidding?”

“No kidding … and that's about as much as I can tell you.”

Someone yelled George's name, and they looked back toward the hangar. The rest of General LeMay's group were starting to go inside; an MP was walking toward him and Harry. “Better head over there,” Harry said. “I'll walk with you.”

“All right.” George nodded as they turned away from the loading pit. “Let's keep what we were talking about to ourselves, okay?” Harry nodded, and George changed the subject. “I'm sorry to hear about you and Maggie. That's a real shame.”

Harry gave him a sharp look. “Come again?”

“I heard that you broke up. Nat told me in a letter that he and Maggie were…”

Harry felt his heart suddenly go cold. He stopped walking. “What about Nat and Maggie? I haven't heard anything from her in weeks, and Nat hasn't written me in almost a year.”

Harry had seen Nathan Arkwright's stories in
Astounding
. The Galaxy Patrol series in particular had become popular among readers, and he'd figured that Nat was too busy writing for Campbell to send a letter to a buddy in the service. But when he saw the surprised and … God help him,
pitying
 … look on George's face, he realized this assumption was in error.

“Oh no.” George's face became pale, his eyes wide. “Oh, God … Harry, I didn't know. She told me she'd written you a letter, and I thought … I assumed … you'd received it already.”

“The mail is slow getting here. I told you, it sometimes takes…” Harry swallowed something hard that had formed in his throat. “Are you telling me that Maggie has started … you mean, she and Nat are…?”

George looked down at the ground, slowly nodded. “I'm so sorry. I thought you already knew.”

“I … I … Maggie's going out with…?”

“Dr. Hallahan?” By then, the MP had caught up with them. “General LeMay wants you to come along.” He gave Harry a hard look, silently admonishing the lowly petty officer for distracting a civilian scientist from an important task.

George nodded and then turned to Harry again. “Look, I have to go. Maybe we can get together again, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry murmured. “Go.”

George gave his arm a brief squeeze that was meant to be commiserative, and then he fell in beside the MP as they returned to the hangar where
Enola Gay
was being kept. Harry watched them walk away. All at once, the sun was no longer hot, he could barely feel the ground beneath his feet, and New York was on the far side of the Moon.