Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (12 page)

“But I—but I’m so
big!
”

“Then why don’t you make an asset of your liability?” Cherry suggested. “Queens are supposed to be tall, aren’t they? Those handsome models whose photographs you see in all the magazines—they’re as big and bigger than you. Our swimming stars and tennis stars, whom the whole United States admires, are mostly stunning Amazons of girls. If you’d only accept yourself, Bessie, and cultivate your own particular brand of good looks—Why, my heavens,” Cherry said, laughing, “every girl is sure that she, and she alone, has some awful flaw in her appearance. Ten to one, no one else ever noticed or even thought that feature was a flaw at all!” Bessie thought for a moment. Then she said shyly,

“My husband thought I was nice-looking. And—and some of my friends think so.”
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“There, you see! If you’d stand up straight and be proud of your height, instead of stooping—and if you’d try not to bump into things, or take a little exercise—” Cherry stopped and laughed again. “Sometimes I think good looks is partly a state of mind. Now see, you called attention to your size, so everyone thought of you as fat.

When you are not fat at all! If
you
thought of
yourself
as nice-looking, you’d convince other people that you are.

And you really, truly are, you know.” Bessie blinked hard, and there was a suspicious moisture in her eyes. “I feel much happier about the whole thing,” she admitted.

“And no more dieting,” Cherry reminded her with a grin.

“No more dieting,” and Bessie added, as she rose with confidence from the mess table to her full, proud height, “because I don’t need to diet. I’m
meant
to be big!”

Cherry, walking down the coral-edged road to the Medical Headquarters tent, felt almost as much satisfaction in Bessie’s new self-confidence as Bessie herself.

c h a p t e r v i i

The Silent Flier

without warning one night, charlie came back.

Cherry was working alone, late, in the Medical Headquarters tent. She had been wondering when, if ever, her brother was going to return to Island 14. Suddenly there he was, filling the canvas doorway, his tall active figure, his keen blue eyes, his wind-blown hair, the very picture of air and speed and danger.

“Hi,” he said, as casually as if he had seen her yesterday and had not been risking his life in between times.

“Hi,” Cherry said faintly, in astonishment. “Well, well, Lieutenant A., where’ve
you
been?” She jumped up, smiling, trying to hide her relief. She formally offered him a chair, made of a crate, while he took a good tug at her black curls.

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“Oh, here and there,” her brother teased her. He caught her frown as she sat down, and he sighed. “Oh, all right! My team’s been flying a lot or stuff—plane parts, heavy trucks, tires, blood plasma—and some more men. Something certainly is up. You all right, Sis?”

“I’m fine.
I
haven’t been flying at twenty-five thousand feet, above the Himalayas like you. How are
you?
Don’t you freeze up there?”

Charlie smoothed his light hair and grinned. “It’s cold, all right. But we have fur-lined flying suits. So I’m okay.”

“Any Japs up there in the clouds?” Cherry asked cautiously.

Charlie looked annoyed. Cherry knew he did not like her to worry about him—her doubts filtered doubts into his own courage. “No Japs this trip. We fly awfully high to avoid ’em. You know, we’re unarmed, transports always are. Say, tell me—” his face grew very serious—” how’s Gene?”

Cherry leaned her rosy cheek on her hand and looked squarely at her brother. “Not good, Charlie,” she said.

“Not good at all. Oh, I don’t mean physically—

physically, he’s coming along very nicely. But—he—I hate to tell you this about your friend—I think something has hurt his spirit.”

Charlie scowled. “You girls and your roundabout way of talking! What in thunder do you mean?”
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“I mean,” Cherry said earnestly, “he won’t talk. He lies there and seems to be brooding about something and never says a word. It—it gives me the creeps.” Charlie looked down at his hands, studied them with exaggerated care. “I can tell you something,” he said at last. “Matter of fact, it’s something you probably already know, at least in theory, only this is the first time you’ve run smack up against it. It’s this. A man can stand only so much strain, then he gets tired and nervous, and just—wilts, goes to pieces temporarily. It’s called combat fatigue, or nerve strain, what they used to call shell shock in World War I, only that’s an inaccurate word.

And Gene has been flying and fighting too long. He had one of the most dangerous and nerve-racking jobs there are—tail gunner. Those boys are the ones who do the real fighting. It’s an awful emotional tension; I know.

Gene’s been a pilot, too. Well, the Flight Surgeon wanted to ground him for a rest, because a person can take only so much. But Gene wouldn’t hear of being grounded. When the rest of us switched to the Air Transport Command, he insisted on coming right along.

He was overtired when he started. Gene’s had too many harrowing hours in the air without rest. He’s exhausted, that’s all.”

Cherry said slowly, “No, that isn’t all.” And she told her brother about the strange metal fragments the surgeons had taken from Gene’s shoulder, and the
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strange wound. Charlie’s face tightened as she carefully described it. “So that’s why I think,” she concluded,

“that Gene is brooding over something the rest of us know nothing about.”

“Strange,” Charlie muttered. “It’s downright mysterious.”

“Mysterious certainly is the word. Now tell me,” Cherry demanded briskly, “every single thing you can remember about the flight on which Gene was wounded.”

“All right, honey, I’ll do my best.” Charlie hitched his crude chair closer to Cherry’s desk, thought for a moment, then began.

“We were about forty minutes away from Island 14.

We were in the general direction of those forward islands, where you hear the guns from, but we circled away as much as we could. Everything seemed to be going all right. Gene went back alone to the middle of the ship to check some cargo that was rattling around.

The rest of us were way up front. Then all of a sudden, the plane sort of rocked, for no reason I could see. It could have been a shot, or it could have been an air pocket that rocked us. The noise of the propellers and engines might have drowned out the sound of a shot, you know. Gene said—” Charlie drew his blond brows together “—Gene said, ‘There they are, boys! Enemy aircraft!’ ” He fell silent.

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“Go on,” Cherry prompted.

“It doesn’t make sense. The rest of us took a quick look all around us. There
weren’t
any enemy planes.

There wasn’t any smoke, any fire.
There wasn’t anything!
”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He never spoke again.” Cherry buried her face in her hands. She tried to think but the flier’s drawn face, especially his haunted eyes, kept rising up on her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes hastily to wipe out that pathetic vision.

“Charlie,” she said in a choked voice, “there’s no sense in our getting upset about this. We’ve got to keep our wits, if we’re going to help him. And the way to help Gene is to find out what happened. Gene saw or experienced something the rest of you didn’t see. To cure Gene, we’ve got to solve this mystery.” Charlie laughed mirthlessly. “Think you can solve it? Let me tell you something, Sis. There’s more to this than saving just this one man. If the enemy has a secret weapon, then the lives of thousands of men are at stake!”

Cherry shuddered, then drew herself up. “All right, the first thing is to keep a cool head. The enemy would just love to get us all scared and panicky. But facts
can
be uncovered, and, for Gene’s sake if for no other reason, we must get to the bottom of this.” She hesitated
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a moment, then asked, “What’s Gene like when he’s well?”

“The finest man you ever knew,” Charlie replied softly. “Cherry, we fellows all think he’s swell. He’s so quiet and good and modest and unselfish. I could tell you things he’s done for us, at risk to himself—And he never did talk much. Sort of kept his thoughts to himself. But when he did talk, it was highly intelligent talk. Still, no one ever really knew him.” Charlie’s voice grew rough. “Gene was always sort of—remote. And now he’s farther away than ever.”

“Hold tight!” Cherry commanded. “We’ll get Gene to talk again! We’re going to solve this mystery, or my name isn’t Ames.”

“My name is Ames, too,” Charlie reminded her.

“Let’s go!”

Brother and sister settled down at the desk and soberly went over the facts they had between them.

Charlie said the Intelligence Officer was disturbed because the crew could not give him an adequate report of what had happened. Captain May had been questioning them until their heads ached, trying to jog their memories. More interrogations were coming.

Cherry could not report much, only that the wounded flier was merely sleeping and eating, slowly regaining his strength, the shoulder slowly healing. She could have sworn that he knew perfectly well what was said
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to him, and that his failure to reply was no lack of comprehension, but came from another source. But what source? Shock? Yes, probably hysterical muteness caused by shock. Cherry suggested: either he did not want to talk, lest he would have to talk about what he alone had seen, or else the memory of it was holding him frightened and silent. Cherry explained to Charlie that Gene’s vocal chords were all right but that people can be stricken temporarily blind, deaf, or mute by shock.

“It’s almost a psychological mystery,” she murmured.

Charlie vigorously shook his head. “It looks to me like a mechanical mystery. That strange kind of metal fragment—it must mean a new kind of smokeless shell.

Maybe a new metal, or a new chemical. Or both? And the way you said it acted—little holes entering, a big hole at the back.” Charlie puzzled over various answers.

But Cherry could see her brother was not satisfied.

“Besides,” Charlie went on, “where did the shell come from? Planes? But we saw no planes and, believe me, we were watching. Hidden on land? Hidden on camouflaged ships? Funny. There didn’t seem to be any flak.” But even between them, Cherry and Charlie had only incomplete, contradictory, cloudy impressions of what had befallen Gene.

Suddenly Charlie pounded his fist on the desk.

“What am I thinking of? Talking of mechanical—and
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I forget to tell you the most important thing of all! Gene is a gun expert. He’s one of the most valuable men in the flight forces. He’s irreplaceable! And he’s going to be needed for—he must be cured in time for—Oh, gosh, I shouldn’t be telling this! Not even to my own sister!”

Cherry said evenly, “Tell me as little as you can.” Charlie grinned. “Thanks. You’re a real pal. Well, you hear the guns, and you see us bringing in ammunition.

You’ve guessed for yourself that something big is coming. The date is set. Gene is slated to play a key role.

The Transport Command is lending him to the combat air forces. He has a special mission. We might lose without him. Cherry, you
have
to get him cured—if you can cure him at all—within a month.”

“Yes, sir,” Cherry said. “Within a month, sir. I take that as an order.” Her tone was light but her determination was deadly serious.

Then they went out into the hot, starry night, through the chigger-infested palms. It did not seem like the third week in March. They headed for the silent soldier’s tent.

As they walked over, Charlie told Cherry:

“Maybe Gene
is
suffering from shock at whatever he alone saw or experienced. But I want you to know this.

His silence is not the result of fear. He is the bravest, steadiest man in our crew. They don’t come any better than Gene. And if
he
can be shocked into silence, then
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this strange new thing must be something really dangerous.”

“All the more reason,” said Cherry, trying to keep her own courage steady, “why we must keep and use our heads!” She was glad her brother was here to help her.

“Maybe,” she said, lifting the canvas flap into the private room, “maybe when Gene sees you, Charlie, he will talk.”

The little, crude room was quiet and almost dark, lighted by a lantern. The corpsman at the bedside rose as Cherry and her brother came in. The silent airman saw them from the high bed; he moved his head a little on the pillow. Cherry told the corpsman he might go off duty now, and he left. She and Charlie went over to the bed.

“Hello, Gene,” Charlie said in a cheerful voice.

“How’s the shoulder? Tough you had to get it.” The airman did not answer. His eyes clearly recog-nized his crew mate Charlie, but his expression did not change. Charlie struggled to pretend nothing was wrong, and kept up a one-sided conversation. “We sure do miss you, Gene. Hurry up and get well, will you? We need you. I guess you remember a certain date.” The airman’s lips moved, but no sound came. And then Cherry realized that his eyes were not on Charlie at all, but on herself, standing behind her brother. He looked at her like a dependent child.

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She forced a smile. “Charlie told me you’re a pilot and an expert gunner. And he—” Cherry hesitated, then decided to risk mentioning the dread subject “—he told me all he could about what happened when you were hit.”

The flier’s eyes flickered nervously, but remained focused on Cherry’s face. She tried to continue, to make this sound like a normal conversation, but it was eerie talking to someone who never answered. Charlie was so shaken he had turned his back to the bed.