Call to Arms

Chapter Ten

(One)

San Francisco, California

0915 Hours, 14 January 1942

The office of the chairman of the board of Pacific Far East Shipping, Inc., occupied the southwest comer of the top (tenth) floor of the PFE Building. Its tinted plate-glass windows overlooked the harbor and the bridge; and an eight-by-twelve-foot map of the world was mounted on one wall. Every morning at six A.M., just before he went off duty, the night operations manager came up from the third floor and laid a copy of the more important overnight communications on the huge, near-antique (which is to say post-1800) mahogany desk of the chairman of the board. Then he went to the map and moved small devices on it.

The devices, mounted on magnets, were models of the vessels of Pacific Far East Shipping. They represented tankers, bulk carriers, passenger liners, and freighters of all sizes. There were seventy-two of them, and they were arranged on the map to correspond with their last-reported position around the world. Just over a month before, there had been eighty-one ship models scattered around the map.

Now nine models-representing six small interisland freighters ranging in size from 11,600 to 23,500 tons, two identical 39,400-ton freighters, and one 35,500-ton tanker- were arranged in the lower left-hand corner of the map as if anchored together in the Indian Ocean off Australia. Eight of them had been lost to Japanese submarines. The ninth, the tanker Pacific Virtue, had been offloading aviation gasoline at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese struck.

In a mahogany gimbal mount near Fleming Pickering's desk, there was a globe, five feet in diameter, crafted in the 1860s. And two glass cases holding large, exquisitely detailed ship models had been placed against the wall behind the desk. One of the models was of the clipper ship Pacific Princess (Hezikiah Fleming, Master), which had held the San Francisco-Shanghai speed record in her day; and the second was of the 51,000-ton Pacific Princess, a sleek passenger ship that was the present speed-record holder for the same run.

According to the wall map, the Pacific Princess was sailing alone somewhere between Brisbane and San Francisco, trusting in her maximum speed of 33.5 knots to escape Japanese torpedos.

Fleming Pickering looked up from his desk with mingled annoyance and curiosity when he heard the sound of high heels on the small patches of parquet floor exposed here and there beneath fine antique (seventeenth-century) Oriental rugs. He knew it was not his secretary, the only person permitted to come into his office unannounced when he was there. Mrs. Florian wore rubber heels. All the facts considered, his visitor had to be either his wife or a very brazen total stranger.

It was his wife.

After twenty-four years of marriage, Fleming Pickering was still of the belief that he was married to one of the world's most beautiful women. And she was one of the smartest, too. Smart enough to avoid waging a losing battle against growing older than thirty. Her hair was silver, and if she was wearing makeup (which seemed likely), it didn't appear to be layered on her face with a shovel.

She sat down in one of the chairs facing his desk and crossed her legs, giving him a quick glance of thigh and black petticoat.

"'Come into my parlor,' the spider leered at the fly," Fleming Pickering said. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"God!" Patricia Foster Pickering groaned.

"Really?" Flem Pickering joked. "The clouds opened, and a suitably divine voice boomed, 'Go to thy husband.''?"

She shook her head, but had to chuckle, even though she didn't want to under the circumstances.

"I hate to bother you," Patricia Pickering said. "You know I wouldn't come here unless-"

"Don't be silly," he said. "Would you like some coffee?"

"I would really like a double martini," she said.

"That bad, huh?" he said.

"I'll settle for the coffee," Patricia Pickering said.

Fleming Pickering tapped three times with his toe on a switch under his desk. It was a code message to Mrs. Florian. One tap summoned her. Two taps meant "get this idiot out of here by whatever means necessary," and three meant "deliver coffee."

"I just had a call from Ernie Sage," Patricia Pickering said.

"And? What did he want?"

"Little Ernie," she corrected him.

"And what did she want?"

"She's out here. In San Diego."

He looked at her curiously, waiting for her to go on.

"She wanted me to get a check cashed for her," Patricia said. "And to see if I knew someone in Diego who could find her someplace to stay."

"I hate to tell you this, honey," he said. "But the way you're presenting this, it's not coming across as a serious problem."

"She's out here with McCoy," Patricia said. "You remember him? Pick's friend from Quantico? You met him."

"I remember him very well," Flem said. "What did they do, elope?"

"That's part of the problem," she said. "No. They are not married."

"A real Marine, that boy," Flem said. "I could tell the moment I saw him."

"Flem, this is not funny," Patricia said.

"Well, it's not the end of the world, either," he said. "She is not the first nice young woman in history to go to bed with a Marine before their union was solemnized before God and the world."

She glared at him. And her face colored. "That was a cheap shot, damn you!" she said. But she smiled.

"There's something about a Marine, you know," Flem Pickering went on. "My response to this situation is that I hope whatever it is Marines have will work for Pick, too. That he gets somebody as nice as Ernie. Let her who is without sin cast the first stone."

"Well, thanks a lot," she snapped.

"Honey, this is none of our business," Flem said.

Mrs. Florian came into the office, pushing a serving cart with a silver coffee service on it.

"I like your dress, Mrs. Pickering," she said.

"I will not tell you it's an old rag I found in the back of my closet," Patricia said. "I bought it yesterday, and made them alter it right away. Surprising absolutely no one, Guess Who hasn't seemed to notice."

"The way to catch my attention is to come in here not wearing a dress," Flem said.

"I'd sock him for that," Mrs. Florian said, and left the office.

"It is our business, Flem," Patricia said.

"How do you figure that?"

"Elaine is my best friend," Patricia said. "And Ernie's the closest thing I have to a daughter."

"Does Elaine know about this?" he asked.

"No. I asked Ernie, and she told me she was going to call her. And she went on to ask me to please not say anything until she works up the courage to do it."

"Then don't say anything," he said.

"I think I'm going to go to Diego and talk like a Dutch aunt to her," Patricia said.

"All that would do would be to piss her off," Flem said.

"I love your language," Patricia snapped.

"It caught your attention, didn't it?" he replied, unrepentant.

She met his eyes, raised her eyebrows, and then shifted her gaze and sat up in the chair to pour coffee. She handed him a cup and then slumped back in her chair, holding her cup with both hands.

"I think it's entirely possible that Ernie may need a friend," Flem said. "If she thinks you're going to say exactly the same thing her mother would say, she won't come to you."

She looked at him again but said nothing.

"I seem to recall when I was a handsome young Marine just home from France, that your own mother had a long talk with you about not letting me get you alone-in case I tried to kiss you. I gather she was afraid I'd give you trench mouth."

"I never should have told you that," Patricia said.

"You remember where you told me?" he asked.

"Damn you!" she said.

"In a ne'er-to-be-forgotten bed in the Coronado Beach Hotel in San Diego."

"All right," she said, just a little sharply.

"Never did get trench mourn, did you?" he asked. "And neither will Ernie. And you can no more talk her out of what she has decided to do than your mother could talk you out of seducing me."

"You bastard!" she said. "Me seducing you!"

But their eyes met and she smiled.

"So what do we do, Flem?" she asked after a moment.

"That will depend on what you've already done," he said.

"I told her to go to the San Diego office, and we'd arrange for her to cash a check."

"That's all?"

"That's all," she said.

Fleming Pickering picked up one of the three telephones on his desk and told the operator to patch him through to San Diego.

When J. Charles Ansley, General Manager, San Diego Operations, Pacific Far East Shipping, Inc., came on the line, Fleming Pickering told him that a Miss Ernestine Sage was on her way to see him. She needed a check cashed. He should cash it; and then he should arrange something with the Bank of America branch in San Diego so that she could cash checks whenever she wanted in the future.

"The second thing I need from you, Charley," Fleming Pickering went on, "is to find someplace for her to live. A little house, preferably on the beach, or at least with a view of it." "Jesus, Flem," the general manager protested. "That's going to be hard. This town is full of sailors and Marines, and most of them, the officers anyway, brought their wives and their families."

"A little house on the beach, or with a view of it, and someplace where the lady can entertain an overnight guest on a regular basis without any embarrassing questions being asked."

"It's a good thing I know you're a straight arrow, Flem," the general manager said. "Or otherwise-"

"The young lady, you dirty-minded old man, you, is the closest thing Patricia and I have to a daughter. She is visiting a young Marine officer. I don't know for how long."

"It's going to be hard finding a place."

"Do whatever has to be done, Charley," Fleming Pickering said. "And with your well-known tact and finesse. And get back to me."

When he put the phone back in its cradle, he looked at his wife… She was sitting back in the chair, tapping the balls of her extended fingers together.

"Done," he said.

"I hope we know what we are doing," Patricia Pickering said.

"Me, too," he said.

She shrugged and rose out of the chair.

"Where are you going to be at, say, one?"

"Here, probably," he said.

"I've got a few things to do," she said. "After which I thought I would drop by the apartment. Say about one?"

"Oh," he said.

"I would hate to drag you away from something important," she said.

He picked up another of the telephones on his desk.

"Mrs. Florian," he said. "If I have anything scheduled between one and three, reschedule it."

He put the phone back in its cradle.

"There was a time," Patricia Pickering said, "when you would have taken the whole afternoon off."

"I can always call back," he said.

"Braggart," Patricia Pickering said, and went through the door.

(Two)

Pensacola Navy Air Station 18 January 1942

If they are asked, aviators will tell you there is no such thing as a "natural" or "born" pilot. The human animal, they will explain, is designed to move back and forth and sideways with one foot planted on something firm. But aircraft move in a medium that is more like an ocean than solid ground; and they move more like a fish swimming than a man walking. Controlling an aircraft, consequently, does not come naturally; a pilot has to be taught how to move around in the sea of air.

Aviators will also modestly point out that while it is not really much more difficult than riding a bicycle, flying requires a certain degree of hand-eye coordination. And this must be taught and learned. It is for instance often necessary for one hand to do one thing, while the other does something else. And meanwhile, the feet might be doing still another thing.

Making a climbing turn, for example, requires both rearward and sideward pressure on the control stick (or as the originally scatological term, now grown respectable, has it, the "joystick") between the legs, while the feet apply the appropriate pressure to the rudder pedals. And while he makes these movements, the pilot's eyes must take into consideration where the aircraft is relative to the horizon; and at the same time he must monitor the airspeed, vertical speed, and all the gauges indicating engine function and condition.

Almost without exception, pilots will relate that the first time they were given the controls by their instructor pilot (IP), they were all over the sky.

They will often add by way of explanation that fledgling birdmen usually "overcontrol," which is to say that they apply far more pressure to the controls than should be applied. What results is that the plane goes into a steep dive, or a steep climb, or veers sharply off to one side or the other… It goes all over the sky.

This condition is made worse by the fledgling birdman's lack of experience operating with his body on its side, and/or tipped steeply upward or downward.

One's first flight at the controls, aviators will all agree, is a traumatic experience. But over a period of time-long or short, depending almost always on the skill of the instructor pilot- those student pilots who ultimately make it (there are many who simply cannot learn) gradually pick up the finesse that permits them to smoothly control their aircraft. And their bodies. They no longer are quite so dizzy, or disoriented, or nauseous.

Like riding a bicycle, aviators will affirm, piloting an aircraft is something you have to be taught to do-always under the watchful eye of a skilled instructor pilot. The way you learn to do it well is with a great deal of practice, slowly growing a little better.

And then, after they have gone through all this explanation, a puzzled look will very often come onto their faces, and there will be a caveat:

"Yeah, but I remember a guy at Pensacola [or Randolph Field, or wherever]… the IP just didn't believe him. He thought he'd come to basic with at least a couple of hundred hours and was being a smart ass… who just got in the sonofabitch and could fly it like he really had three, four hundred hours in it. No problem at all, not even when the IP did his best to disorient him. Looped it, whatever. When he gave him the controls, he just straightened it out. And he knew where he was.

"Just that one guy, though. Little [or Great big, or Perfectly ordinary] guy. I forget his name. But he just knew how to fly. All they had to do was explain to him what the propeller was doing, spinning around like that."

Captain James L. Carstairs, USMC, had heard all the stories himself, of course, about that one character in ten thousand'- or a hundred thousand-whom Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom had elected to equip naturally with a feeling for the air that others could acquire only after much time and great effort.

But until he took Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMC, up for his orientation flight in an N2S (The Stearman N2S, an open, twin-cockpit training biplane, painted yellow for visibility, was officially called the 'Cadet.' But like the other basic training aircraft, the Navy-manufactured N3N, it was rarely called anything but the "Yellow Peril.") he had never personally met one.

Captain Carstairs had been annoyed, but not surprised, when he learned from the records of Lieutenants Pickering and Stecker that neither had been afforded the opportunity of an "orientation flight" before they had been ordered to Pensacola.

The "orientation flight" was something of a misnomer. It was designed primarily to disqualify would-be Naval aviators from the training program. If the SOP (Standing Operating Procedure) had been followed, the two second Johns whom a cruel fate had placed in his hands would have been given their "orientation flights" before they came to Pensacola. And they'd have passed them; otherwise they would not have been sent to Pensacola at all.

It made much more sense to take would-be birdmen up for a ride-a ride in which the IP would do his very best to frighten and/or sicken his passenger-to determine before the kid was actually sent to Pensacola that he really wanted to be a pilot and was physically able to endure the physical and mental stresses of flight. They would thus eliminate before they began training those who had second thoughts about becoming aviators, or who proved unfit for flight. In that way time and money were saved.

His two second Johns had slipped through that hole in the sieve, too. Neither of them should have been sent to Pensacola in the first place, so it made a certain perverted sense that they had been sent without having taken the required orientation flight. Captain Carstairs realized there were two ways the omission could be rectified. He could write a memorandum outlining the facts and requesting that the two officers named above be scheduled for an orientation flight. He could then have a clerk type it up and send it over to Mainside and let it work its way through the bureaucracy. This would take at least a week, and probably two. Or he could load his second Johns in his Pontiac coupe and drive them to Saufley Field right then and take them for a ride in a Yellow Peril himself.

Second Lieutenant Stecker went first. Captain Carstairs loaded him into the backseat, carefully adjusted his mirror so that he could see Stecker's face, and then took off. He left the traffic pattern at Saufley and flew up to U.S. 98 in the vicinity of the Florida-Alabama border. There, climbing to eight thousand feet, he put the Yellow Peril through various acrobatic maneuvers, frequently glancing in his mirror to examine the effect on Second Lieutenant Stecker.

Stecker was a picture of grim determination. From time to time, his face grew deathly pale, and he frequently swallowed and licked his lips. He otherwise stared grimly ahead, as if afraid of what he would see if he looked over the side of the cockpit.

But he neither dosed his eyes to shut out the horror, nor did he get sick to his stomach. Just about the reaction he expected, Captain Carstairs realized when he thought about it. Stecker was young and in superb physical condition. And, significantly, he was a West Pointer. Himself an Annapolis graduate, Carstairs was willing to grant that the U.S. Military Academy probably did nearly as a good a job as the U.S. Naval Academy to instill self-discipline in its students. That meant that by pure willpower, Stecker was able to keep his eyes open and stop himself from being sick.

Forty minutes into the flight, after just about half an hour of violent aerobatics, Captain Carstairs put the Yellow Peril into straight and level flight. He then conveyed via the speaker tube that Second Lieutenant Stecker was to put his feet on the rudder pedals and his hand on the joystick and "follow through" as Carstairs maneuvered the airplane, so that he would acquire some sense of what control motions were required to go up and down and side to side.

Second Lieutenant Stecker's orientation flight lasted one minute less than an hour. When Carstairs taxied the Yellow Peril to the place where Second Lieutenant Pickering was waiting for his turn, he saw that Pickering was eating.

Enterprising merchants from Pensacola had been given permission to roam the edges of the parking aprons at Saufley, Coney, and Chevalier fields, selling box lunches to civilian mechanics and service personnel. Pickering had obviously bought himself a snack.

When he came closer, Captain Carstairs saw that what Pickering was eating an oyster loaf. This consisted of maybe eight fried-in-batter oysters in a highly Tabasco-flavored barbecue sauce on a long, soft roll. It was not the sort of thing someone about to experience violent aerobatic maneuvers in an airplane should put in his stomach. And Pickering, he saw, was about to make a bad situation worse. He was washing the oyster loaf down with a pint bottle of chocolate milk.

There was no question whatever in Captain Carstairs's mind that Second Lieutenant Pickering was going to throw up all over the Yellow Peril. But there was a silver lining in that black cloud, Carstairs decided. For one thing, the student rode aft of the instructor. None of what erupted from Pickering's stomach would reach Carstairs.

Getting sick, moreover, would teach Pickering the important lesson that an aviator must consider what he eats or drinks before flight. And cleaning up what he threw up from the aircraft would serve two additional purposes. It would emphasize the importance of lesson one, and it would serve as a test of Pickering's determination to become a Naval aviator.

"If you have finished your snack, Pickering, get in," Captain Carstairs said.

Second Lieutenant Pickering stuffed the rest of his oyster loaf in his mouth, then washed it down with the rest of his chocolate milk, after which he climbed into the rear seat of the Yellow Peril.

Captain Carstairs flew the same course he had flown with Stecker. And once he was near the Florida-Alabama border, to start things off, he rocked the Yellow Peril from side to side. In his mirror, he saw Lieutenant Pickering's eyebrows raise in surprised delight.

Next Carstairs pulled back on the joystick and put the Yellow Peril in a climb. Eventually inertia overcame velocity and the airspeed fell below that necessary to provide lift. The Yellow Peril stalled, which is to say, it suddenly started falling toward the earth.

In his mirror, Captain Carstairs saw that Pickering's face now reflected happy surprise at this new sensation.

Carstairs recovered from the stall by pushing the nose forward until sufficient airspeed had been regained to permit flight. He pulled it straight and level for a moment, and then peeled off into a steep dive to the left.

Pickering's stomach was stronger than Carstairs would have believed. But there would be an eruption soon, either when he pulled out of the dive, or when he rolled the Yellow Peril: The aircraft would turn upside down as he reached the apex of his climbing maneuver.

When, in inverted flight, Captain Carstairs looked in his mirror at his passenger, his passenger's face bore the enchanted look of a little boy finding an unexpected wealth of presents under the Christmas tree. He was smiling from ear to ear and gazing in pure, excited rapture all around this strange and wonderful inverted world he was seeing for the first time.

An additional fifteen minutes of intricate aerobatics not only failed to make Second Lieutenant Pickering sick to his stomach, but it failed to wipe the smile of joyous discovery off his face. Indeed, if possible, each more exotic maneuver seemed to widen proportionally his ecstatic grin of delight.

Captain Carstairs was willing to admit that he was capable of making an error in judgment, and fair was fair. He put the Yellow Peril into straight and level flight and conveyed the order that Pickering was to follow him through on the controls. In a moment he felt a slight resistance to both joystick and rudder movement. This told him that Pickering had his feet on the pedals and his hand on the joystick.

Carstairs moved the aircraft up and down, and from side to side, and then made a sweeping turn. Then his own very sensitive hand on the controls told him that Pickering had let go of the controls. There was no longer any resistance when he moved them.

The arrogant sonofabitch is bored; he's taken his hands off the controls. He thinks I'm up here 'to take him for a ride!

He set the Yellow Peril up in a steep climbing turn to the left, and then took his own feet off the rudder pedals and his hand off the joystick.

The Yellow Peril would continue in the attitude that he had placed it in until it ran out of airspeed, whereupon it would stall. And since it would be moving leftward when it stalled, it would not fall straight through, but would slide in a sickening skid to the left. With just a little bit of luck, it would enter a spin.

That would catch Second Lieutenant Pickering's attention.

He watched the airspeed indicator as it moved downward toward stall speed, so that he would be prepared. And he frequently glanced at Second Lieutenant Pickering's face for the first glimmer of concern. This would be shortly followed by bewilderment, and then terror.

When the airspeed indicator needle showed about five miles above stall speed, Captain Carstairs sensed first that the angle of climb was diminishing, and then that the aircraft was coming out of its turn. He looked at the joystick between his legs. It was moving. And when he looked at the rudder pedals, so were they.

In a moment, the airspeed indicator began to rise again, and shortly after it did that, the control stick moved again, returning the aircraft to its turn and to a climbing attitude. But in a more shallow climb than before, one that it could maintain more or less indefinitely.

This wiseass sonofabitch is a pilot, and not too bad a pilot. That was the natural, practiced reflex action of somebody who feels in the seat of his pants that he's about to stall. He did what had to be done to recover.

Captain Carstairs put his mouth to the speaking tube. "Okay, Pickering, take us back to the field and land it," he ordered.

For the first time, a look of confusion and concern appeared on Second Lieutenant Pickering's face.

"When I give you a command, you say 'Aye, aye, sir,'" Carstairs ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Pickering responded.

The Yellow Peril entered a 180-degree turn.

Steep, Carstairs thought, but smooth.

Ten minutes later, after an arrow-straight flight, the traffic pattern over Saufley Field came into view. Eight or nine other Yellow Perils were waiting their turn to make their approach to the runway.

"Sir," Pickering's voice came over the tube to Carstairs's ears, "what do I do now?"

"Sit it down, Pickering."

There was a moment's pause, then, "Aye, aye, sir."

Pickering moved the Yellow Peril to a position behind the last Yellow Peril in the stack.

Carstairs finally found something to fault in Pickering's flying technique. They were a little too close to the Yellow Peril before them before Pickering retarded the throttle.

And then it was their turn to land.

"Sir," Pickering's voice came over the tube, "I've never landed an airplane before."

"Do the best you can, Lieutenant," Carstairs replied.

Pickering aimed the Yellow Peril at the runway.

When he was over the threshold, he chopped the throttle and skewed the Yellow Peril from side to side as he tried to line it up with the runway.

Carstairs made a quick decision. While it was entirely possible that Pickering was going to be able to get it safely on the ground the way he was doing it, he was coming in way too high.

"I've got it," Carstairs said over the speaking tube. He shoved the throttle forward and put his hands and feet on the controls, and they went around.

Carstairs put the Yellow Peril at the tail of the stack of Yellow Perils, and then spoke again.

"The way this is supposed to be done," he said, "is that you run out of lift the moment you level the wings. We like you to do that about ten feet off the runway, not one hundred."

Pickering shook his head to signal his understanding.

On his next attempt to land, Pickering greased the Yellow Peril in two hundred feet from the threshold. The Yellow Peril's main gear touched, and then a moment later, it settled gently onto its tail wheel.

And then, for the first time, there was terror in Pickering's voice. "I can't see to steer!"

"I've got it," Captain Carstairs responded. He braked, turned onto a taxiway, and taxied the Yellow Peril back to where Second Lieutenant Stecker waited for them.

Captain Carstairs hoisted himself out of his cockpit ahead of Pickering, and then he stood on the wing root in a position where he could look directly into Second Lieutenant Pickering's face.

"Am I to believe, Pickering, that this has been your first opportunity to attempt to fly aircraft?"

"Yes, sir," Pickering said. "Captain, I realize I screwed up. But I really think I can learn how to do it."

Carstairs looked directly into Pickering's eyes for a long moment before he spoke.

"Actually, Pickering, you didn't do too badly," he said, and a smile of relief appeared on Pickering's face. "I would, in fact, go so far as to say I saw a suggestion-faint, but a suggestion-that you may have a natural talent for flying."

The smile of relief turned into one of joy.

"Thank you, sir."

"You're going to have to work a little harder than your friend Stecker," Captain Carstairs said. "But if you apply yourself, there's really no reason why you can't get through the course."

"Thank you, sir," Pickering said, absolutely seriously. "I'll really try to do my best, sir."

Carstairs nodded at Pickering and then jumped off the wing root.

Second Lieutenant Malcolm Pickering surprised Captain James L. Carstairs a second time that same day.

At half- past six, Captain Carstairs was at the bar of the San Carlos Hotel in the company of Captain and Mrs. Lowell B. Howard, USMC, and Mrs. Martha Sayre Culhane. They were waiting for a table in the dining room; they had reserved a table for eight.

There were two empty stools beside them at the bar.

Second Lieutenant Pickering, trailed by Second Lieutenant Stecker, obviously freshly showered and shaved, crossed the room to them.

"Good evening, sir," Pickering said.

"Pickering."

"Sir, are these stools occupied?"

"No. Help yourself. We're about to leave."

"Thank you, sir," Pickering said. "Hello, Martha."

"Hello, Pick," Martha Sayre Culhane said.

"May I present Lieutenant Dick Stecker?" Pickering said.

"Hello," Martha Sayre Culhane said, and gave him her hand.

"I'm a little surprised that you know Mrs. Culhane, Pickering," Captain Carstairs said.

"My mother introduced us on the golf course," Martha said.

Captain and Mrs. Howard were introduced.

"You two here to have dinner?" Carstairs asked, to make conversation.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said.

The headwaiter appeared, and beckoned to Carstairs.

"There's our table," Carstairs said. And then he gave in to a generous impulse. "Listen, we've reserved a larger table than it looks like we're going to need. Would you like to have dinner with us? It's sometimes hard to get a table…"

"Thank you, sir, but no," Second Lieutenant Stecker said.

"Shut up," Pickering said. "Yes, sir. Thank you very much."

The invitation did not seem to please Martha Sayre Culhane.

"They can probably get a table of their own without too much trouble," she said. "They live here. In the penthouse."

It was a rude thing for Martha to say, Carstairs thought. He wondered how long she had been waiting in the bar; how much she'd had to drink.

"Well, it must be nice to have a rich father," Carstairs joked.

"No, sir, we're just a pair of payday-rich second Johns," Dick Stecker said. "My father's a captain at Camp Elliott."

"But his father," Martha Sayre Culhane said, inclining her head toward Pickering, "owns Pacific and Far East Shipping." Martha really doesn't like Pickering, Carstairs thought. 1 wonder why. I wonder what happened on the golf course.

"I think," Pickering said, "that on reconsideration, we had best decline with thanks your kind invitation, Captain."

Carstairs could think of no other way to get out of what had become an awkward situation.

He nodded at Pickering and Stecker and, taking Martha's arm, led her away from the bar.

But at the entrance to the dining room, she shook loose from his hand and walked back to the bar. Carstairs, now sure that she was in fact drunk and about to make a scene, hurried after her.

Martha put her hand on Pickering's arm, and he turned to look at her.

"For some reason," she said, "you bring out the bitch in me. I'm sorry. Come and have dinner."

Pickering hesitated.

"Please, Pick," Martha said. "I said I'm sorry."

Carstairs saw the look on Pickering's face and knew that he was absolutely incapable of refusing anything Martha Sayre Culhane asked. And then he had a sure, sudden insight why Pickering brought out the bitch in Martha. She was attracted to him, strongly attracted to him, and under the circumstances she didn't know how to handle it.

As Captain Carstairs had recently come to realize, he himself didn't know how to handle Martha Sayre Culhane.

Carstairs had known Greg Culhane at Annapolis, where Greg had been three years behind him. They had become closer when Greg had come to Pensacola. And Carstairs had been at Admiral Sayre's quarters when Greg's engagement to Martha had been announced, and he had been the best man at their wedding.

And he had been considered part of the family after the telegram from the Secretary of the Navy had made official what Admiral Sayre had been told personally over the phone days before the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. And he had sat with the family during the memorial service in the chapel where she and Greg had been married.

And then Martha had started to hang around with him and his friends. The polite fiction was that Martha took comfort from the company of the other officers' wives. That wasn't true. Martha took comfort from the officers, and from Captain James L. Carstairs, USMC, in particular.

This had not escaped the attention of Admiral Sayre, who had spoken to Carstairs about it: "Mrs. Sayre and I appreciate the time and consideration you're giving Martha. She needs a friend right now. someone she can trust when she is so vulnerable, emotionally."

Carstairs was aware then that the admiral might well mean exactly what he said. But he also thought that the admiral might well be saying, "It would not especially displease Mrs. Sayre and myself if something developed between the two of you," or the reverse of that: "I'm sure that a bright young man like you, having received a word to the wise, knows what somebody like me could and would do to you if I ever found out you had taken advantage of my widowed daughter's emotional vulnerability to get into her pants."

Carstairs had not laid a hand on Martha Sayre Culhane. At first it had been unthinkable. He was, after all, a Marine officer, and she was the widow of a brother officer. But lately he had become very much aware of the significant difference between the words wife and widow, and he had been equally aware of her beauty. It was too soon, of course, for him to make any kind of a move. But eventually, inevitably, he had concluded (wondering if it made him some kind of a sonofabitch), time would put a scar on her wound, and nature would take over again, and there would be room in her life for a man.

Martha's behavior toward Lieutenant Pickering-that handsome, rich sonofabitch-made him now realize that even if she didn't know it, there was already a thick layer of scar tissue covering her wound.

Pickering slid off his bar stool. For a moment Martha held his hand, and then, as if she realized what she was doing, quickly let go of it.

Captain Carstairs stepped out of the way, and then followed the two of them into the dining room.