Page 5

"The sooner the better, Sergeant," General Fertig said.

[TWO]

Naval Communications Facility Mare Island Navy Yard

The radioman second looked to be about seventeen years old. He was small and slight, and his light brown hair was cropped close to his skull. He wore government-issue metal-framed glasses, and his earphones made his head look very small.

But he was good at his trade, capable of transcribing the International Morse Code coming over his Hallicrafters receiver far faster than it was being sent. He had time, in other words, to read what he was typing instead of just serving as a human link in the transmission process.

He raised one hand over his head to signal his superior while with the other, with practiced skill, he took the sheet of paper in his typewriter out and fed a fresh sheet.

The lieutenant junior grade who came to his station looked very much like the radioman second, except that he was perhaps four years older and just a little heavier But he was slight, too, and wore glasses and looked very young.

He took the sheet of yellow paper from the radioman second and read it:

MFS FOR US FORCES AUSTRALIA

MFS FOR US FOR CBS AUSTRALIA

AC MOW BRTSS DXSYT QRSHJ BRASH

POFTP QOPOQ CHTFS SDHST AL ITS

CGHRZ QMSGL QROTX VABCG LSTYB

AC NOW BRTSS DXSYT QRSHJ BRASH

CGHRZ QMSGL QROTX VABCG LSTYE

"What the hell is this?"

"Look at the third block, Sir," the radioman second said.

"What about it?"

"It was the emergency code, no SOI, when the Army was still using the old M94," the radioman second said.

"Who's MFS?" the j.g. asked.

"There's no such station, Sir," the radioman second said.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's the Japs playing games," the radioman said.

"Well, what the hell, I'll send it over to the Presidio," the j.g. said.

"Maybe they've still got an M94 around someplace."

"You don't think I should give them a call back?"

"They weren't trying to reach us, they were calling Australia. Let Australia call them back."

[THREE]

Motor Machinist's Mate First Class Charles D. Staley, USN, in compliance with his orders, presented himself at the National Institutes of Health building.

Five weeks before, Staley had been running the tune-up shop at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center motor pool, outside Chicago. It was a hell of a thing for a first class petty officer with eighteen years' service to be doing with a war on; but Staley was a Yangtze River Patrol sailor, and he had learned that Yangtze River Patrol sailors who had managed to make it back to the Statesinstead of either getting killed or captured in the Philippines--seemed to get dumb billets like that. The Navy didn't seem to know what to do with them, so it gave them billets like running a motor pool, shit that had to be done but had little to do with ships or fighting a war.