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"But what if one of them sees us?"

"We have two defenses," Canidy said.

"We're a little faster. If that doesn't work, Brother Dolan will lead us in prayer."

"We're faster because you removed the guns? That weight is gone?" Darmstadter asked.

"The weight, sure, but primarily because of the parasitic drag," Canidy said.

"By taking the two turrets out of the slipstream, we picked up twenty knots at twenty thousand feet. We got another five or six knots when we faired over the waist-gun position. We can go either faster or farther at the same fuel consumption rate."

"Clever," Darmstadter said.

"The engineers obviously knew their stuff."

"Thank you," Canidy said, smiling.

"You did it? You're an engineer?" Darmstadter blurted, remembering as he spoke that it was a question and questions were against the rule. But Canidy didn't jump on him.

"You will doubtless be awed to hear that you are dealing with R. Canidy, BS, Aeronautical Engineering, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, '39."

Darmstadter bit off just in time the question that popped to his lips:

"How'd you get involved in something like this?"

He was beginning to understand that there were questions he could ask, but that asking personal questions was taboo.

The answer, anyway, seemed self-evident. Whatever the OSS really did-some of the stories he'd heard about the OSS simply couldn't be true--it obviously had a high priority for personnel and equipment. The big brass had apparently decided that an MIT-trained aeronautical engineer could do more good working and flying for the OSS than he could, say, as a maintenance officer in a troop carrier or heavy bombardment wing.

Canidy connected a portable oxygen bottle to his face mask, then went into the cabin. Ten minutes later, he returned.

"I'll sit there awhile, John," he said to Dolan, motioning him out of the pilot's seat.

"Take a nap."

When Dolan had hooked up a portable oxygen mask and gone back the fuselage, Canidy's voice came metallically over the intercom.

"Dolan's a hell of a fine pilot," he said.

"He was a gold-stripe chief avi;

pilot before the war."

Darmstadter had heard that both the Navy and the Marines had enliste lots in peacetime, and the legend was that they were better pilots than i of the officers because all they did was fly.

"And then he got a commission?" Darmstadter asked.

"No," Canidy said.

"First, they took him off flight status. Bad heart. The got out of the Navy and went to China with the American Volunteer Groi a maintenance officer. Then he got a commission."

"But he's flying!"

"How Commander Dolan passed a flight physical, Darmstadter, is of those questions you're not supposed to ask," Canidy said.

"When you we preflight, and they were giving you those fascinating lectures on military tics, did they touch on 'conservation of assets'?"

Darmstadter thought about it, then shook his head.