Astounding Outpost

Night flying was not considered good for the health in the days of the Big Fuss. That was before we had radio beams and robot pilots. All a man like Phineas Pinkham had were a stick, two Vickers guns, and a prayer.

And now the flyer from Iowa was cruising high over the heads of both armies, his eyes trying to spot the telltale fiery phlegm of a snooping Hun’s exhaust.

“They are very stingy with the moonlight, ce soir,” Phineas muttered. “If the Heinies hadn’t tried to kiss me twice with archie, I would swear it was Scotland I was flyin’ over. Huh,” he mused, “all that Kraut dough and me not gettin’ a smell. I could get even a better price for them marks, I bet, if they was mine. I could make enough to buy that pool room up over the Greek restaurant back home in Boonetown. I could even buy a flivver an’—oh yeah? Sneak over, will ya, ya square-headed Boche!” He kicked right rudder, described a semicircle in the murk, and booted his Spad toward a higher sky shelf. The drone of a Mercedes power plant had trickled through his leather helmet and had seeped into his big sound detectors than which there were none larger in all France.

Phineas had picked himself a tartar. He found that out after he banked, dropped down on the nocturnal Kraut, and missed with a couple of bursts. The Boche crate seemed capable of doing as many tricks as a wasp when it finally got down to business.

“It’s a lie,” the lone Yank gulped. “Nothin’ can fly like that. I am asleep in my hut, or somethin’. Bump, wake me up, you bum, before I get killed. Ow-w-w-w-w!” A tracer bullet streaked the length of the Spad’s top wing and the smell of burning dope stung Phineas Pinkham’s nostrils. Spandau slugs took bites out of the Spad’s shortribs, singed its scalp, and played havoc with it in general from prop boss to tail skid. Phineas managed to get down to five hundred feet, then the Hisso sat down and demanded shorter hours and more gas. There was no way out of the mess but straight down, so the quaking pilot let his Spad pick its own landing field while he closed his eyes and speculated as to whether his next C. O. would wear horns or big white wings.

BLOOEY! Phineas had his safety strap unhooked and was half out of the pit when the fifteen thousand dollar Yank investment went into the red amidst the green branches of a Frog tree. The Boonetown bat flyer woke up ten minutes later with his face in a bird’s nest. His prop boss had ruined the careers of four feathered creatures before they had even gotten a good start in life. The aroma-de-egg brought the Yank back to consciousness whereupon he got his legs and arms untangled carefully and started to lower his bruised fuselage down through the branches.

“Ugh!” he sniffled. “I am sure glad it was not an ostrich’s domicile that I broke up.”

Once on terra firma, Phineas looked around him. Not fifty yards away he made out the outlines of a big Frog chateau. A single light was burning in a window and toward that haven Lieutenant Pinkham limped, hoping that somebody had left a snack or two in the ice box. When he walked up the big stone steps he saw that part of the place had been bitten out by a hungry shell and he wondered what manner of Frog citizen dared hold his ground so near the palpitating lines.

In response to Phineas’ loud pounding accompanied by his loud yip—”Who is in chez maison? Annybodee dans ze chateau, oui?”—the door finally opened. A non-descript individual with a long white beard that brushed off his shoes as he walked, peered out at the Yankee pilot. Phineas thought that by comparison to this old Frog, Rip Van Winkle should have worn rompers.

“Bong sour,” he chirped to the hermit. “It is succor I want.” To himself he muttered, “I hope he is one, haw-w-w-w!”

“Entrez” squeaked the bewhiskered Frog. “Vous avez ze marks, hein?” He rubbed his bony hands together like a miser who has found a stray nickel.

“Marks?” Phineas gulped. “Why—er—oui oui! I have eet some. Brand new ones that—er— Heinie treasury just issued. Bet you never saw ‘em before. Uh—er—you read it ze Engleesh, mawn amy?”

“Mais non. I only speek a bit of Anglais, oui. But ze marks. I geeve ze francs for zem. Come, mon ami.”

Phineas followed the aged Frenchman into a big room that was half smothered with cobwebs. The windows had been boarded up and only a single candle burned on a large table. Where the light was none too good, Phineas dug down into his pockets for a small bunch of greenish certificates and tossed them out.

“Sacre!” exclaimed his host, “Mes yeux—my eyes, zey are not tres bon,” he went on, “mais thees eez ze argent, I know. By ze feel of ze papair—”

“Oui, sure,” Phineas hastened to say. “It took me a year of smokes to save—er—I mean I had to stop smokin’ so’s I could save the dough— argent—up, haw-w-w-w! For ten francs it’s votre sugar, mawn amy. Listen, monsoor, why ees you save ze Kraut money, non?”

“Pourquoi?” the ancient Frog wheezed. “Jacques le Bouillon, he do not make eet ze same mistake deux temps, non” He shook his head from side to side as he went on. “In 1870 I theenk ees ze French who win ze guerre an’ I buy zem all ze francs. But ze Germans zey win! NOW I theenk ze Germans win ze guerre aussi—so eet ees ze marks I buy.”

“Battier than a belfry,” Phineas muttered to himself. Then to Le Bouillon: “That’s smart, monsoor, haw-w-w-w! Vous avez ze beaucoup francs, huh?” 1

“Mais oui, I have ze barrel fill’ up, oui. I buy heem all marks I can. Hark, mon ami! Ze guns, ze Boche guns zey geet moch near all ze time, oui?

Sacre, I go’n be tres rich homme.”

“Ah—er well, I must be gettin’ home now,” Phineas stammered, his brain doing spirals. “I am ze Lieutenant Pinkham an’ have eet ze airdrome to find encore. Adoo for now, grampa. I weel geet eet more marks pour vous. Bong swore!”

“Vous breeng, I buy, merci” cackled the old Frog, showing Phineas to the door.

Now over in Alsace-Lorraine, in a Heinie stronghold, a monocled Herr Oberst was pawing the dew of concern from a brow that was as wide as a garden gate. “Ach, mein Herrs,” he gutturaled wearily, “der Marks ve moost haben. Alreadty yedt der Marks dey ben lower by der Cherman Banken. Der troops by der groundt vill lizzen vhen der promise cooms, but der flying Offiziers, ach, smardter yedt dey ist, hein? Ein, drei Staffels dey say dey moost get der back pay— oddervise dey dondt fly! Und Staffel Noomber Sieben ist der besser by der front. Ach, der Dumkopfs know der Marks ve moost haff zo ve buy der bullets mit shells to shoodt, und yedt der Marks dey vant alzo! Donnervetter, first der Marks und den der Vaterland. Idt vas like dis nefer by 1870!”

“Nein, nein,” a bespectacled Junker shook his head mournfully. “But don’dt haff der vorry, Herr Oberst. I haff der Marks in zwei, drei Tags, you see. Ofer der lines ist vun Frenchman—zo agent K-4 he giffs me der vord—und der Frenchman he helps der Kaiser efen if he does nodt vant to. Enough Marks he has, mein Freunds, to pay idt der Fokker und Albatros flyers, ja I look for der vord from K-4 any minute, Herr Oberst.”

“Gut! You gedt idt der Marks, Kapitan Schlushwig, und it giffs some of dem to you alzo, ja.”

Even so, the brass hat had been somewhat careless with the truth, though it would not be polite to call him a liar. In the presence of Phineas Pinkham he had told Garrity that what he had to say was not a pilot’s business. But after he was gone, the Spad flyers of the Ninth found out that every last one of them fitted into the word picture that the Colonel had painted.
“Why the big bum!” Phineas snorted when the C. O. enlightened them as to the orders that had come from the Wing. “Bat flyin’ he wants, huh? Awright, see if it bothers me. You heard what he said—that it wasn’t none of my affair. That lets me out. I got a witness, haw! It’s you, Major! The brass hats sure are a panic. They are like the managers of the pugs who say ‘Go out an’ slug, kid. He can’t hurt us!’”
“Are you all through?” Garrity inquired with a pent-in restraint that sent his blood pressure up to the explosion point. “Well, in just twenty minutes you take the first hop over the lines, Mr. Pinkham. How do you like that for apples, you freckledfaced baboon?”
“I always do my duty,” Phineas retorted loftily. “A Pinkham never questions orders. No sir! I will find out why the Heinies are tryin’ to land a crate behind the lines near Souilly—as well as knock any of them knockkneed who try it. If a very young Jerry spy is waiting to get picked up, he will have hardenin’ of the arteries and no teeth by the time it happens. I will solve the mystery, Major. Watson, my violin! I feel like a bar or two of Choppin before I get in the mood.”
“Yes,” Garrity cracked, ignoring
Phineas, “a Hun ship was seen in the vicinity of Souilly three nights ago. It was flying low, heading for Germany, and it may have dropped a spy for some reason or another. If they did drop one, they’ll have to pick him up.
That’s logic.”
“Haw-w-w-w-w! I dropped a dame once,”
Phineas chortled. “She is still where I tossed her, for all of me. It is not sense. Well, adoo, bums. I go—but I will be back, cur-r-r-rses! The next time I will git the mortgage, haw-w-w-w!”
“I will do it yet,” the Old Man kept yelling even after Phineas had taken a Spad off the tarmac and was flying toward the muttering lines. “I will kill him! I will take the consequences with pleasure. I can stand just so much! I can—I’ll—Crr-ripes!”