"And you're not Hounslandian.”  Kit realized in a flash of insight that she must have concealed him under the clothes.

“Aye, lad.”  The woman gave a brief glance around. "Looks like there ain't nobody here but us chickens."

The cow mooed in her stall.

"Present company excepted." Satisfied that there weren’t any Swatzis nearby, she dug a portable radio transmitter/telegraph machine out from underneath a roosting chicken. From beneath another chicken, she grabbed a pair of headphones.  She concealed both of them in a laundry basket and piled clean clothes over them.

“Funny eggs they’re laying over here,” Kit observed wryly.

“I laid an egg last night when I was sending a message to my superiors.  Someone got tangled in my antenna.”  She held up a mangled piece of wire.

“Sorry, ma’am.”  Remembering his manners, he held out a hand. “I’m Kit.”

She shook his hand with a firm grip.  "Clara’s the name.  Spying’s my game.”

“In a barn?” Kit wondered if she was as crazy as that Captain Grogg.

“I’ll explain later."   Clara looked at Kit’s attire and clicked her tongue. “It won’t do to go traipsing ‘round with that Uslandian uniform.”  She reached into the basket and pulled out some clothes.  “Put these on.”

He donned the threadbare gingham dress and knotted a handkerchief over his head, thinking it wasn’t the weirdest disguise he’d ever worn.  While he was rolling up his pant legs, he mumbled, “I’m just glad Ernie and the guys aren’t here to see this.”

 

Clara’s brown eyes twinkled as she handed a basket of eggs to Kit.  Then she picked up the one containing the hidden transmitter. “Sure’n you could pass for a girl if no one looks too closely.  Just keep your head down and let me do the talkin’.”

The sun was peeking over the countryside when they left the barn. Kit trotted to keep up with the surprisingly spry woman as she crossed the farmyard. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that there were guards stationed inside the old windmill house, in the tree beside the silo, and on the top floor of the two-story house they were approaching.

Clara’s knock on the farmhouse door was answered by a flabby-faced bulldog.

The guard pointed his gun at Kit. “Who’s dat?  I don’t recognize her.”

Kit, who was finding it difficult to think of a female Hounslandian name with the barrel of a rifle buried in his chest, stammered, “Oh...my...er…”

“Etta,”  Clara concluded quickly.  “Her name is Omyeretta, Sergeant Vedge.  From der farm down der road. She came to help me.”

Kit tittered and fluttered his eyelashes. “Takes a lot of verk to do laundry und make bratvurst,” he said in a falsetto voice, not forgetting the Hounslandian accent.

“Mit extra sauerkraut?” Wedge asked, nearly salivating.

“Yuck,” Kit spat.  Getting an elbow nudge from Clara, he smiled brightly. “I mean, ja.”

The two ‘women’ bustled through the farmhouse, past rooms filled with Swatzis typing, Swatzis telegraphing, and Swatzis moving figures around on maps.

Finally, they came to a large pantry.  To Kit’s surprise, Clara slid the door and a metal gate shut behind them and pushed a button on the wall.  The elevator began its descent with a jolt.

When they were alone, Clara quickly explained, “This is the Swatzi’s largest experimental base.  Hundreds of scientists are kept prisoner here, forced to create horrible weapons.  Sure’n you didn't drop in to pay a social call?”

“I was sent here to steal a jet plane.”

“Which one?”

“There’s more than one?”

The elevator door opened, and Kit choked back a gasp.

They were in a place more massive than Carlsbear Cavern and packed with objects he was sure were beyond even Buzz’s wildest dreams.

As they traversed the twisting tunnel, Kit marveled at the things he glimpsed in each of the rooms they passed. Gigantic rockets that reached to the roof.  Scientists blasting boulders with lasers. A tank bigger than his high school.  A small wingless airplane with a propeller rotating around the fuselage.  And, oddest of all, something that looked like a flying saucer.

Wordlessly, Clara motioned towards other passageways, indicating that there were many more weapons just as fantastic and futuristic as those in sight.

Not only were there countless tunnels, but armed guards were as numerous as ants at a picnic.  

Kit could feel their suspicious eyes boring into him. This isn’t going to be easy, he thought.  

Higher for Hire

The grandfather clock was striking midnight as Rebecca tucked the covers around Cassie.  She turned to the next bed and gently took a Sheerpluck Holmes book out of sleeping Molly’s hands, placed it on the nightstand, and pulled a blanket around her.  

It was then that she noticed that Molly had taken Lucy to bed with her.  The eleven-year-old hadn’t slept with a doll for a long time, but apparently she felt the need for a comforting companion.  Kit suddenly joining the Air Force had been hard on all of them.

After exiting the girls’ room, leaving the door open a crack, Rebecca went upstairs where she knew Baloo would be keeping a vigil out on the catwalk.  She joined him.

The peaceful scene - the Sea Duck bobbing on the waves, the cool ocean breeze, the stars splayed across the sky - failed to calm her nerves.  In fact, she could have cheerfully throttled the clanging harbor buoy.

“You were right, Becky.  Savin’ the world or no savin’ the world, I shouldn't have let him go." Baloo’s hands clenched and unclenched the rail convulsively.

Rebecca wrapped her arms around one of his.  She regretted the hot, hasty words she’d shouted at him earlier. "You were right, too, Baloo.  Kit's smart and chock full of moxie and the best navigator in the world.”

“Yeah, give that kid a compass and a map, and I could fly the Yalps in a plane with no windows.”

“He's a good pilot, too, despite his awful flight instructor,” she teased.

It took Baloo a while to register that she was talking about himself. “Hey!"

Rebecca giggled mischievously.

She had gotten him to smile, but his smile quickly faded into a sigh.  “I’m just worried about him without his ol’ Papa Bear for a wingman. Right now, he could be facin’ guns, tanks, bombs..."

Meanwhile…
The Swatzi Secret Facility’s Galley

Kit was surrounded by stacks and stacks of dirty dishes.

“Hundreds of scientists and none of them can invent an automatic dishwasher?” he grumbled to himself. “I’ve never heard of a spy with dishpan hands.”

“Patience lad,” Clara murmured as she brought in another stack of breakfast dishes from the scientists’ cells.

Scowling, Kit rinsed his umpteenth plate.“That’s all my parents ever say.  ‘Be patient; someday you’ll have your own plane.’  I bet my real parents would’ve let me have my own set of wings by now.”

The old woman picked up a towel.  While she dried dishes, she gazed at him thoughtfully as if she was trying to decide something.  Finally, she murmured,  “I once knew a young fella a lot like you.   A natural at flying and so brave and adventurous that the whole world would’ve eventually known his name.”

“What happened to him?”

Sadly, Clara admitted, “I haven’t heard from him in a donkey’s age.  He was just a wee bit older than yourself when he took off with nary a word to me or his father.”  She dabbed at her eyes with the rough towel.  “The world is a harsh place, and it’s hard to let your bairns go out into it alone.”

Kit gazed at his reflection in the bottom of a copper pot pensively. He’d never thought of it from his parents’ point of view before.  Maybe what he saw as unreasonable they saw as protecting him.  Still…  

As if Clara could read his thoughts, she whispered, “Don’t fret, lad. You’ll get that plane someday.”

“Yeah, when I’m fifty,” he said sarcastically, prompting a low chuckle from Clara. “But maybe I’ll have a better chance of getting my own plane if I can steal the one I was sent to steal.”

“I can help with that.” She glanced around to make sure that there were no guards hiding anywhere, including in the flour barrel, then whispered, “While I was delivering breakfast, I got a chance to talk to some of the scientists. The plane you described is…”

Hearing approaching boots clomping on the cavern floor, she broke off.  Both silently washed and dried dishes as a guard tramped past the galley door.

“...the Hoot E-2.  No one knows where it is, but Horten Hootenski, the man who built it is imprisoned in...”

The guard marched by again.

“Corridor C, room Z.   Sure’n he’s the one to teach you to fly it.”

“Check.” Kit plopped the dishcloth in the dishwater, swiped his soapy hands on his skirt, and headed for the door.

“Wait.”

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