Scirye

Mugwort shuffled back with an armload of coveralls. Bayang’s would have fit her—if she had been 300 pounds. The others were also for large adults so they hung on Scirye and the boys like tents, which at least left plenty of room in which Kles could hide.

As they began to roll up their sleeves and pants cuffs, Mugwort shook his head. “Try to keep out of the direct light, okay?”

Their progress across the maintenance area was slow because they had to keep pace with the plodding Mugwort, but finally they arrived at a truck loaded with crates. From the hand truck, he took the box and added it to the flatbed at the rear. “Hop on,” he said.

Bayang and the others managed to find places among the stacks of crates. All of them had labels which read:

Ship to:
Roland Enterprises
Houlani

When Bayang saw the children looking about, she hissed, “Quit behaving like tourists. Look like you belong here.” She set the example by folding her arms and pretending to be bored.

Leech and Koko had no trouble copying her. To survive on the streets, they had learned how to act different roles—as they had just done in Captain Honus’s office. Scirye, though, felt the opposite of boredom. Her heart was pounding; she expected any moment for the police to shout out, “Halt!” The best she could do was sit rigidly and hope staring at her toes would fool casual bystanders.

As the truck slowly wound its way through the warehouse traffic, Koko pulled out his handkerchief. “I hate work.”

“We’re just pretending to work,” Leech corrected.

“It’s still hard,” Koko insisted and wiped his forehead. As he lowered the handkerchief, the others began to splutter, trying to control their laughter. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” Bayang said. “You’ve got grease on your face.” She pointed to the stripe across his forehead.

“How’d that get there?” Koko said puzzled, but as he raised his handkerchief to wipe it off, Leech stopped him.

“You don’t want to do that,” Leech warned, trying to keep from chuckling.

Koko looked down at his handkerchief and then frowned. “Where’d that come from?” His forehead wrinkled as he considered the possibilities. His eyes settled on Scirye. “It’s funny how chummy you suddenly got back there.”

“I was just so grateful you didn’t leave us in the jail,” Scirye said innocently. She and Kles were usually more careful about making sure blame couldn’t attach to them, but they’d been improvising.

“Maybe I should have,” Koko said suspiciously, and his voice took on a menacing tone. “You know, girlie, I can play pranks, too.”

“Our target is Roland and Badik,” Bayang reminded them, “not one another.”

Leech grinned, glancing back and forth between Scirye and Koko. “You may want to think twice about it, Koko. You just may be outnumbered and outclassed.”

“Okay, okay,” Koko grumbled, looking down sorrowfully at his stained handkerchief. “Let’s have a truce for now.”

Finally, the truck reached the piers, chugging along as the bay lapped at the big wooden tree trunks that supported the concrete platforms.

Service across the Atlantic had not started until this year so Scirye had come to America by ship. Despite Bayang’s warning, the girl could not help taking a closer look at the passing seaplanes.

They seemed to come in all sizes and designs. Some floated on their bellies in the water like fat gulls. Others rode high up on pairs of big pontoons, looking like long-legged storks. There were sleek single-wing racers, two-winged air yachts all the way up to a monster with nine wings and eight engines, four facing forward and the other four faced toward the rear. With all the struts and crisscrossing wires, the craft looked more like a trio of mobile bridges than an aircraft.

Mugwort stopped the truck at the foot of the pier by several luggage carts. Close up, the Pan American Clipper was huge as it bobbed up and down, tugging at its mooring ropes as if impatient to be off. With its rounded hull over a hundred feet long, and wings over a hundred and fifty, it truly lived up to its name of “flying boat” and dwarfed the nine-winged sea plane. Even though the blades of the four propellers were enormous, they still didn’t seem big enough to lift such a gigantic craft into the air.

Mugwort appeared at the back. With seaplanes arriving and leaving, there was almost a constant roar of engines so he had to speak loudly. “Here,” he said, handing a suitcase to each of them. “Follow me.”

They walked along the pier where the Clipper’s triple tail rose high above them. Ahead of them, a broad wing cast a large area of shadow over the water and the pier. Scirye couldn’t help feeling as if they were walking straight into the belly of a whale.