That meant an unceremonious dunk in the drink. Even that presented problems. It would be a good idea not to be seen. With the Day of Infamy about to begin, the decks were jammed with spectators. My one lucky break was that the port side offered much the better view of the festivities, and the stewards had advertised that fact. That was also the side that would tie up to the dock after the show, so the crew preparing hatches and ramps were over there, too. I had found a big cargo hatch near the starboard bow and in the fifteen minutes I'd been standing there, watching the water flow by twenty feet beneath me, not a soul had come down the passageway. Until now.
"Good morning, Elwood," I said. He was ambling toward me, hands jammed down into his pockets, hat jammed down on his head. I hadn't seen much of him during the voyage. No doubt he was spending his time at the bar, telling his tall tales to anyone who would listen.
" 'Lo, Sparky," he drawled.
"Feel like a swim?" I asked him.
"No. No, I think I'll pass on that one." He leaned on the pole that blocked the open hatch door and gazed out at the gray Navy ships, dozens of them, clustered around the dry docks and repair yards of Keanapuaa. All the bigger ones, the behemoths, the battleships named after political divisions of the old United States, were on the port side.
"I looked in on that feller in your dressing room," he said.
"How's he doing?"
"Gonna be a close thing," he said. "A real close thing."
"That's what I thought, too."
He turned to squint up at me.
"Didja have to hit him so hard?"
"You didn't see the fight, Elwood."
"No, you're right. I didn't see it. He must have come at you really hard, for you to do that to him."
"Actually, he didn't come at me at all. He was just holding me at gunpoint."
He looked surprised. "You don't mean it. What was he, some sort of cop?"
"In a way. Private security."
He shook his head slowly and looked down at the water.
"It's usually not a good idea, beating a cop half to death."
"Didn't have much choice. He was going to kill me."
"He said that, did he?"
"Well, not in so many words."
He gave me another long look, and this time I looked away. Sometimes I wish Elwood would just go away. He's always second-guessing me.
"What did you want me to do?" I protested. "Wait around and see?"
"Now don't you get all excited. I'm just asking, that's all. I don't want to try to run your life for you."
"Sure you do."
"That's not true, Sparky. I'm just looking out for your welfare. If that man dies, you know good and well there'll be more trouble—"
"Getting killed isn't your idea of trouble?"
He looked me over again, then nodded. I was beginning to hear a low, droning noise, still distant but getting nearer. Elwood looked up. The sky was blue, and still clear.
"All I was gonna suggest," he said, "is when you get ashore, would it hurt anything to give a call and have somebody go get him? It might make a big difference."
"They'll find him soon enough."
"Maybe, maybe not." He kept looking at me.
"All right. I'll call."
"That's good." He looked down at the water again. "I'm glad I won't be diving into that. Looks cold to me."
"Are you kidding? This is Hawaii. It's warm as soup."
"Yeah? Seems to me there's a nip in the air."
With that the droning noise got a lot louder, and the first wave of torpedo bombers of the Japanese Imperial Navy appeared over the pineapple fields to the north. I gave Elwood a sour look, and shoved the Pantech over the side. When I hesitated for a moment, he planted a foot encouragingly, and I tumbled into the water.
The next half hour kept me busy as a one-man show of Cast of Thousands. It wasn't nearly as dangerous as it looked... or so I kept telling myself.
Pacifica's Pearl Harbor spectacular, known in the trade as a Vegas, employed every trick in the book to make it seem life-sized and historically accurate, including one of the more subtle tricks I know: having parts of it actually be life-sized. The aircraft were all exact replicas, powered by real gasoline engines. The torpedoes they dropped were to scale, but had no warheads, explosions being provided by charges already in place. The battleships themselves were also big as life... on the side the audience saw, anyway.
The show employed a cast of several thousand. Most of them simply had to run around shouting and pointing. Others did actual stunts, from simply swimming through water dotted with burning oil slicks, to being blown from the deck of an exploding battleship. There were fire gags, with sailors running around engulfed in flame, and bomb gags, where men bounced off concealed trampolines at the moment the gas and flash powder went off.
Only about a hundred of these were full studio-certified expert stunt performers, and they were clustered near the center of the action. The rest were journeymen, getting extra wages because of the marginal dangers involved, but not qualified for the more exacting gags. My plan was to stay in the areas where these guys were assigned, and try not to get my hair singed off.
The Pantechnicon is equipped to deliver motive power in a variety of mediums. Today I'd rigged a small propeller to a shaft that would normally power a set of wheels, and I trailed behind at the end of a three-meter cord. The Pantech is about as streamlined as a brick. Its progress might best be described as wallowing, but it managed a steady three knots, which would eventually get me there.
I'd seen the show twice before, so I had some idea where the biggest effects were produced. Still, it could get dicey. The best thing I had going was the clarity of the water, at least before the worst of the explosions roiled the bottom and filled the water with foamy bubbles. I could duck my head under and see where the charges were placed.
My worst moment came when I felt a vibration in the water, turned my head, and saw a torpedo headed straight for me. I saw it pass about ten feet below, a lethal silver shark, then the water all around me turned to foam and my clothes filled up with air for a while.
But a few minutes later I ran aground on a concrete shore to the south side of Ford's Island. I dragged myself and my luggage out of the water and sat down to await the end of the show.
If you think the sinking of the Arizona is spectacular, you should see the raising.
Britannic had gone to her berthing point before it was over, all the fire and noise and fountains of water and planes crashing in flames. Then the heavenly director shouted, "Cut, that's a wrap," and it all stopped for a moment... then went into reverse. Torpedoes bobbed to the surface, then headed for a submarine tender like schools of fish. Half a dozen enormous gray metal battlewagons were lifted from the bottom, still smoking, paint blistered. Sailors who had gone down with the ship spit out breathing tubes and broke out the paint cans. Everywhere water cascaded off buckled "wooden" decks, which now started to unbuckle along the invisible hinge lines. All over the harbor little boom skimmers darted, corralling the black bunker fuel, sucking it into big tanks.
Everybody went about his business without a single cheer being raised, nor a solitary high-five exchanged. They call it theater, but it's not, to my mind. I know it's hard to maintain enthusiasm after a long run. The solution to that is to get out when you no longer feel excitement as the curtain falls. This particular Vegas had been running for twenty years. Some of the people around me were the children of the original cast. Their own children would no doubt take over the jobs when this generation moved on to something else. I found these disneyland shows overproduced and cheerless. If you want a history lesson, a holograph movie would serve.