Early the next morning, Kit and Bobbo snuck away from the barracks after a hearty (by Thembrian standards) gruel breakfast and set off down the snow-laden hill toward the airfield.

"Kit, I don't know about this," huffed Bobbo, who apparently, to judge by the way he clopped behind in Kit's footprints out of breath, never had an affinity for running. "What if they find out that we left without permission?"

"Nobody said we couldn't," Kit said. "And you could've stayed behind!" He waited at the foot of the hill for Bobbo to catch up. "But, I'm glad you didn't. It's nice having a friend around here."

"Yeah," smiled Bobbo. "Sure is."

"C'mon, I'll hurry as fast as I can," said Kit. "I gotta get a postcard soon so it'll catch Baloo by Saturday!"

The boys crawled under a barbed-wire fence where there was a train station and rows of wooden shacks on the airfield's outskirts; they were told by another cadet they could find a post office there.

By no means matching the hustle and bustle of Cape Suzette, the train station was a small but beating pulse amidst the frozen desolation. Off-duty military pilots with ice shards clinging to their face around the silhouette of where their goggles covered their eyes socialized and inspected goods at the trading posts. Weary, soot-covered miners in hard hats took rest with their mugs atop barrels stacked outside a tavern. An old woman swept the stoop of a general store, which, for the most part, sold frozen fish and can openers.

Behind the station, a black freight train blew its whistle, hot clouds billowing from its oversized smokestack as it inched up the tracks with a seemingly endless burden of cars, a few of them passenger vessels, but most of them open-top boxcars laden heavy with a heaping cargo of crushed rock.

"If you get it out in time, do you think he'll come to see you?" asked Bobbo.

"No, but I wish he would. We were kind of in an argument the last time I saw him, and I'd like him to know there's no hard feelings. Even if he is still wrong."

The boys found the post office, so noted by a illustrated sign posted by the swinging doors: a flounder with a big envelope in its mouth. As they entered through the swinging wooden door (and were the only customers present), Kit was venting a few things off his chest: "We fly in his plane, so it's his rules. He's scared to let me try anything because he says I'll end up with my nose in the dirt, as if I wouldn't know what I was doing. He doesn't think I can handle myself in a plane because I'm too young. I'm not a baby! Once he finds out that I'll be in an airshow, he'll know I—!"

Kit choked on his words as he suddenly noticed who was sitting behind the post office counter. He was met by those same big, fogged spectacles; this time they were donned under a green visor. And, immediately from that wrinkled, statuesque countenance: "What is your business here."

"Oh no," muttered Kit. "You work here, too?"

"Questions are holding up line," said the old blue hog. "What is your business here."

Kit filled his lungs with a big gasp. "I'm-inna-hurry-an'-I wanna-buy-a-postcard-please!"

The clerk grunted with some kind of contentment at the expedient answer; he reached under the counter and came back up with two postcard, each quite distinctive from the other. "You have a choice. Traditional, or, for an entirely fair and justifiable increase of price, the new Glorious People's Ministry of Tourism and Foreign Relations promotional card."

One card was a photo of an old hovel buried halfway in snow, the solid grey monotony of barren, icy background broken only by a string of telephone poles. The second was a tropic beach, a brilliantly colored artwork with shimmering clear ocean, warm sand, tall palm trees, and dolphins jumping from the sea into the air. The bottom corner read 'Greetings From Thembria!'

"Oooh, a choice," marveled Bobbo. "Gee, Kit, whatcha gonna pick out?"

Kit's eyebrows knitted at the beach postcard, his mouth agape. At length, the question was finally able to breach his loss for words: "What does this have to do with Thembria?"

"Right there," said Bobbo, pointing at the greeting. "The name of the country."

"Right. So?"

Bobbo tilted his head, questioningly. "So... what?"

"Quicky!" snapped the clerk. "Keep line moving."

Kit shook his head and set a nickle on the counter. "I'll take the traditional one. I don't suppose you have a glorious people's pencil I could borrow for a minute?"

The clerk snorted an affirmative, bent down behind the counter and this time came up with a stack of papers.

"What's all this?" asked Kit.

"Pencil-lending permission form. Fill out, wait for processing."

"Fill out... with what? If someone doesn't have a pencil, how would you expect them to fill out a form to borrow one?"

"With a pen, of course," replied the clerk.

Kit's next question was served through gritted teeth: "Then can I borrow a pen?"

"Silly foreign boy. There are no pens here in Thembria. Ink freezes."

Kit turned to Bobbo for any kind of help, to which his bunkmate astutely suggested, "You better hurry up with it, Kit, or we're gonna be late."

It was back to speaking to the spectacles under the green visor. "Look, sir. All I wanna do is write home real quick. Can't you cut me just a little slack?"

"I cannot grant permission to loan the People's pencils because they are property of the People," replied the clerk. "What would be next? If the People's property was permitted to be passed on without processing, it would be preposterous."

Kit had to take cover under the counter to avoid being sprayed with spittle. "Huh...?"

From his shirt pocket, the clerk fished out an old, cracked, chewed-up pencil. "Without processing, the best I can do is loan you my own."

"That'd be swell!" said Kit. "Thanks!"

However, as Kit held out his hand, the clerk put the pencil back in his shirt, uttering promptly: "You can't have."

"Why not?" scowled Kit.

"It belonged to my father, and his father, too," said the clerk. "Glorious family heirloom. You don't touch."

Amidst Kit's groaning and cringing, Bobbo dug in his jacket until he found a pencil of his own—which was hardly in any better condition than the clerk's—and handed it over to Kit. "Here, you can use mine if you want," he said.

"You had one all this—aw, never mind. Thanks." Kit accepted it with a belligerent glare toward the clerk. "It's not a glorious family heirloom, is it?"

"Sure is!" Bobbo beamed. "So be careful with it, please."

The clerk folded his arms and sat up straight, smugness flowing abundantly from his tusked frown.

"'Preciate the help, Bobbo," muttered Kit, head ducked as he about-faced out the door.


For the third day of flight school, the cadets were gathered in a small classroom. The chalkboard in front was full of diagrams of stick figures assuming what resembled ballerina-like poses. It was Thembrian saluting; the many, many nuances of Thembrian saluting.

Colonel Spigot stood on top of the teacher's desk, standing on one foot. "And if I'm standing thideways?"

The boys copied his stance, albeit by then with more fatigue and slower responses. "We salute this way," they replied, monotone and by rote. It was the fifteenth time Spigot had gone over the entire assemblage of saluting poses.

Just before saluting began, the boys stood there for two hours watching an old war veteran polish his medal, and explaining every application of the polishing cloth with precise (and extremely repetitive) narration, while Colonel Spigot napped in a chair in the corner with is hat lowered to his snout.

"Good," said Spigot. "You all pass Introduction to Saluting."

"Finally," Kit scoffed, rubbing his tired arm. His feet ached, and his legs felt like putty. Still, there was a gleam of hope in his eye now the boring part was all over. "Flying's gotta be next!"

"Next," Spigot announced, "Sergeant Dunder will instruct you on saluting the Great Patriotic Flounder!"

Kit blinked. So much for that gleam of hope. He wondered if he was having a bad dream.

In a single breath, Dunder recited the account of the country's most famous fish, the full, official account as issued many years ago by the Glorious People's Department of Fish, Cabbage, and History: "This is the Great Patriotic Flounder who jumped from a stream into an enemy cannon clogging it and saving all of Thembria."

Looking around, Kit saw the other cadets stared at the Sergeant with blank expressions. No one was asking any questions. No one was mentioning flying. And now more saluting. Kit suddenly had a sinking doubt that all of the stalling was more than just his own lost translation with Thembrian culture. It was getting frustrating.

"We salute the Great Patriotic Flounder like this!" Dunder stood on one foot and leaned far forward, making breaststroke gestures with his arms.

With the prospect of another hour of saluting like he was auditioning for the part of a water fountain statue, Kit decided to find out about the flying once and for all.

"Uh, sir?" He raised his hand to speak, a move which surprised the Thembrian cadets, who suddenly regarded Kit as if he was insane. "We've learned bootlace tying, medal polishing, a thousand-and-one ways of saluting you, and now we're saluting seafood..."

Tapping his riding crop against the palm of his hand, Spigot glowered at Kit in a manner which the other cadets clearly recognized as a threat to think very carefully of the question before it was asked. "Ye-es?"

"Well, can we fly tomorrow?" asked Kit.

"Tomorrow..." Spigot's eyes even further narrowed. Just the question he didn't want to hear. "We will have advanced saluting!"

"Well I think that stinks!" snapped Kit, throwing his arms up in protest. The cadets all stepped back, no longer regarding Kit as if he were insane, but now like more having a death wish. "I wanna fly!"

For a beat, the room was entirely silent with an air of impending doom as all waited for the Colonel's response.

"So. You want to fly, hm?" Spigot jumped down from the desk and circled Kit slowly, eyeing him from head to toe. "Well, we have thpecial classes for kids like you."


Just after supper, before the cadets were herded into their barracks, Bobbo cut out of the mess hall to the kitchen to see how his bunkmate was holding up in Spigot's "special" class.

Down the hall, a half-peeled turnip rolled out of an open door, where was also heard the mutters, sniffles, and sudden but common "ouch!" of the novice turnip peeler poking himself in he finger for the umpteenth time.

There he found Kit, slouched on a stool, absently picking away at a turnip he held over his lap. Alone in the kitchen, Kit was surrounded by mountains of red turnips and their shavings on the floor, and after a couple hours had a small pile of peeled turnips beside him to show for it. His thoughts, however, were far elsewhere from the pungent smelling vegetables. "I don't get it," he muttered. "Something's wrong—ouch!"

"Are you okay, Kit?"asked Bobbo.

"I'm just great," Kit replied, frowning at the newest scrape on his finger. "I'm in a flight school that doesn't teach flying. I don't get it."

Bobbo nodded. "This kind of thinking is normal in Thembria."

"Yeah," Kit sighed, thinking that was a considerable summary of the last three days. "But I left home so I could fly." His frown furrowed a bit deeper as he sliced away another chunk of turnip skin.

"Flying means a lot to you, huh?" asked Bobbo.

"It means everything," said Kit. "I sleep it, I dream it... I think about it once every ten seconds, at least!"

"I know whatcha mean," agreed Bobbo. "I feel that way about shaving ice."

Kit didn't hear him; for that moment, he became lost in thought of all the incomprehensible, mindless work he had been doled and how Spigot was dangling hopes of flying above him, at his fingertips but perpetually out of reach. The gears of his mind had suddenly spun angrily with swift decision. He jumped off the stool, casting the point of the turnip peeler's blade into the floor, with such thrust that he may have wished Colonel Spigot's foot was on the receiving end it.

"I don't care what's normal thinking in Thembria," said Kit. "Something's fishy around here, and it's not just the saluting!" He brushed by Bobbo and stormed out the door. "I'm gonna find out what it is!"

"Be careful, Kit." Bobbo looked after him curiously and worriedly. Of all the things that were considered normal in Thembria, among them was not a twelve-year-old confronting the people in charge. "You could get in trouble!"


In the shadows of dusk, Kit ran across the snowy acres to the airfield, where he aimed to search for clues. Specifically, he wanted to find the fleet Thunderyaks, since they seemed to be the one thing Spigot was trying to hide from them.

Kicking up long tracks in the snow, he yelped as he stubbed his toes on something heavy and metallic on the ground. He grumbled at it and brushed the snow back to see what it was, finding a discarded plane carburetor. Fortunately, thanks (or not) to the freezing ground, he had not much feeling left in his toes anyway.

He dashed to the first hangar, where a flag pole next to it had Thembria's proud colors (black and white) caught high in the numbing breeze. He scaled the side of the hangar and looked around the corner out in front, then over his shoulder... no patrols were in sight, the coast was clear! It was time to make his move and get inside quickly.

The double doors to the hangar were giant and cast iron. Kit tried to pull them apart at their middle, but a lot of good it did him; they would not budge. Then suddenly they did budge, with a great deal of squeaking and clanking as the locks were turned over... someone was about to exit!

Kit bolted back around the corner and jumped behind a snow dune. He heard the big doors clank shut again, and peered up to see two big guards now pacing around the entrance. To his relief, the guards did not look down to see his tracks, and in a moment their own larger footprints stamped away any evidence that he was ever there.

'That was close,' he thought, 'but I'm not getting cold feet!' Looking around for another means inside, he trod around to the rear of the hangar where he found a back door, but he could hear metallic hammering noises from the interior; simply walking in was not an option while there were workers inside.

Then the snap of waving the Thembrian flag caught his attention. It was a big flag, and was hoisted much higher than the hangar itself. 'Up' suddenly looked like an intriguing option...

He went to fetch that heavy airplane part that acquainted itself with his toe moments before, and brought it back with him to the flagpole. There he tied the flagpole's ropes around it, and slowly, quietly, hoisted it to the top while bringing the flag down. Once it was all the way up, he let it free fall, and grabbed onto the flag as it was whisked skyward, taking him with it!

He was shot to the top of the pole, and just barely got his hands around its ball-shaped finial, saving himself from being flung into the air altogether. From there, he clasped onto the rope with one hand and gathered the flag up with the other, unfastened the hooks and grabbed onto all four of the flags corners, then jumped! The flag bloomed into a parachute, and he glided with ease onto the snow laden roof of the hangar.

Once he touched down, he tossed the flag into the wind, quite pleased with his own cleverness.

He found a roof hatch that was unlocked and crawled inside, where he dropped onto one of many wooden beams stretched across the dimly lit rafters. Sure enough, the fleet of Thunderyaks were on the floor, and he spied Spigot and Dunder down there as well. He crawled around the rafters to get a better ear on what they were speaking about, but he found he was going to have to move carefully... even against his meager weight, the wooden beams were creaking and bending.

Colonel Spigot was doing a jig around the planes, singing, "Flounder, flounder, we have the perfect floun-der!" He chuckled giddily. "General Spigot, yes, I like the sound of that!" He took a reprise from his celebrating and turned to his Sergeant, who was studying a long sheet that illustrated Spigot's detailed scheme. "Do you understand the plans, Dunder? This year, the High Marshal is finally going to see a perfect flounder formation! And do you know why, don't you?"

Dunder nodded, and whipped out a rivet gun from a tool crate at his feet, giving the trigger a quick test squeeze; the sudden noise nearly made him drop it. "Because I'm bolting the planes together?"

"Exactly!" said Spigot. He paced around Dunder in pep-talk fashion, and continued, "It's going to be long, hard, tedious, taxing work, but I just want you to remember one thing!"

"What, sir?"

"You're not getting paid for it."

Not that such news made Dunder bat an eyelash. He looked at the plans once more, a bit confused this time. "But sir, how will these kids fly the planes?"

"Ah, but the kids won't fly them," said Spigot. "They'll sit in them, while Tiny Bubbles, Thembria's smallest adult pilot, flies the lead plane!"

As the Colonel's words sunk in, so did Kit's fingertips into the wooden beam he hid on top of. "We're not gonna fly?" he exhaled, scandalized, and did not notice how the beam — which he clasped onto as if he wished it was Spigot's neck in his hands — was beginning to crumble under his chest. "Not gonna fly?"

Spigot and Dunder looked up, seeing and hearing the sudden movement, and in the shadows just saw the figure of someone recoiling in the rafters.

"What the—an intruder!" cried Spigot. "Guards! Guards, hurry, there's an intruder! Don't let him escape!"

Kit went to leap to another beam, but tripped backwards on it, and just caught hold of it again with both hands before he instead took a long drop to the floor.

The two guards who were outside quickly jotted in, with their rifles racked, and they took aim at the shadow of the intruder's dangling legs, their intent as deadly and gleeful as ones starved for the thrill of the hunt.

"Ready, aim...!" yelled Spigot, and he smirked, rubbing his fingers together with savage amusement. It looked like the intruder had gotten back up on the beam, squirming desperately, like someone hoping to escape a bullet-riddled death, and hope was often a comical concept to the Thembrian militant. "Fire liberally."

"Uh-oh," gasped Kit, and staring at the business end of two powerful guns, it was a big uh-oh. He went to leap to the other end of the beam, but it cracked altogether, as did more, and in one fell swoop, the rafters came falling down in a piled-up crash on top of the Thembrians!

Kit landed on top of the guard hut on the far wall, and while the colonel and his troops were down and dazed in the dust, he quickly stole inside of an open vent shaft.

"We really need to get this place termite inspected," wheezed Spigot.


The cadets in the barracks lounged around quietly reading their textbooks, until the guards opened the doors to let Kit back inside, straight from turnip-peeling duty (or so they assumed). And it could have been said, as Kit's breath fogged the frosty outside air, that he appeared steaming mad.

"That liar," he muttered, shaking his fists as the guards closed the door behind him. For the moment, he ignored the other cadets, stomping down the length of the room, lost to himself. "That fraud! He's not gonna to get away with this!"

"What happened?" asked Bobbo. "Did anyone see you?"

"Listen up, guys," said Kit. He climbed on top of the nearest bunk and addressed them all: "I have terrible news to report! We're all victims of a huge scam!"

Bobbo gasped. "They're gonna ration the roast turnip dinners?"

"Much worse, Bobbo," said Kit. "We're not gonna fly! Spigot's gonna bolt all the planes together in a fish formation, and we're just gonna sit in 'em like dummies! But we can stop him if we unite! We'll march down to headquarters and demand to fly! Who's with me?"

To his chagrin, though (as he thought it was a rather good speech), the cadets shrugged and walked back to their bunks in short order. Kit's face fell incredulously; at length, Bobbo was the only one still standing in front of him, and he by no means looked interested in knocking on Spigot's door.

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," said Bobbo. "No one cares about the flying."

That was all too terribly apparent to Kit by then, and it stung. "I care," he said. He jumped off the bunk and angrily brushed past Bobbo. "It's not just about the flying, it's about our rights as men!"

"But we're not men," shrugged Bobbo. "We're boys. Flying's too dangerous for us."

Kit stiffly paused in mid-step, and fur bristled over the collar of his jacket. Hearing it from Baloo was one thing; hearing it from a fellow twelve-year-old should have amounted to some type of treason. In a beat, he swung around on his heel with a seething glare. "Oh yeah? Just tell the guys to look up at the sky at midnight. I'll show you how dangerous flying is!"

In a huff, Kit climbed back on the top bunk, and from there leapt to grab onto a stretch of pipe that was ice-cold and probably for water. He scaled the pipe hand-over-hand until he came to a tubular metal shaft that branched out all across the ceiling; he climbed on that and crawled to a grate that lead to the loft, and all that was in his way were four screws holding the grate to the ceiling. For that, he fished from his coat pocket a spoon pilfered from the mess hall, the end of which fit nicely into the grooves of the screws, and in a few moments he had climbed into the loft and eventually escaped through the roof.

Bobbo looked on with mouth agape as Kit was commencing all of this, particularly when he produced the spoon, as it was apparent this kind of escape plan was not carried out on the spur of the moment. "How long have you been thinking about getting out this way?" asked Bobbo.

"Since the first day," replied Kit. Then he was gone.


As the hour drew late, there was some speculation among the Thembrian cadets as to where their foreign classmate had wondered off and what he was doing. Bobbo had passed on the message to look to the sky at midnight, but the general agreement among the cadets was that the Cape Suzette kid was nuts and was probably already apprehended by the guards. Or, another popular theory was that he was merely frozen somewhere in the snow (it was often rumored that foreigners were severe tenderfoots when it came to a little itty bitty chill... even presently when it was a pleasant twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit). By midnight they were all asleep as usual... until they were abruptly woken by the blasts of tank cannons, so booming and so close that it shook them from their bunks. They yelped and huddled together near a window.

"We're under attack!" one boy shouted. They all dove from their beds to the floor, ducking their heads under their arms as they had been instructed since memory.

Alarms were blaring and soldiers were shouting frantically. Hastily the locks of their room's doors came undone, and a guard rushed inside, where he counted the heads of the frightened cadets. Their eyes were wide and questioning and they silently pleaded with him for answers, or at least for instructions, but he only swallowed and counted again, and then once more. Then he bolted out of the room; in his haste he forgot to shut the door.

"Why... why did he do that?" a cadet asked.

"It's Kit!" said Bobbo. "Kit's flying!" He ran out the door, with the other cadets following shortly behind. There they witnessed a lone Thunderyak not quite flying but scurrying across the airfield on its wheels, with a whole line of firing army tanks in fast pursuit of it.

It seemed that Kit was planning to take one of the Thunderyaks for a joyride, although he may have miscalculated the guards' preparedness for another intrusion, and perhaps further underestimated the typical Thembrian response to burglary: roll the tanks first, ask questions after the body parts have been shoveled up.

One of the cadets yawned. "This again?"

"He really is crazy," remarked another.

In any event, Kit was giving an entire platoon of Thembrian soldiers a sporting chase, though with more tanks responding from the ice-paved roads from either side of him, he was suddenly left with nowhere to turn, and ahead he was fast approaching a multi-story concrete building that was certain to put an end to his attempted flight before it even began.

Yet, the Thunderyak was not slowing down...

"What's he gonna do," scoffed a cadet, "run down the door, drive up the stairs and take off from the roof?"

Kit's plane burst inside the building, with the tanks mowing down the wall in pursuit, and the shocked cadets stood with wide eyes and bated breath as all the blasting and crashing noises echoed over the snow drifts.

"Well, there's where it ends," said another cadet. "How'd he think he was gonna get away with it?"

The building shook and smoke poured from some of its windows. The cadets expected the ruckus to stop any second, meaning Kit had likely been blasted into pieces, but the unseen chaos kept going. The cadets began to mutter amongst themselves.

"What's he doing in there?"

"You don't think he'll actually..."

"No way. There's no way... is there?"

With the chase ongoing, over each passing moment it was ever more apparent that the kid from Cape Suzette was not going to give up, no matter what. Perhaps it was a sense of rooting for the underdog, but the cadets then began to grin and hope that they would see that errant Thunderyak take off.

Rifles were then firing; the cadets saw the muzzle flashes from the buildings roof, which meant Kit had somehow made it that far. There was the sound of the Thunderyak's engine revving... he was going for it!

The cadets took a collective gasp, and suddenly the Thunderyak shot forth from the roof and took to the air like a bird, and there was much laughing and cheering.

"He did it! He's flying!" cried Bobbo. "He's flying! He's...! Um... got a building in his way."

And it was not just any building, but the landmark military fortress that housed among other things Colonel Spigot's office and quarters. Though the cadets saw the plane making a beeline for its massive gray walls, it was more than they could say for Kit before it was too late. They all flinched and cringed when the plane went sailing into one of the windows on the top story, and there it crashed to a halt, wings clipped and its tail poking out between the tall but narrow concrete frame.

As the dust was settling, the sirens quelled and more soldiers came from around the airfield and ran into the building after the Thunderyak. The young Thembrians watched on for a moment, stunned and quiet.

"Wow," said a cadet softly. "He did it. Sort of."

"I wonder if the colonel saw any of that?" gulped Bobbo.


What were the odds, thought Sergeant Dunder, that Colonel Spigot was not only watching the whole ordeal-frozen in scandalized terror as his whole scheme was about to explode before his very eyes-but that he was watching it all from the very window that Kit crashed the Thunderyak through, where the nose of the plane came to a crumbled halt on top of Spigot's very desk.

Had it not been that the desk was up to Thembrian carpentry standards for military buildings (which is to say, it weighed five hundred pounds and provided as an excellent bomb shelter), the colonel might not have been so fortunate as to come crawling out of the wreck unscathed.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," said Dunder to his seething commander, "but we won't find another boy the right size before Saturday. If you throw Kit to the polar bears, you're going to have an empty plane, and if the High Marshal sees that..."

Spigot was pacing around the floor of his quarters, muttering foul oaths in angry growls and wringing his swagger stick in his hands. "Thith ith terrible! Terrible!" he cried. "If I can't even replace him, what am I thuppothed to do with that bothersome brat!"

"He's not like the other cadets," said Dunder. "He actually joined the Junior Air Corps expecting to fly."

"Fly? Fly? Where did he get the idea that twelve-year-olds can fly in Thembria?"

Dunder inwardly agreed and gave that question some serious thought, and replied as he suddenly remembered, "Oh! I think it was when you told him, 'You'll be flying the most advanced fighter plane in the world!'"

"Enough!" shouted Spigot. "Oh, those yokels from Cape Suzette are so thpoiled and reckless! Don't they understand anything! Thank heavens that Thembrian boys know their place. Why, what would become of our glorious Mommyland if we allowed our children to chase thilly dreams and told them they could be anything they wanted?"

"I shudder to think," Dunder muttered dryly.

"It would be chaos!" said Spigot. "The sheer and utter kind! Why, instead of one, we would have hundreds of kids taking off in airplanes and crashing into buildings!" On that thought, Spigot stopped pacing and huffed into the adjacent office to check on the progress of the clean-up effort. Soldiers were still hard at work to quickly disassemble the plane and take it piece by piece back to the hangar, and from there they would have to very hastily hammer out the crumbled metal frame and put it all back together in working order.

Spigot whimpered as he thought of the possibility that the High Marshal would find out about any of this, but his face was quick to grow dark and angry again. He stormed back into his quarters, cursing and swishing his swagger stick around. "That boy is messing with the natural order of things!"

"He said he was sorry," said Dunder.

"Sorry, hmph. Sorry!" Spigot stood huffing by a window, with his foot tapping impatiently as he searched for an idea, and his scowl only grew deeper as he realized that nothing he truly wanted to do with the little troublemaker was going to suffice, for the boy had to be in at least ambulatory condition to put on a proper act in front of the High Marshal, and he was forced to resort to less-than-painful methods.

"Fine," the colonel grumbled. "He has to be in the airshow, but I can't risk him taking another chance. So perhaps if we made him see things our way, hmm?"

"How so, Colonel?"

"Dithipline, Dunder! Dithipline! Show him we mean bithness! We have to make sure he doesn't have time to cause any more trouble! Just until Thaturday, so he can fill that blasted seat!" At that, Spigot paused and wrung his hands together in delight. "And then I can feed him to the polar bears!"


The fourth morning of "flight school" found the cadets in the same routine as they had been practicing: out of the barracks, gruel for breakfast, and then off to the classroom with Spigot and Dunder. There was, however, one detail different: Kit was not with them.

All morning there were quiet conversations whispered about his flight attempt, and concern over what had happened to him. Then, there was one peculiar sight breaking the monotony as they left the mess hall and trekked outside single-file over the frosty paths: they saw Kit running across the campus, a big bucket of ice in each hand, being chased by soldiers with leashed, wolf-like hounds barking and snarling fiercely at his heels.

Spigot halted the line to watch, and, though he did not say anything, the way he rocked gloatingly on his feet with his chest puffed, he was expectant of the cadets to pay dire attention. "That is just an ex-thample of what happens to bad recruits," he said at last, as Kit disappeared yelping behind the snow dunes.

His gloating was interrupted, however, by the lack of awestruck silence when the cadets began to huddle up and whisper with Sergeant Dunder. Spigot cleared his throat loudly, and they fell back in line.

Some time later, after the guard dogs got tired, Kit was brought to the Thunderyak hangar for his next task. At the entrance, he was met by Spigot, Dunder, and a tin pail of soapy water.

"Oh, you're not tired already!" said Spigot. "There's so much to do!" He stepped to the side and gestured at numerous Thunkeryaks within the hangar. "These planes just sitting here... not being wrecked by twelve-year-olds... can get awful dusty."

"Whatever you want," panted Kit, and he leaned forward on his knees. "Please... just let me catch my breath."

At that, Spigot cracked him across the shin with his swagger stick. Kit jumped with a shrill yelp and stumbled backwards.

"Wakey wakey," snarled the colonel, and he threw a pointed finger toward the wrecked Thunderyak in the corner. "Who's resting with this big mess you made! Now pick up the bucket and get to work!"

With fists clenched and murderous gleam in his eye, Kit's singular thought was to pound Spigot's snout into fuzzy blue putty. If not for the view of Thunderyaks over the stout hog's shoulder that helped him keep his temper in check and his goal in view, the night could have been disastrous.

Kit took a deep breath through his teeth, picked up the soap bucket and the sponge within, and commenced work cleaning the planes. The tired misery on his face was pure bliss to the Colonel, who merrily left him under the watch of the two guards posted in the hangar, which the strict orders for them not to give him a moment's rest until every single plane was sparkling.

Hours passed; Kit meticulously scrubbed plane after plane, every inch from nose to tail and from top to bottom, under the guffaws and taunts of the guards. After every plane he had to ask the guards nicely for permission to get more water for his bucket, and worse yet, the ice-cold water pouring from the indoor faucet was but a trickle and took seemingly forever.

During one of his trips to fetch more water, he spied some tools left on the floor by the wrecked Thunderyak... including a wrench that seemed to sparkle at him. A pity, he thought, such a useful tool was left unattended... he kept it in mind to sneak it inside the sleeve of his jacket and give it a good home under the mattress of his bunk until the air show.

Before long, his fingers and arms ached fiercely, and his eyelids were growing unbearably heavy, but he pushed himself, which each stroke of the sponge. As sun had set and the overcast sky was charcoal gray, he was finally coming to the last plane , twenty-five of them in all. By that time, over the hours splashing himself a bit with each dunk of his hand into the pale, he was dripping from head to toe in soapy water.

Sergeant Dunder came to the hangar and excused the guards from their duty. "Go on, I'll make sure it all gets taken care of," he said. The guards saluted him (on one foot, of course) and marched outside.

Kit was leaning against the last Thunderyak, wiping his brow against his sleeve. Dunder asked, "Are you okay?"

"Great," mumbled Kit. "Can't you tell?"

Dunder sighed. "The other cadets want me to help you escape."

"Thanks, but no dice," said Kit. He took a sharp breath and promptly resumed scrubbing down the plane. "I'm not giving up."

"But, Kit..."

"I'm not giving up!" snapped Kit. He climbed up on the plane's wing and started wiping down the windshield. "I'm gonna fly one of these planes down his lying throat on Saturday! I'm gonna show him, you, Baloo... I'm gonna show everyone!"

"But don't you see?" said Dunder. "You'll never have a chance. The planes are bolted together."

Kit glanced at him through the corner of his eye. "Yeah, that might throw a wrench in my plan."

"Things'll only get worse if you keep trying," said Dunder, shaking his head. "It's not worth it."

Kit suddenly stopped scrubbing and scowled at the sergeant's reflection against the plane's cockpit glass. "You don't know what it's worth," he said, and dunked his sponge hard into the pail.

He gave the glass a few more swipes, and finally had to pause, for a wave of weary dizziness overtook him. Dunder, meanwhile, rather sympathetically, fidgeted for the right words to talk him out of getting into more trouble before it was too late.

"You know, you can't win against him," replied Dunder, at length. "He's in charge."

It made Kit sneer the way that Dunder said that last part, in such a matter-of-fact tone as if it somehow simply explained and excused everything, absolutely. "I don't care," he hissed. He slid off the wing and gained not but a step before he had to lean against the plane's tail before his legs betrayed him. "I've got flying in my blood, and no one's gonna stop me!" At that, he had waved his arm at Dunder as to shoo him away, flinging sponge water into the sergeant's face.

"But look what ya just did," said Dunder, jerking his thumb at the wrecked Thunderyak.

Kit blinked at the scrambled metallic heap, his sight a bit fuzzy. "You mean the crash? Well... what do you expect? There was a building in my way!"

Suddenly Spigot was behind him. "Get back to work!" shouted the colonel, making Kit start. At least fortunate for Kit's benefit, Spigot had not heard much if any of the previous conversation, and in continued to be quite pleased with himself at the boy's torment. To boot, as he sauntered into the hangar, he was munching on a chocolate bar and smacking his fingers to make a show just how pleased he was.

"I'm done, sir," muttered Kit. "Can't I please just go to bed?"

Spigot looked him over from head to toe, grinning fiendishly. "Tisk, tisk, you missed a spot," he said.

Kit squinted at the plane. "Wha'... where?"

Spigot said nothing, but wiped the chocolate-smeared fingers on the side of the Thunderyak, leaving an unsightly smudge on the polished gunmetal. Kit sighed and began to clean the smudge away, but it would have seemed that the colonel was not quite content.

"Oh, no no," said Spigot. "If you missed one spot, you probably missed others. Start all over again... from the beginning!"

"Th-the beginning?" stammered Kit. His knees nearly buckled at the thought. From over Spigot's head Dunder frowned, and the look he shared with Kit urged the boy to take him up on his offer and get out of Thembria fast; Kit read him, he understood... he just couldn't agree.

"I'll need another bucket of water," he sighed, and brushed by the two of them.