"Pretty, pretty, hey, kid?" Dawson grunted, and made a sweeping gesture with one hand.
"What is?" Freddy Farmer murmured absently. "Oh, you mean this California scenery? Yes, it's very nice, but stop talking about it so much, will you? You'll have me believing that you are a native of this state."
"No, dope!" Dave snapped. "I don't mean the scenery, though it really is something. I mean those Flying Fortresses and Liberators, lined up over there. Remember? This is the Los Angeles Air Forces base. We flew up here last night from Dago. We're ferrying one of those jobs out to Pearl. Or don't you remember? Oh, I get it. You're in that kind of a daze, huh?"
"What do you mean, that kind of a daze?" young Farmer demanded. "I was just wondering if ..."
"Sure!" Dawson broke in with a chuckle. "Just what I mean. You're wondering if there's time to slip out to Hollywood so maybe you can get Dorothy Lamour's autograph, and Hedy Lamarr's, and ..."
"Rot! That's kid stuff!" Freddy snorted as his cheeks went a beet red. "Of course ... well, I mean, they are both very lovely ladies, and ..."
"Okay, we'll skip it!" Dave laughed as Freddy started to stammer in his confusion. "We'll pretend you were wondering something else, which your face says you weren't. What was it?"
"Definitely something else, and please go walk into one of those revving propellers, will you!" Freddy said hotly. "Frankly, I was wondering why the vice-admiral sent us up here to fly an Air Forces plane out instead of sending us over by a Navy plane. A Catalina, or a Coronada, for instance."
"I wondered about that myself, for a while," Dave replied, as the smile faded from his lips. "But I think I figured it out."
"All right, master mind!" young Farmer said with a patient sigh when Dawson didn't continue. "I'll be nice and polite, and ask. What did you figure out?"