“You and I are going to do a little practicing.” The girl spoke in a steady even tone. Then she smiled.
The sergeant looked her up and down. She was, he decided one of those rare girls who could make even the drab uniform of a WAC look good. She was rather large but well proportioned. “An oversize copy of a beautiful gal,” he told himself.
To the girl, after recalling her words, he said:
“Says who?”
“Says the Colonel.” Smiling a little more broadly she fished a crumpled bit of paper from her pocket and handed it to him.
“Military papers,” he grumbled as he smoothed out the sheet. “Should be kept in perfect condition, folded neatly.”
“And read.” She did not smile.
“Okay—okay, sister. All the same, that’s general orders I’m giving you. I—”
He broke off to stare at the paper. “What’s this?” He glared at the paper some more. “You are to send small balloons carrying hollow steel balls up into the sky. Then you are to find them up there in the clouds and I am to try and shoot them down?”
“That’s right.”