"Did you hear that?” George looked over at Rick.

“That’s an old familiar tune, my dear George.  I haven’t heard it in a long time,”  Rick replied grimly.  “I would say our TV boys aren’t exactly who they want us to think they are.”  He leapt to his feet and charged into the cockpit, George following behind.  Their clattering and shuffling died away as they slid back the side window of the canopy and flooded the interior with the cawing, howling uproar of the island’s night life.

“What’s going on, Dad?”  Charlie asked anxiously.  Whatever the noise was that they had just heard, the noise that had set all the wildlife on the island off like a small, raucous riot, it had had an electrifying effect on George and Rick.  Even in the dim light of the cabin interior, Charlie could see that both George and Rick had visibly transformed.  From greying, portly middle-aged men, slightly slow on their feet, they now appeared to be almost quivering with some kind of suppressed excitement, peering into the darkness beyond the cockpit canopy.

“Shhh, Charlie!  We need to listen!”  Rick said, not unkindly.

Charlie mouthed, “What’s going on?” to Carmen but she simply shrugged and looked at the two men in the cockpit.

Rick charged back into the cabin and clambered up into a folding seat set high up in the wing by two sliding windows.  He slid one back and stuck his head out.  He stayed there, motionless save for one heel jiggling up and down on the foot plate of the observer’s seat.  Suddenly, he pulled his head in and jumped down, startling the two children.  Ignoring them he dashed past into the cockpit. 

“It’s no good.  I can’t hear anything now – not over that noise!”  they heard him say.

“Do you think we should take a look?”  George mumbled, attempting to whisper.

“No, I think we should pretend we didn’t just hear AK chatter and hope that Mr Winthrop-Smythe has a perfectly good reason for smuggling weapons in the South Pacific,” Rick said sarcastically.  “Of course we should take a look!”

“But the kids…”

            “The kids will be fine.   They’re in no danger out here.  We can go take a look and be back before dawn.”

            “I’m not sure, Rick.  If they have weapons, then they must be keeping watch too.  Anything could happen,” George said uncertainly.

            “Nothing’s going to happen to anyone.  We’re just going to sneak ashore like the good old days.  You remember, ‘Quiet as a mouse, quick as a rat’,” Rick whispered.  “If we left tomorrow without taking a peek, we’d be putting ourselves in a pretty difficult situation with the authorities.  We’ve spent years building our business.  That could all be for nothing if anyone finds out that we’ve been carrying weapons, no matter how innocent we appear.  If we go in and look, real quiet like, then we can notify the authorities ourselves and keep our names from being dragged into the mud.  Have you forgotten what we used to do back in the day?  This will be a cake walk!”

            “So long as all we do is take a look.  We can’t risk any more than that!” George insisted, but to Charlie’s ears George’s protests didn’t have quite the same ring of conviction as they had before.

            “In and out!  We’ll take the lay of the land and see what they’re up to.  No more than that, I promise,” Rick said.

            Both men erupted from the cockpit and stumbled back into the cabin.  They stood facing the children, grinning stupidly, breathing heavily with excitement in the heavy, sticky air of the Catalina. 

            “Um…er…,” said George.

            “Look kids, the thing is…we’ve heard something that we want to take a look at,” Rick said, shifting uncomfortably. “There’s no need to worry but George and I are going to slip ashore quietly to check it out.”

            “What do you mean by ‘slip ashore quietly’?  Do you mean that you and Dad are going to spy on the TV people?” Carmen accused. “I don’t think that’s very nice, Rick.  I’m not sure Mum would like it, Dad.”

            “Well, we’ll have to make sure that she doesn’t find out then, won’t we?”  George rumbled.  “Stop your yapping, Carmen.  You know that if I do something there must be a pretty good reason for me doing it.”  All sense of George’s reluctance to follow Rick had gone and what now remained was an implacable, steely determination.

            “Look, guys,” said Rick,  “We think we’ve heard something on the island that shouldn’t be there.  We want to look.  If the TV people have taken something on to the island that they shouldn’t have, and got me to fly it in, then your dad and I could be in serious trouble.  If there is someone else on the island that the TV people don’t know about then they could be in danger.  We just need go and see how the land lies.  Trust me, Carmen, your dad and I have done this sort of thing before.” 

            “When have you done this sort of thing before?” asked Charlie.

            During the short silence that followed, Charlie felt like he did at school when answering a question that he realised was actually an answer to something that had been asked five minutes previously.  For some reason, everyone in the cabin knew the answer except him. 

            “Charlie?  Did your mom ever tell you what I did back in the day?” Rick said.

            “No…not as such.  She just said that you were...er…kind of…reckless but interesting,” Charlie answered awkwardly.

            “Hah!” shrieked Carmen. “That’s what Mum says!”

            “That’s enough, Carmen!  Watch your manners, young lady!”  George spoke quietly but gave the impression that a mountain had tumbled nearby.  The severity of his tone surprised Carmen, who almost immediately dropped her head and found something interesting to stare at on the deck of the cabin.

            “Sorry, Dad.  Sorry, Rick,” she mumbled, almost inaudibly.

            “It’s OK!” said Rick.

            “It’s really OK,” George added.  “We have done this before, Charlie.  Carmen’ll tell you.  It sounds like you and Rick have some catching up to do.”

            “Now’s not the time to chat, Charlie, but I think your Mom left out a few details about her life before you.  Her life with me, for instance,” Rick said.  “Look, we’ll talk about this later, but right now George and I better get wiggling.”

            George shuffled the children out of the way to sit side by side on one of the bunks.  He went back to the cockpit and dragged a heavy chest out from beneath the old navigator’s chart table and pulled it down the length of the Catalina to the area beneath the big observation cupolas. 

            “I was hoping to show this to you later on this vacation, Charlie.  We could go diving on some of the reefs near home,” Rick said as he threw back the lid.  He started dragging the contents out onto the deck: wetsuits, flippers, facemasks, diving knives and lastly, clattering to the deck, weight belts. “No time to suit up properly, George.  Face masks, belts, snorkels and we’ll get the tanks from the back. Grab the regulators and let’s get to it!”

            Rick and George grabbed handfuls of equipment and began to pull it on over their shorts and shirts.  As they changed, and as George set up two diving tanks that Charlie had not noticed strapped to the bulkhead at the rear of the main cargo compartment, Rick explained what the children were to do whilst the men were gone. He spat out instructions in a kind of staccato rapid fire, “We’re going to be gone for a couple of hours, possibly three, almost probably no more than four.  We have to be back before sun-up to get the Catalina’s pre-flight check done and go.  You two just need to sit tight and listen out for us.  We’ll come up by the main door on this side,” Rick pointed at the door on the port side.  “It’s on the side away from the island which will keep us from being observed.  When we get back I’ll give three sharp knocks like this,” at which point he rapped on the hull quickly and the sharp cracks reverberated along the Catalina.  “It’s so you don’t get startled when you hear someone trying to board the plane,” he explained patiently in response to their questioning looks.

            “What if it is someone trying to get on?”  Carmen asked nervously.

            “Yeah, how are we going to explain that you and George have gone mental and decided to play spies?” Charlie muttered.  He had been looking at his shoes and nervously picking at his fingers as a growing sense of unease manifested itself as a strong desire to be sick.  Looking up he caught Rick’s eye.  Rick smiled and came over to where Charlie was sitting.  He squatted down on his knees in front of Charlie and ruffled his hair.

            “It’s OK, Charlie.  There’s nothing to worry about.  I need George with me to watch my back; otherwise he’d stay here with you guys.  If anyone does come you’re to tell them that George and I have gone spear fishing for squid so that we can have breakfast before we fly.  It’ll explain why we aren’t there and why we’ve gone diving at night.  At the very least, it’ll hold off any awkward questions until George and I get back.”

            “He’s right, Charlie,” Carmen said unexpectedly.  “Everyone in the islands goes night fishing once in a while – it’s a pretty good story.”

            “All right then,” Charlie grumbled.  “Go on and take a look.  I just think it’s none of our business.  Mum would hate that you’re doing this.”

            Rick looked at Charlie curiously and tilted his head to one side.  “You know I think she would understand, Charlie.  Anyway, if there’s one thing I have learned in this big, wide world is that poking my nose into other people’s business is exactly what I am good at!”

            “Look, Charlie,” George said.  “The TV people aren’t coming out to the Cat.  Remember who has the boat?”
            With a flash of realisation, and a hot flush of embarrassment, Charlie remembered the hot and tortuous process of unpacking and packing the rubber boat to ferry the TV people, as well as their equipment, out to the island from the Catalina.  How could he have forgotten that the boat was tied by its painter to the side of the sea-plane?  There was no way that the TV people could get out to them.  Unless they swam in the darkness, of course, and that would be pretty unlikely since there was no reason for the TV people to be suspicious of Rick and George.

            “Let’s get going, George.  The kids will be fine.  Carmen, you know how to tune the radio?  Why not tune into island radio and see what’s happening in the big wide world!”

            George went over to the door and cracked it open, holding it almost closed.   He looked over at Rick, who nodded, then turned the cabin lights down.  “Keep these off, it’ll drain the batteries otherwise.” 

George, opened the hatch fully, and sat on the edge of the doorway, facing into the cabin.  He pulled the face mask over his eyes and set the regulator firmly between his teeth.  After making a thumbs up sign to the children, he tipped backwards into the darkness and disappeared.  What followed was an almost immediate splash.  Rick stomped over to the doorway awkwardly, his flippers slapping the deck with loud claps.  He muttered a last, “see you in a couple of hours,” and followed George out of the door.

            Carmen leapt up off the bunk, as if stung by her proximity to Charlie and dashed over to the door.  For a moment she stared out into the dark of the night.  It was a quarter moon but it still lit the sea and sky enough to make out plenty of detail.  She could make out the two men hanging off the outer float of the port wing as they checked that their equipment was working fully.  In the black of the sea the water flashed with an uncanny blue luminescence as it splashed along the sides of the hull and the plane’s floats.  For a moment, to Carmen, the men appeared to be floating in a whirling mass of phosphorescent drifting stars, but then they tipped up, flippers briefly outlined against the glow of the sea and disappeared beneath the inky swell.  “Mou o a,” she said quietly to herself, wishing the men farewell.

            “Well that’s it then, Carmen.  It’s just us now,” said Charlie, trying to sound a lot braver than he actually felt.

            Carmen pulled the hatch shut plunging the cabin back into darkness.

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