Read Online Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) by Yasutaka Tsutsui - Free Book Online

tongue-lashing from the Chief. But that would be better than dying in a plane crash.
    At that moment, there was a faint whirring sound in the distance, mixed with the sound of the wind.
    “There he is now.” Red Nose and Sticky Eye got up.
    We rushed out of the hut in front of them. We wouldn’t be happy until we could see this aeroplane with our own eyes.
    A light plane, flying at low altitude from the Shiokawa direction, was making a sweeping circle above the bean fields. I didn’t know what type it was, but it had a stumpy fuselage with a propeller on each wing.
    “Well, it’s more or less a proper aeroplane, isn’t it. We’ll be all right in that. Won’t we. Eh.” Hatayama was trying to convince himself.
    “What else were you expecting, if not a proper aeroplane?” I countered, staring at him. “Don’t talk garbage.”
    Pummelled by the wind, the plane shook violently as it turned and prepared for landing some distance from the runway. Then it came towards us, flapping its wings up and down. The wings weren’t flapping in alternation. They flapped up and down
at the same time
.
    “Can aeroplanes flap their wings?” asked Hatayama in a frightened little voice.
    “Of course they can’t,” I replied with irritation. “It’s just the wind doing that.”
    “Wait a minute! The runway’s too short!” Hatayama shrieked. He stood transfixed as the aeroplane approached, wheels still retracted. How close would it come? Hatayama prepared to run.
    When the wheels at last touched the ground, the plane bounced on the runway. I closed my eyes.
    “No. It ain’t Gorohachi,” yelled Sticky Eye, standing behind us. “He’s better at it than that.”
    Who was it, if not Gorohachi? I opened my eyes again to find out. The plane made a thunderous noise as it careered towards us on the runway. It was sure to plough straight into us.
    “Nooooo! It’s going to hit the hut!” Hatayama was long gone. I followed him, diving headlong into the bean field beside us.
    The aeroplane reversed the pitch of its propellers, and screeched to a halt just inches from the hut.
    We looked at each other in the bean field. “We nearly died in a plane crash without even getting in!” said Hatayama. In hissheer terror, the pupils of his eyes had contracted to the size of pinheads.
    We waited until the propellers had stopped before crawling out of the bean field. As we approached the plane, we saw how close it had come to destroying the farmers’ hut.
    “Look at that! About five inches,” said Hatayama, measuring the gap with his fingers. He turned to me and added sarcastically, “Now that’s what I call service!”
    I frowned. It was hardly a laughing matter.
    Behind the plane lay a parallel trail of deep wheel ruts, two thick ones for the main wheels on either side of a thinner one for the front wheel – like gigantic mole tracks. They must have been made when the pilot had braked on the rain-softened runway.
    The door of the plane opened and a wooden ladder was thrust out. Nothing as grand as an ‘air stair’ for these passengers, then. And onto that wooden ladder stepped a plump middle-aged woman, who clambered down shakily with a baby strapped to her back.
    “Hello there, Yoné,” Sticky Eye called to her. “I thought it might be you. How’s old Goro doing, then?”
    “Bah. There ain’t nothing wrong with him. Just that the doctor said he weren’t to move,” she laughed, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth. “Goro knew you was here, and was that worried, saying he’d come and get you, like. But seeing as the doctor told him to lie down, I had to come instead, see.”
    “Well, it’s a long time since we flew with you, Yoné,” Red Nose said cheerily. “I see you haven’t forgotten how to do it.”
    “As if I would!” replied the woman, throwing him a flirtatious look as she laughed. She was obviously Gorohachi’s wife. “It kept coming back to me as I went along.”
    Hatayama poked me several times in