Before too long Slothrop has begun checking out these boxes here that Schnorp brought along. There are a dozen of them, and each contains a deep, golden custard pie, which will fetch a fantastic price in Berlin. “Wow,” cries Slothrop, “holy shit. Surely I hallucinate,” and other such eager junior sidekick talk.

“You ought to have a PX card.” A sales pitch.

“Right now I can’t afford a ration stamp for an ant’s jockstrap,” replies Slothrop, forthrightly.

“Well, I’ll split this one pie here with you,” Schnorp reckons after a time, “because I’m getting kind of hungry.”

“Oboy, oboy.”

Well, Slothrop is just chowing on that pie! enjoying himself, licking custard off of his hands, when he happens to notice off in the sky, back toward Nordhausen, this funny dark object, the size of a dot. “Uh—”

Schnorp looks around, “Kot!” comes up with a brass telescope and braces it blazing on the gunwale. “Kot, Kot—no markings.”

“I wonder…”

Out of air so blue you can take it between your fingers, rub, and bring them back blue, they watch the dot slowly grow into a rusty old reconnaissance plane. Presently they can hear its engine, snarling and sputtering. Then, as they watch, it banks and starts a pass.

Along the wind between them, faintly, comes the singing of Furies:

There was a young man named McGuire,

Who was fond of the pitch amplifier.

But a number of shorts

Left him covered with warts,

And set half the bedroom on fire.

Ja, ja, ja, ja!

In Prussia they never eat pussy—

The plane buzzes by a yard or two away, showing its underbelly. It is a monster, about to give birth. Out of a little access opening peers a red face in leather helmet and goggles. “You limey ’sucker,” going past, “we fixin’ to hand your ass to you.”

Without planning to, Slothrop has picked up a pie. “Fuck you.” He flings it, perfect shot, the plane peeling slowly past and blop gets Marvy right in the face. Yeah. Gloved hands paw at the mess. The Major’s pink tongue appears. Custard drips into the wind, yellow droplets fall in long arcs toward earth. The hatch closes as the recon plane slides away, slow-rolls, circles and heads back. Schnorp and Slothrop heft pies and wait.

“There’s no cowling around that engine,” Schnorp has noticed, “so we’ll aim for that.” Now they can see the dorsal side of the plane, its cockpit jammed to capacity with beer-sodden Americans, singing:

There once was a fellow named Ritter,

Who slept with a guidance transmitter.

It shriveled his cock,

Which fell off in his sock,

And made him exceedingly bitter.

A hundred yards and closing fast. Schnorp grabs Slothrop’s arm and points off to starboard. Providence has contrived to put in their way a big white slope of cloud, and the wind is bringing them swiftly into it: the seething critter puts out white tentacles, beckoning hurry… hurry… and they are inside then, inside its wet and icy reprieve… .