Word: ducks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Martinis for the Heart. Across the River is the story of an embittered man steeped in a sense of personal failure, momently expecting death from heart disease, having his last fling at duck hunting, which he loves, and his last fling at love itself with an 18-year-old Italian countess in Venice. Hero Richard Cantwell is 51, a U.S. Army colonel demoted from general and stationed in a postwar billet in Trieste. His personal history and even some of his characteristics are startlingly parallel to those of Author Hemingway...
...altitude nobody is allowed to "sack out." Reason: an accidental pressure failure would fill the cabin with a frigid blue haze, and the loss of oxygen would kill a man in 30 seconds if he didn't slap on his oxygen mask. A sleeper would be a dead duck. A more earthy problem: the toilet mechanism won't work at high altitude. The most practical makeshift is a bucket, and by unwritten law, the first man who needs it on the flight cleans it after landing. This makes the hours of flight a competition in painful restraint...
...days ago government troops waded neck-deep through muddy waters to close in on Gyi's hideaway hut. The rebel leader was getting ready for dinner; the troops heard him urging his cook to hurry with a duck curry. The government men called on the rebel to surrender. Gyi answered with a blast from a U.S. carbine. When the gun battle was over, the Karen chief lay dying with bullets in his head and chest. "A drop of water," he begged of his captors. "There's no water here, sir," replied a government officer politely. A few minutes...
Santa Rita used to be in Albuquerque, where her bird was thought to be a dove. Now that she has moved to Socorro and the rainmaking studies are going full blast around her, it has been noticed that her bird looks more like a duck. It holds its head back on its shoulders in a way doves seldom do. Dr. Workman considers this apparent metamorphosis a favorable omen...
...Gamma radiation travels with the speed of light and is gone instantly. Heat radiation lasts as long as three seconds (which may be time enough to duck into a doorway or sprint a couple of steps around a corner). The blast or shock wave races a mile in five seconds. After an air burst, stay where you are for at least a minute, and watch out for falling debris. After an underwater burst, the danger from radioactive mist may last for several hours...