The G.o.ds of war in their high places thought differently at that instant. Even as Dawson's thumb started to press down on the trigger b.u.t.ton the other h.e.l.l Cat swerved sharply and cut right out of the Yank air ace's sights. True, the maneuver brought the n.a.z.i even closer. In fact, that one maneuver sort of put the two aircraft on even terms. That is to say, the n.a.z.i no longer had any safety lead over Dawson's plane.

Neither could outfly the other on the flat, now, unless one of the engines went bad.

"Okay by me, chump!" Dawson grated as he relaxed thumb pressure on the gun b.u.t.ton. "Make the turn and ..."

And right then and there the n.a.z.i proved that his maneuver had a purpose. It proved that he had, for some time at least, been aware of the fact that Dawson was sneaking up on him. In other words, the n.a.z.i's swerve was not to change course toward the Truk area. On the contrary it was a deliberate air battle tactic. A swerve to the left, and then suddenly the n.a.z.i came spinning around and down like a flame-spitting demon from Satan's domain.

A far less experienced pilot than Dawson would have died then and there.

He would have died, hardly realizing what had hit him.

Too many, many times, though, had Dawson sc.r.a.pped with the best that the n.a.z.is or the j.a.ps had to offer not to be able to react instinctively to approaching danger. Thus it was, and almost before the thing had become a thought in his brain, he pulled up straight for the sky in the nick of time. The n.a.z.i's withering fire missed him.

At the speed the diving n.a.z.i was traveling it was impossible for him to haul up his nose and get a new bead on Dawson's zooming ship. As a result he undershot his target and went cutting down across the sky.

"Which makes me top man now!" Dawson yelled, and kicked his h.e.l.l Cat over and down. "And I kind of like that. Now, wiggle and squirm, you rat. Let me see you twist away from these little things."

Thundering down almost at the vertical, he lined up the other h.e.l.l Cat and let go with all of his guns. That is, almost all of his guns.

Something was wrong with two of them, and they did not fire. The others, however, did their stuff. And with grim satisfaction Dawson saw his tracers chew into the tail of the n.a.z.i's plane. It wasn't enough, though. The h.e.l.l Cat is a very, very tough ship. It can absorb all kinds of punishment, and the n.a.z.i's h.e.l.l Cat was no exception to the rule.

Dave Dawson saw it stagger a little in the air, but before he could correct his aim the n.a.z.i was prop clawing upward and around to the left.

"Not enough, huh?" Dawson gritted, and hauled out of his own dive to follow through the n.a.z.i's maneuver. "Well, I'm just the guy who can give you more. Like _this_!"

He was not in position for a tail shot then. The n.a.z.i had pulled out too fast, and his h.e.l.l Cat was not letting him down. As a matter of fact, though, it was the kind of a shot that Dawson liked best of all. A rear quarter shot that would permit him to rake the other plane from prop to tail before its pilot could do anything to get out of the way.

The n.a.z.i pilot seemed to sense that truth, and there was no reason he shouldn't sense it in view of the fact that he had been flying as a dirty n.a.z.i spy in Uncle Sam's Navy. Anyway, he belted his plane hard over on wing and tried to whip it down to the vertical. But Dawson followed right through and pressed his trigger b.u.t.ton. And it was then that it happened!

Rather, it was then that it _didn't_ happen!

With the n.a.z.i cold meat in his sights, not a one of Dawson's guns fired a shot. Maybe it was that a stray bullet from the n.a.z.i's opening burst had hit something that threw the firing mechanism out of whack. Maybe it was for any one of a hundred different reasons. The cold hard fact was that not one of his guns spoke its piece. And in the next split second the n.a.z.i was out of his sights and in the clear.

During that brief split second Dawson's brain seemed to freeze solid in unbelievable horror. Yet instinct was at work again. Instinct that made him try every way he knew to get his guns working. But it was all in vain. The joke was on him, and the war G.o.ds up in their high places were screaming with insane glee.

"No! Oh, no!"

From countless miles away Dawson's own sobbing words echoed back to him.

His heart was lead in his stomach, and his head was filled with the flames of an all-consuming rage. Yet with all that he did not give up the ghost and just let his h.e.l.l Cat roar down across the sky. The n.a.z.i did not know that his guns had gone out on him. Ten to one the n.a.z.i simply thought that he had kicked his own plane out of the line of fire, and so Dawson had saved his bullets for another try.

At any rate Dawson did not give up. He was made of better stuff than that. Gunless though he was, he still had the advantage of position. He had the n.a.z.i on the defensive, and as long as _he_ could keep the offensive he had not truly lost.

"And after all, I've still got one trick left!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "One trick that will stop you from reaching Truk, so help me!"

As though the n.a.z.i pilot had actually heard the words, the other h.e.l.l Cat zoomed for alt.i.tude in a pilot's trick to cut the corner and drop down from above. Dawson was not to be tricked by that one, however. He zoomed himself, and prevented the n.a.z.i from cutting in behind. The n.a.z.i tried it again in the opposite direction, but Dawson stayed right with him, and even improved his position in relation to the n.a.z.i's plane.

But it couldn't last, and no one knew it better than Dave Dawson. A half dozen times he got the n.a.z.i in a cold meat position, and was helpless to do anything about it. And by then the n.a.z.i knew, or could make a pretty good guess as to what was what. As a matter of fact, in the very next moment the movements of the n.a.z.i's plane proved what was going through the pilot's head. The n.a.z.i started to zoom up off to the left, and then deliberately cut off the zoom and flew right smack across Dawson's sights. Hot tears of rage almost blinded Dave as he saw the n.a.z.i's h.e.l.l Cat sail by looking as big as a battleship. The greenest pilot ever to fire an aerial machine gun could not have missed that target completely.

It was then that the n.a.z.i pilot knew for certain, and as his helmeted head was turned Dawson's way for an instant Dave thought he saw the other's face flame up in a look of mad triumph. Dave thought he saw that look, but it might have been his imagination. To tell the truth, his whole attention was on something else. The time to lose or win had arrived. He had fooled the n.a.z.i as long as he could. By his flying he had made the n.a.z.i wonder a little, and then wonder more and more until the Hitlerite took a chance to find out for sure. He did find out, and he probably thought that victory was his now. He could swing away and go on to Truk without danger. Or he could first stick around and polish off this gunless American who had intercepted him.

Yes, perhaps the n.a.z.i thought all those things as he sailed by the front of Dawson's nose and received not a single bullet. But what he probably did not realize was that his instant of mad triumph was Dawson's moment for a last desperate gamble. A gamble in which one and perhaps both could lose.

"Make the most of it, rat! Here I come!"

Words? Had he spoken them? Or had they simply been the echo of a thought racing through his whirling spinning brain? Dawson didn't know, and he didn't care. He wasn't thinking of anything, now. That time had pa.s.sed.

The time had pa.s.sed for everything save for mad, furious, smashing action that would stop this n.a.z.i from reaching the Truk area, and rob Admiral Shimoda forever of what he was now probably waiting for with gleaming eyes and drooling mouth.

In the next split second a hundred and one things loomed up large in Dawson's brain. He saw the n.a.z.i's marking F Dash Fourteen stretched up tall as a house. He saw the color of the fuselage with the last rays of the sun dancing off its smooth surface. He saw the n.a.z.i's h.e.l.l Cat start to swerve violently. He saw its nose drop down and its tail kick up. He saw the n.a.z.i turn his head and saw him impulsively fling up one arm. He really saw this time the look of wild terror that flooded the n.a.z.i's face.

"Nope! You still lose!"

Like a soothing, comforting whisper those words filtered back to Dave Dawson. And then he slammed his h.e.l.l Cat over on left wing, and kicked top rudder with every ounce of his strength. For the infinitesimal part of a split second his plane and the n.a.z.i's plane seemed to hang motionless in mid-air. And then his lower wing sliced against the n.a.z.i's fuselage and c.o.c.kpit hatch.

He knew that, because he saw it in the fraction of time allowed. And then all the furies of land, sea, and air exploded all about him. All the colors of the rainbow surged into his brain in brilliant b.a.l.l.s that blew up in a terrific crescendo of sound. Ten thousand spears of fire pierced every square inch of his body. And demons with red hot sledge hammers pounded their way down into his brain.

Then for an instant, and as though by magic, all sound faded away, and his vision was as clear as crystal. Directly in front of him, so close that he could almost reach out his hand and touch it, was the smoking wreckage of two Grumman h.e.l.l Cats entwined about each other. He clearly saw the markings F Dash Fourteen on one of them. But he could not see the c.o.c.kpit as a section of wing covered it like a steel band. He thought he saw something start to fall slowly away from the hovering mess of wreckage, but a red film slid across his eyes and the falling object was blotted out.

Yet even as the red blurred his vision his whirling brain functioned at lightning speed. He knew that he had been thrown clear of his h.e.l.l Cat, and that he had seen the two crashed ships as his body went tumbling seaward in a free fall. Fall? He was falling? Then he had to yank the rip cord ring of his parachute. Where was it? He couldn't find it. Or was that because he couldn't move his right arm? Couldn't, because there was no right arm there now? Had he lost his right arm?

But what did it matter? Why bother to pull his rip cord ring anyway? The opportunity to float down to his death, rather than hurtle down and get it over with quickly? Death was death, no matter how it came to you.

Certainly it was. You only died once. And this was it, for him. Well, weren't a lot of others doing the same thing in this war? Sure!

Thousands of them. Millions of them. Wonder what Freddy Farmer will say?

Wonder where Freddy is, now? Good old Freddy Farmer. No fellow ever had a pal like Freddy. G.o.d created only one Freddy Farmer. Good old Freddy....

What was that noise? It would be nice to see once more. Blind as a bat, now, though. Everything red, and growing redder. A deep, deep red. A funny noise, that. Like a plane. The planes of other pilots who had died? Did a pilot go on flying after he was dead? As dying people hear voices of those who have gone before them, did a dying pilot hear the planes of pilots who had already gone? A funny sound, but a nice sound.

Just like an aircraft engine. No sound in all the world so deeply thrilling as the sweet song of an aircraft engine, and the hymn sung by wings in the wind. You had to be a pilot to know that.

So this was it? Well, that was okay. No pain at all. A sort of comforting silence. Like slipping off to sleep in a nice soft bed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_The Dead Return_

A nice warm comfy bed. And a soothing silence all about. Rest, beautiful rest in a world of fluffy white silence. It ...

Like a half drowned man groping his way up through fathoms of silent waters to the surface, Dave Dawson rose up from the depths of unconsciousness. And as a man saved from drowning remembers things that pa.s.sed through his mind while down in the depths, so were Dawson's first conscious thoughts a continuance of what he had been thinking in another world. A nice, warm comfy bed, and ...

And though it was still dark all about, the sense of touch returned to him, and his finger tips telegraphed to his brain the fact that he was actually in a warm, comfy bed. He could feel smooth sheets, and a soft mattress underneath him. And then little by little he became conscious of sound. Not individual sounds, but a merging of all different kinds of sound into a sort of faintly pulsating murmur. And with that faintly pulsating murmur there came to him a sense of motion, too. A gentle vibration that traveled throughout his entire body.

It had all the effect of lulling him into deep and untroubled slumber.

But in that it did not quite succeed. It didn't because at that moment his eyes opened slowly and there was the image of Freddy Farmer's face centered in a vast expanse of white. But it was more than an image of Freddy, for the lips moved back in a smile, the eyes glistened with joy, and then came the spoken words.

"That's better, my lad. How do you feel, Dave?"

Dawson stared for a moment, and then closed his eyes tight, but when he opened them again Freddy Farmer's smiling face was still there.

"You dead, too, Freddy?" he heard his own voice speak. "How did it happen, fellow?"