Colonel Culver shot a warning glance from Smithy to the seated officer. "About a hundred square miles of the finest fruit country on earth laid waste," he admitted gravely; then sought to turn Smithy from his rebellious mood:
"What's underground, I wonder? Must be a world of caves. Or perhaps these mole-men can follow up a mere crack or a fault line and open it out with their flame-throwers to make a tunnel they can go through."
The plane's captain had caught Culver's glance. "Speak your piece," he said pleasantly. "Don't stop on my account. There's a lot to what Mr. Smith says—but you don't know all that's going on."
He had been half turned. Now he swung about in his little swivel chair, whose base was riveted solidly to the floor and whose safety belt ends dangled as he turned.
"My orders are to deliver you two gentlemen at San Francisco. But there's a show scheduled for to-night down south of there—two hundred planes, big and little, scouts, cruisers, battle planes. They're going to swarm in over when the enemy makes his first crack. There's a devil of a storm in the mountains along the route we would usually take. I'm afraid I'll have to swing off south." He was grinning openly as he turned back to his desk.
Colonel Culver smiled back. "Attaboy!" he said.
But Smithy's forehead was still wrinkled in scowling lines as he walked forward to an adjoining room. "Underground," he was thinking. "We've got to carry the fight to them; got to lick 'em so they'll stay licked. But Rawson—good old Dean—we're too late to help him. And the lives of all the devils left in hell can't pay for that."
mithy had been dozing. The shrill whistle of a high-pitched siren brought him fully awake in an instant. Culver, too, sprang alertly to his feet. Both men knew the signal was the call to quarters.