"What the devil!" Freddy protested, looking up from adjusting a lens on his camera.
Three or four thirty-caliber slugs tore holes in their left wing, the rest of the burst missing completely.
Joe dove sharply, gained speed, winged over and reached desperately for altitude. The other—no, the others were above him. He yelled back at the cameraman, "Put that Chaut-Chaut gun together for me. Be ready to hand me pans of ammo. And if you want blood and gore on that Tellylens of yours, get going!"
It still hadn't got through to the smaller man. "What in devil's going on?"
Joe banked again, grabbing for a current rising along a hill slope, circled, circled, reaching for altitude before they could get over to him and make another pass. He snapped bitterly, "Did I say something about poor old Bob Flaubert not having a gun, while I did? Well, poor old Bob's obviously got at least as much fire power as we have. Freddy, I'm afraid matters have pickled."
The other was startled.
"Do I have to draw a picture?" Joe said. "Look." He pointed to where the other two crafts circled, possibly a hundred meters above and five hundred to the right of them. The other two gliders bore a single passenger apiece, and were seemingly moving as quietly as were Joe and Freddy, but gliders in motion are deceptive. Joe shot a glance at his rate of climb indicator. He was doing all right at six meters per second, a thousand feet a minute, considering his weight.
Freddy had at last awakened to the fact that they were in combat and even that the enemy had drawn first blood. The wound taken in their wing was not serious, from Joe's viewpoint, but the torn holes in the fabric were obvious. But the little man had not gained his intrepid reputation as a Telly cameraman without cause. He moved fast, both to get the small French machine gun into Joe's hands and to get himself into action as a cameraman.
He snapped, "What's the situation?"
Joe, circling, circling, praying the updraft wouldn't give out on him before it did on the others, on their opposite hill, said, "We weigh too much. Altitude counts. What've you got back there that can be thrown out?" As he talked, he was shrugging himself out of his leather flying jacket.