Dave Dawson at Truk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Have some of those, you filthy beggars!" Dave heard Freddy's voice screaming over the inter-com. "Pull a trick like that on us, what? Well, how do you like some of the same? How do you like it, what?"

"They don't like it even a little bit, pal!" Dawson shouted impulsively into his own flap mike. "Not even a ... Hey! Ye gods! You've hit something, Freddy!"

Hit something was right! A column of livid red flame suddenly belched up out of the conning tower hatch. The silver light from the floating exploded star shells had just about died away, but now the sky and the sea were bathed in a blood red glow as the column of flame mounted higher and higher, and then fountained outward in all directions. It came so close to the circling Fortress that Dawson gasped out a strangled cry of alarm and quickly banked off in the opposite direction. As soon as he was clear of the area of falling fire he banked the Fortress again so that he could look back at the doomed Jap submarine.

And doomed it was. Even as he saw it again there was another violent internal explosion that seemed to lift the craft clean out of the water. It actually seemed to hover motionless in mid-air for a moment, and although Dawson was not sure, he thought he saw the thing break in half, and both halves fall back into the water with mighty splashes, and then disappear completely beneath the flame-tipped waves. At any rate, an instant later the submarine just wasn't there any more. There was nothing but a blazing whirlpool of oil to mark the spot where it had been. There was not even a single piece of floating wreckage in that ever widening circle of blazing oil.

"And that's one Tojo can sure mark off as gone for good!" Dawson muttered, and nosed the Fortress up for altitude. "What a way to die, even for a dirty Japrat."

With a little shuddering shake of his head he took his gaze off the blazing patch of oil slick, and turned his attention forward.

"Okay, Freddy, boy!" he called into his inter-com mike. "Come on up front and get your cigar for hitting the bull's-eye. And how you did, pal. How you did!"

There came no reply from Freddy over the inter-com, nor did the English youth come up forward in person.

"Hey, Freddy!" Dave shouted, this time even louder. "Can you hear me? Anything wrong back there? Hey, Freddy!"

Ten full seconds of silence ticked by, and an eerie chill started to close about Dawson's heart. Why hadn't Freddy at least answered if he wasn't coming forward just yet? Was something wrong? Had a chance shot from that rotten Jap submarine nailed old Freddy? But that couldn't be. He'd heard Freddy's port-slot guns still slugging away long after the last gun on the submarine had gone silent. Then what was wrong?