"Okay, I go down, so what?" he argued with his other self. "What does it matter, if I've already sent that rat down where he belongs? A fellow can't live forever, can he? All right, so why cry over it when your time comes? Didn't some great man once say that the most beautiful experience in life is death? Didn't...?"
He cut off the rest with a slow shake of his head, pushed up his goggles, and drew his free hand across his eyes.
"When a guy starts talking to himself this way, he must be going nuts," he grunted. "Boy! Do I wish old Freddy were here with me to steady me a little, like he's done so many times. Good old Freddy! I wonder where he is, now? Did he go back to the Trenton when the recall went out? Or is he...?"
He stopped and swallowed hard. Sure, why not? Freddy had brains. Twice as many brains as he had about lots of things. It wouldn't be any miracle for Freddy Farmer to figure the situation out the same way he had, and to be doing the very same thing that he was doing right now. And as that thought built itself up stronger and stronger in his brain he searched the clear air about him again. But he saw nothing. If Freddy Farmer, too, was winging all out toward the Truk area, then he was somewhere up in those clouds.
No sooner had he figured that one out than two brand-new thoughts rushed into his swirling brain to taunt him, and cause little beads of nervous sweat to form on his face. Supposing Freddy Farmer by some miracle had stumbled across that fleeing Nazi and slammed him down, just as a marksman such as Freddy could do? If so, then he was simply flying to his death by drowning, or ultimate capture by the Japs, for no earthly good reason.
That wasn't a pleasant thought, and it sent a clammy shiver rippling throughout his body. And the other new thought made him shiver all the more. Supposing—just supposing this cursed cloud weather carried all the way to Truk? Supposing the Nazi spy stayed up in it until he was well within the protective ring of Truk's Zeros? If that turned out to be the case, he wouldn't get a crack at that rat in a hundred years. Ten to one that Nazi knew some secret radio signal he could send out to tell the Japs who was approaching and not to attack simply because it was a Yank plane. Supposing ...
And right then and there Dave Dawson stopped his supposing about things. In fact, he stopped thinking of all crazy things. The clouds above him suddenly ceased abruptly. The Pacific ahead suddenly became as though on fire from the dying rays of the setting sun. It was like flying out from under a huge pink roof. He came out like a shot from a gun, and almost in the same instant he saw a flash of red ... a flash of sparkling crimson caused by the sun rays dancing off the wings of a plane way off to his right and perhaps two or three thousand feet above him.
The Nazi rat, or Freddy Farmer? That question burned in letters of fire a foot high in his brain, as he banked his Hell Cat to the right, and sent it nosing upward.