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 Hell Cats entwined about each other. He clearly saw the markings F Dash Fourteen on one of them. But he could not see the cockpit 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 Hell 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. God 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 passed 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 ...