Dave Dawson, Flight Lieutenant

by Robert Sidney Bowen

A crash of sound and a blaze of light off to his left cut off the rest and jerked his head around. The glob of red and orange in the night sky was a familiar sight to Dave, and he recognized it instantly. Anti-aircraft gunners on the ground were groping for them in the black sky. A second glob of red and orange flame appeared in the sky, but twice as far away as the first, and Dave's heart slid back down out of his throat.

More anti-aircraft bursts appeared in the sky but as none of them was close Dave didn't give them a second look. He held his ship steady, prop-clawing upward and straight westward toward the English Channel. A couple of minutes later the anti-aircraft fire was far behind and rapidly giving it up for a bad job. At just about that same time Dave saw that his altimeter needle was right on the eighteen thousand foot mark. He automatically leveled off from his climb and turned his head to see the shadowy blurr that was Freddy Farmer's plane doing the same thing. For perhaps five seconds the planes roared straight ahead on an even keel, then Dave saw the exhaust plumes from Freddy's plane wink out, and the craft start turning around in a wide arc toward the north. The English youth had killed his engine and was starting the long silent glide back that would take him over the glider hangar area from the north. Dave swallowed a lump in his throat, cut off his own engine and went gently gliding around and to the south.

"Luck, old pal!" he spoke in a husky whisper. "We're going to make it okay. I've got the old feeling, Freddy. The old hunch. Be seeing you soon in dear old England. Yup! The home of tea and crumpets!"

Dave grinned in the darkness, and nodded for emphasis, but he couldn't kid himself. There was an icy emptiness in his chest, and the eerie tingling sensation at the back of his neck. In fact, for one crazy moment he was filled with the almost uncontrollable urge to call out to Freddy over the Messerschmitt's radio and suggest they call all bets off, and go streaking home to England, instead. He angrily killed the urge even as it was born in his brain, squared his shoulders and held the plane in its long flat glide southward and around toward the east. In spite of it being night he could clearly see the hair pin bend in the Lille River. And as the Messerschmitt's wings whispered their way lower and lower down through the air he caught sight of a few lights spotted here and there on the murky carpet of ground below.

He imagined that one of those lights came from General von Peiplow's test laboratory, and office, in the patch of woods. He imagined the Luftwaffe high ranker at the open door and scowling in savage defeat up at the heavens toward England. He imagined those things, chuckled softly, and made a face earthward.

"Just stick around, von Peiplow, old sock!" he grunted. "The old balloon's going up any minute, now. Any minute, now!"

As he spoke the last he squinted at the altimeter dial that was just faintly visible in the pale glow of the single instrument board light. The needle had moved down to close to eight thousand feet. That fact startled him for he felt he had started his downward glide but a couple of seconds ago. But it had been more than that. And as he took another look down over the side at the guiding bend in the Lille River, he saw that he was in correct position to the south of the glider hangar area. It was time to glide around due north and ease down the last thousand feet or so before Freddy's signal would come over the radio on the agreed wave length reading he had tuned at several minutes ago.

Banking gently around and down, he reached out with his free hand and made sure his four hand grenades were still in an empty map box where he could reach them without wasted movement. His own safety, and Freddy's too, rested in their getting rid of those hand grenades fast and clearing out from over the area twice as fast. If their planes received the full force of the explosion's concussion, the wings would be torn off like paper, and....

Suddenly, without the slightest sign of warning, the inky darkness of night was shattered apart by a thunderous roar of sound and a seething ocean of red, yellow, and orange flame that seemed to come boiling upward from the ground below. The plane bucked, and shivered, and lurched crazily forward. And for one horrible second a mighty invisible force tore Dave's hands from the controls. Head whirling, and his lungs seeming to burst right out through his ribs, he fought with every ounce of his strength to keep the plane from plunging wildly downward out of control.

Freddy Farmer! Where was Freddy? Did he get through? Was Freddy all right? The radio! Was it working? Would that signal come through from Freddy? Darn the blasted thing! Would it never speak?