The Flight Engineer paused for a moment and grinned down at him.
“No, there isn’t a thing, thanks,” he said. “Glad to have you two aboard for company. These ferrying jobs are pretty dry. I’m just about to rustle up some coffee, and a sandwich or two. Can I interest you?”
“Oh, quite!” Freddy Farmer said, and beamed. “I say, that would be splendid. This American air, you know, makes me frightfully hungry quite often.”
“Quite often, he says!” Dave groaned. “He really means no more than twenty-four hours a day. You don’t happen to have a whole cow aboard for him to nibble on, do you, just as a little snack in between his regular meals? But I could go for a cup of java. Here, let me give you a hand with the business.”
Dave scrambled up on his feet and followed the Flight Engineer past the flare chute compartment and further aft to the bomber’s galley. They had the little electric stove going in nothing flat, and it was not long after that before the pleasing aroma of coffee was mingling with the one hundred and one equally pleasant (to pilots) smells inside the bomber. Freddy sliced bread and Dave buttered it, and the Flight Engineer got out the various things to put in between the buttered slices. It was when he was cutting the first sandwich cornerwise that he suddenly straightened up and sniffed.
“What’s that smell, or is it my imagination?” he asked.
“I smell nothing but nice things to eat,” was Freddy Farmer’s reply to the question.
Dave didn’t make any reply for a moment. He sniffed hard and was suddenly conscious of a very strange smell in his nose. And it didn’t come from the cook stove, either. He tried to identify the smell, but the best he could do was to guess it was burning rubber, or the smell of scorched paint.
“I get something,” he grunted, and turned to look forward. “It smells something like—”
The last froze on Dave’s lips, and for a second or two he couldn’t move, let alone speak. Just forward at the front end of the flare compartment a tiny thread of yellowish smoke was seeping out under a locker door. Even as he stared a tongue of blue-white flame licked out. And there was instantly a hissing sound in the inside of the bomber.