Far out in front of Sandy and Red, Shorty Hassfurther jerked the stick of his Snorter back into his stomach to bring it out of a dive. It was being buffeted about like a leaf in a gale. His body ached from being thrown against the cowling. His stomach ached from being slapped against his safety strap. His heart was pounding from exertion. Sand had crept through his hatch to settle in his eyes, his mouth, even down his neck. He shook his fist at the weather and cursed it as only he could curse at such a time. He nursed the ship back into level flight, only to have it picked up and slammed down another four hundred feet. The storm raged and roared without a let-up. He wondered how long his Snorter could take such a buffeting. Then it occurred to him that he didn't care much. He was getting so tired that nothing mattered.
Off to the right, Red Gleason was fighting with a laughing tenacity that was characteristic of him. He whipped his ship out of pocket after pocket while he tried to accompany the scream of his motors with his own voice.
The motor, he told himself, was singing bass and the screaming wind that brought that high-pitched whine to his props was singing tenor. He was carrying the baritone, although he couldn't carry a tune. He gave an excellent imitation of two drunken men singing in a bathroom as he studied his compass and checked his course again. His head was ringing like a blacksmith's anvil from the beating he had been taking. He threw his radio key and a roar like the bellow of a bull greeted him.
“No radio, no peace, no ceiling, no nothin',” he said to himself, through clenched teeth, and settled back to the business of taking his Snorter through that storm.
Suddenly, the sand and wind no longer beat at the windowpanes of non-shatterable glass. Bill flipped his radio key and shouted, “Red, Shorty, Sandy!”
The three of them gave the all-clear signal. Bill's breath hissed between his teeth as he exhaled. His eyes swept, from his map and chart to the instrument board as he asked them for their positions. He checked them against his own and gave them their course. Ten minutes later they were back in their original positions.
“ All right,” Bill said to them. “Take it easy. Hold your course. I'm going to break out the infra-red-ray telescope to take us in the rest of the way.”
He brought the telescope out of its recess in the instrument panel and threw the switch. He looked into the eyepiece, which was not unlike the old-fashioned parlor stereoscope. Ahead the pitch-black night became as day as the beam of infra-red rays projected themselves artificially into the darkness and the electron telescope enabled him to pick them up.
As he started to adjust the lens, a sharp, staccato noise came, out of the night. It brought him straight up in his bucket seat, his eyes wide.
He had heard that noise too many times before not to know what it was. And he knew by the sound of that staccato chatter that the machine guns he heard were not the Brownings set in the engine housing of his Snorters.
He could feel bullets drumming into the wing and tail surfaces of the Silver Lancer; he could feel the big ship tremble under the impact. He pulled the control column of the Lancer back into his stomach as he heard screaming props and thundering motors dive beneath him. As the nose of the Lancer streaked upward, he threw his radio switch arid began to chant the call letters of his men. Red Gleason's voice came back to him first. And he could feel the blood in his body turn to ice as he heard Red's voice.
.”Bill!” Red gasped. “Bill! They got me. I still have control, but they got me bad through the shoulder. I'm trying to climb.”
Bill's hand was a ball of muscle and steel around the control column of the Lancer as he tried to pick thoughts out of his whirling mind.
“Can you make it? You aren't going to faint?” he asked quickly.
“I'll be all right if I can get above 'em,” Red said, his voice steadier. “I'm getting hold of myself now. One bullet almost tore my shoulder off. The pain is easing now.”
“Turn on your oxygen tank and get up to twenty-five thousand,” Bill said. “They're coming back!”
“Bill!” Shorty's voice cut in. “They made a sieve of my Snorter. They are flying without lights. I thought I heard their engines, but I wasn't sure. I was sure when bullets began drumming into me.”
“Get up with Red!” Bill barked. “Stay beside him. Keep contact by radio. Leave your navigation lights on. Where's Sandy?”
“I'm riding all right, Bill,” Sandy broke in, his boyish voice high-pitched and strained. “They came out of nowhere; Bill. I think there are about six or eight of them. I can hear them climbing. They're trying to get above us.”
“You get up with Red, too,” Bill said. I'll try to find them with my telescope. 'Then I'll join you.”
“Look out for a crash, Bill,” Shorty said.
“I'll watch it,” Bin growled. His whole body was burning with anger now. It had been the most murderously unfair attack that had ever been made on him. His body and mind were seething with rage. He neutralized the controls of the Lancer and cut his engines. He could hear the drone of six or eight engines below him to the north. He kicked his rudder and stuck the nose of the Lancer down. He peered into the eyepiece of the infra-red telescope, as he thought he had the nose of the Lancer 'n the ships returning to their murderous attack.
As the telescope picked up the eight lanes racing upward, Bill gasped and continued to peer with unbelieving eyes. The ships were fast, rugged one-seaters with flat, short wings, lean fuselage, stripped down undercarriage and mighty power plants. But those things were not what made him gasp. He gasped because he could see the squadron insignia of the Royal Air Force painted on the sides of the fast little ships!
As fire and orange flame jetted from the machine-gun troughs along the engine housing of the eight ships, Bill jerked the control column of the Lancer back into his stomach and stuck the nose upward to escape that hail of lead. He could feel the Lancer tremble from em to stern as bullets drove into the tail assembly. Then he was away from them. He leveled the Lancer off and began to spiral upward.
His mind was a maelstrom of thought. Why had a portion of a squadron of British planes attacked him? He wasn't sure, but he believed that the insignia he had seen was the insignia of a squadron stationed at Ma'an.
Then all of that left his mind as he thought of Red Gleason. He flipped his switch and made contact with Red on the radio.
“How are you coming, fella?” he asked him anxiously.
“I'll do, Bill ” Red said weakly. “But I'm losing a lot of blood. I'll have to sit down soon.”
“Do you think you can make it to Ma'an?” Bill asked. “It's a half hour. It will be dawn by then, We'll stay at twenty-five thousand until just before we're ready to land. It will be safer than landing on the desert, with those ships over us. Do you think you can make it?”
“I'll make it all right,” Red said. “Three hundred miles an hour,” Bill ordered. “Keep your radio open and shout if you think you're going to be in trouble, Red.”
“0. K.,” Red said. “Bill!” Sandy said excitedly. “I can see those planes streaking off to the west with their running lights on. They tried to get up to us, but began to wallow at about twenty-two thousand feet. Who are they, Bill?”
“'They were British army planes,” Bill said grimly. “And the pilots wore British uniforms. I can't figure it out.”
“Shall I follow them, Bill?” Shorty asked quickly.
For a moment Bill hesitated. Then he spoke with his usual decisiveness. “No,” he said. “Let 'em go. They might gang you. And we've got to stay with Red in case he has to land.”
V—EXPLANATIONS
DAWN was creeping out of the east when the Silver Lancer and the three Snorters circled the field at Ma'an twice while they studied the wind sock and the layout of the field.
Five minutes later Bill led the way in. He had set his brakes, killed his engines, and was over the side before the man in the uniform of the Royal Air Force reached his side.
“Oh, Barnes! Mr. Barnes!” the man called as Bill ran toward Red Gleason's Snorter. Bill knew that Red must have fainted because his twin props were still whirling after he set his brakes and the ship came to a halt. He turned his head and waved a beckoning hand at the man in the light-blue uniform.
Bill's face was white, and the muscles in his cheeks stood out like whipcord as he dived into the front cockpit of Red's Snorter
Red was curled up over his stick, and his left shoulder was a sodden mass of red. Bill's breath whistled through his nostrils as he slipped the catch on Red's safety strap and lifted him bodily out of the cockpit and
