Barry glued his eyes to the r.p.m. indicator. He forced his nerves to ignore the antiaircraft shells that burst closer and closer. This was the big moment of the whole raid—when the bombs were about to plummet down.

Cold air from the open bomb-bay doors rushed into the big ship’s belly. There came the welcome whistle of a falling bomb; then another, and another. A moment afterward the harbor of Rabaul swept beneath. It was out of sight before Barry could spot the bomb hits.

KRANG!

An antiaircraft burst rocked the big bomber like a cradle. Her right inboard engine sputtered and quit. Looking out at the wing, Barry glimpsed a jagged shrapnel hole in the cowling. He glanced to the left. Another Fortress had been hit. She was falling out of formation.

“Never mind, boys, Rosy O’Grady can toddle home all right on three engines,” the Old Man declared. “All you’ve got to do is to smack down every Zero you see....”

“Here come three of ’em, straight down at us!” yelped Soapy Babbitt from the jammed top turret. “If only I could aim these guns!”

“Maybe a Jap will cross your sights, Soapy!” the Old Man grunted, as he reefed back on the wheel. “I’ll try to give Hale a shot.”

Rosy’s nose came up. Her forward guns cut loose at the trio of diving planes. One spun away, smoking; another changed direction. The third kept coming, with his tracer bullets feeling for the Flying Fortress. When they touched her the Jap pilot pulled the trigger of his cannon.

A stunning blast threw Barry hard against his safety belt. Something—it felt like a hard-thrown baseball—struck his head. He felt himself falling into a black void.

Someone was shaking him, none too gently. A voice, Curly Levitt’s, pierced through his dulled consciousness.

“Wake up, Barry! Wake up and take over these controls before I have to,” the navigator was repeating in his ear. “The Old Man is out cold—ripped by that shell.”

Barry made a desperate effort. It was like struggling against gravity, but he won. His eyes cleared. The plane was flying on a fairly level keel, thanks to Curly’s hand on the wheel, but something was very wrong. The Old Man....

One look at O’Grady’s crumpled form drove the last of the fog out of Barry’s head. The captain’s left arm was missing below the elbow. A handkerchief tourniquet had stopped the worst bleeding, but there were other wounds on his left side and leg. He was mercifully unconscious.

The bomber’s machine guns were still firing, by fits and starts, but only two engines were still functioning. The other Fortresses were nowhere in sight. Two Zero fighters were coming head-on into Sergeant Hale’s fire....

These impressions took barely three seconds for Barry to absorb. He gripped the wheel hard, setting his teeth against the pain in his head.

“Thanks, Curly,” he gritted. “You tend to the Old Man.... With two good engines even a dumb co-pilot ought to get Sweet Rosy O’Grady home okay.”

“Good man!” Curly exclaimed, as he turned to the captain. “I’ll fix up your scalp wound later. Just fly southwest until I get a chance to figure our exact position.”

One of the Zeros that had been heading for Rosy’s nose was now falling, with a trail of black smoke. The other had swooped past. Barry heard one of the side guns firing, then a burst from the belly turret.

“Got him!” came Cracker Jackson’s grunt in the radiophones.

Barry eased back on the wheel and found that his crippled Fortress could still gain a little altitude. Cold air still poured in from the open bomb doors; a chunk of flak must have damaged the jacks that raised them. Barry began calling the turrets one by one to learn of any further damage.

Aside from a shell hole through the rudder and countless bullet holes, there was none worth mentioning. Best of all, the sky seemed to be clear of enemy fighters.

The pain in Barry’s head was easier. His brain functioned more clearly with each minute that passed. From the crew’s reports he made a rough calculation of the Jap planes shot down.

About thirty fighters had attacked the bomber formation as they approached Rabaul. Thirteen Zeros had been shot down at the cost of one Fortress. The eleven remaining bombers had laid their eggs with perfect accuracy on the docks and ships, and flown on. The Zeros, already decimated, had hung around just out of range. When Rosy fell behind, with one engine damaged by antiaircraft fire, the Japs had jumped on her like wolves.

Seventeen Zero fighters against one crippled Boeing—and the Fortress had won out! Nine of the Japs had torched down. The others had turned back to their home base.

Barry’s heart swelled with pride in the great ship and the fighting crew of which he was a member. Except for that last shell hit....

A glance at the slumped figure of Tex O’Grady sobered him. Curly Levitt had finished bandaging the captain, and Fred Marmon was helping to lift him out of his seat. The two men lugged their wounded pilot back toward the tail and laid him down, wrapped in their coats.

“What are the Old Man’s chances?” the young co-pilot asked, as the navigator returned.

“It’s hard to tell how deep those shell fragments in his side have gone,” Curly answered. “He’s lost a lot of blood, too. All we can do now is hope.... Hold steady, now, while I swab out that cut in your scalp—oh-oh! I can feel something there.”

“So can I!” grunted Barry. “Take it easy, fella!”

Curly’s fingers touched the cut again, cautiously. Barry felt a stabbing twinge.

“There it is, Mister!” the navigator shouted. “A bit of shrapnel as big as my thumbnail. If your head weren’t solid bone, as I’ve always suspected, we’d be minus a co-pilot.”

He held the scrap of jagged metal in front of Barry’s nose for a second, then stuck it in his pocket.

“When you tie it up, be sure to leave the bone in,” Barry answered with a grin. “When this war is over you can get yourself a nice job in a butcher shop. It would just suit your rough-and-ready style.”

“That’s base ingratitude!” Curly retorted, applying the bandage. “I hope Soapy Babbitt is more appreciative when I fix him up. He got a smashed shoulder when the top turret was wrecked.”

As Curly left him, the full weight of his responsibility settled upon Barry’s mind. Had the Old Man been at the controls, Rosy O’Grady’s crippled condition would not have worried him particularly. If it were possible to bring a ship home on only one engine, Barry would have trusted his captain to do it.

Now, however, both the wounded plane and her wounded crew depended on him. With little more than training school experience, could he land them safely? As he struggled against such fears, Fred Marmon’s voice sounded in his ears.

“I’ve got bad news for you, Lieutenant,” the engineer announced. “The same burst of flak that jammed the bomb doors washed out the electrical system. Your landing flaps won’t work and your wheels won’t come down. Looks like we’ll all have to bail out and let Rosy crash.”

Barry’s first feeling was one of relief. Now, at least, he wouldn’t have to risk the lives of everybody aboard, landing a shot-up plane on a jungle field. But, wait! How about Old Man O’Grady? Even if somebody pulled the chute’s cord for him and dumped him out, the landing would kill him. A parachute lets you down with about the same shock you’d feel if you jumped out of a second story window. A half-dead man could never survive it, even if he didn’t land in the jungle and break his back.

“You men will bail out,” Barry said into the intercom mike. “When we get near the field, strap Captain O’Grady into his own seat, and pad him with your coats against the shock of a crackup. I’ll try to land Rosy on her belly without too much of a flop. It’s the Old Man’s only chance.”

The crew got that reasoning without any trouble.

“It makes me feel like a doggone coyote!” big Danny Hale muttered, turning to look at Barry. “My great gran’daddy didn’t leave the old Alamo, when it was sure death to stay. I reckon if he was in my place—”

“He’d obey orders, just as you’re going to do, Danny,” Barry Blake shot back at him. “I’m in command of this plane, while the Old Man is out. You and every other member of the crew will bail out when we reach the field. That’s final!”

“I agree absolutely, except on one point,” Curly’s voice chimed in. “You’re wounded, Lieutenant. It’s a miracle that you can fly a ship at all, with the beating you’ve had. It’s no reflection on your skill—or your grit—to say that you might go dizzy at the last minute of landing, and crack up. Now, I’ve had some flight training, enough to land belly-floppers on a soft field. Therefore it’s my place and not yours—”

“Spoken like a lawyer, Curly!” laughed the young co-pilot. “You’re a swell guy to offer, but it’s no go. So don’t argue. Just tell me when we’re nearing our base, and then help Fred bring the Old Man back to the cockpit.”

There was a little more discussion of the landing Barry would have to attempt, but nobody else protested. As soon as Soapy Babbitt was made as comfortable as he could be, the thermos jug of coffee was passed around. Barry forced himself to eat a little.

After a seemingly endless time Curly Levitt reported that he had warned the base by radio. The field would soon be in sight.

In the distance Barry recognized the New Guinea coastline. Now he picked out certain mountain landmarks that gave him the exact direction of the base.

“Bring the Old Man up front, fellows,” he said. “And then hook on your parachutes. We have about five minutes to go.”

The men worked fast. Captain O’Grady was still unconscious under the double effect of shock and the morphine that Curly had administered. The navigator and Fred Marmon handled him as tenderly as they could. The strapping was finished, and the men were back at the open bomb bay when Barry spotted the field. Big Danny Hale was gripping the zippered case that held his precious bomb-sight.

Barry tried to judge the proper moment for the first parachute jump. Twisting in the seat, he raised his hand.

Fred Marmon saluted, grinned, and dived headfirst into space. The others followed in quick succession. The bomber roared on, slowly circling the field. Far below, Barry counted six white ’chutes drifting toward the raw, brown slash in the jungle.

“They’re safe!” he murmured. “Wish I had a parachute for Sweet Rosy O’Grady, too!”

When the last ’chutist had landed, the young pilot nosed down and came in up-wind for his risky attempt. He cut the gun, fishtailed to kill speed. A Fortress’s wheels should touch the ground at ninety miles an hour, for a smooth landing; but Rosy couldn’t let down her wheels. A belly landing at ninety would be an ugly mess.

At a shaky sixty m.p.h. Barry brought her in. At the last moment he let her drop. The bomb-bay doors dug into the runway, before they ripped loose. The ship bounced on her belly turret, tore an engine clean out of its mounting, and came to rest.

When the crash squad entered the cockpit, Rosy’s young co-pilot was “out cold.” Fortunately neither he nor the Old Man had received any further hurts. A hospital-corps man jabbed a hypodermic into Barry’s arm. Sixty seconds later, both he and Captain O’Grady were being rushed on stretchers to the field’s temporary dressing station.

The next afternoon, Barry Blake woke up, feeling almost himself again. The marvelous new Army drugs had given him twenty-four hours of refreshing sleep. His head wound had been expertly cleansed, sewed and bandaged. His greatest discomfort was a gnawing appetite. He swung his legs over the edge of his cot and looked around for his clothes.

“Hold it down, Lieutenant!” the medical-corps man in charge warned him. “You’re scheduled to stay right in this hangar till tomorrow.”

“Quit woofing me, Corporal,” Barry growled. “I feel fine. And I’m so hungry my belt buckle is bumping my backbone. Did the major order you to starve me, too?”

“No, sir,” chuckled the medical man. “I’ll bring you some chow right away. It’s almost time for mess call so the cook will have it ready.”

“Wait a second!” Barry exclaimed, as the other turned to go. “Where’s Captain O’Grady, and Sergeant Babbitt? They ought to be here—”

The corporal paused in the doorway, shaking his head.

“Not here, Lieutenant,” he replied. “This place is only equipped as a field dressing station as yet. Captain O’Grady and Sergeant Babbitt were flown to Australia last night. The Captain will have a fighting chance in a real hospital, and they’ll probably save Babbitt’s arm, too.”

Barry lifted his legs back onto his bunk and relaxed. So the field doctor had given Tex O’Grady a fighting chance! That was better news than any of Rosy’s crew had expected.

The medical-corps man returned with hot chow and five grinning Fortress crewmen. Fred Marmon was the first to grip Barry’s hand. Curly Levitt crowded him aside, as Danny Hale and Tony Romani and Cracker Jackson surrounded the cot. Everybody was talking at once. Out of the barrage of wisecracks, congratulations and laughter, Barry Blake got one definite impression: his crew was immensely proud of him, for making that landing and saving the life of their Old Man.

The medical corporal found difficulty in drawing Barry’s attention back to his hot chow. He succeeded at last, but Rosy’s young co-pilot was still too busy talking to know what he was eating. The six friends would have discussed the raid, the fight, and the return trip for hours, if mess call had not interrupted.

After supper, Curly Levitt returned to the dressing station. The others, he said, were needed to help set up the new equipment which had arrived during the past two days. There were electrical generators, searchlights, floodlights, antiaircraft guns, and the first units of a big repair shop. This last would take care of damaged planes landing on the field. It would have crews to bring in ships that had crashed.

“When the repair plant is running, it will probably be able to rebuild Sweet Rosy O’Grady,” her navigator stated.

“I wish we could hope as much for her Old Man,” Barry sighed. “But there’s no repair shop in the world that can put a missing arm back on a pilot.”

“It will just about break his heart,” Curly agreed, rising to his feet. “I imagine that Mrs. O’Grady won’t feel too badly about having her husband back, however.... Well, here’s the doctor, come to have a look at you. That’s my signal to take off.”