Barry’s next impression was as startling as a vision of something unearthly. A girl with big, blue eyes and a crisp white uniform, was pushing something into his mouth. The thing was a thermometer.

“Who—where—whap happumed...?” Barry mumbled in bewilderment.

The blue-eyed vision touched her lips. A red-gold curl that had escaped from her cap dangled as she shook her head. She took Barry’s wrist in a light, expert grasp and compared his pulse-beats with her watch. The seconds, it seemed to him, passed with agonizing slowness.

A glance about him showed a regular hospital ward. The beds were occupied by young fellows dozing, reading, listening to the tuned-down radio. This couldn’t be New Guinea! But where was it? And how long was it since the Battle of Grassy Ridge, when that Jap had tried to bite his throat, and....

“You’re in a base hospital in Queensland, Australia,” the nurse murmured, just as if she had been reading his thoughts. “You have been here for a week. As long as your fever continued you were kept under the new sleeping drugs. I don’t think you’re very bright, Lieutenant—getting into a second fight before your head wound had started to heal. But your blood seems to fight germs as hard as you fought the Japs. You’re disgustingly healthy.”

“And you’re distractingly beautiful, Lieutenant!” Barry retorted. “Nevertheless, feasting my eyes on you doesn’t fill my empty stomach. How about bringing me a T-bone steak—rare?”

The blue-eyed nurse made a face at him.

“All you deserve is a can of bully-beef,” she declared. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Barry’s steak turned out to be bacon and toast. At his groan of disappointment, Nurse Stevens threatened to take it away. In fact, Barry had to apologize and promise to make no more complaints before she would let him eat anything.

Not many days passed, however, before Barry Blake was actually eating steaks and calling Lieutenant Moira Stevens by her first name. He started that on the first evening that she helped him to walk from the ward to the canopied ramp that surrounded the hospital.

“Why won’t you tell me anything about Captain O’Grady?” he asked as she took the deck chair beside him. “You admitted he was sent here from the New Guinea airfield. If he’s dead, I’m well enough to stand the news without bursting a blood vessel.”

Lieutenant Stevens turned her clear, steady gaze on Barry’s face.

“You think the world of Captain O’Grady, don’t you?” she murmured. “How long did you know him before he was wounded?”

“Less than two weeks,” Barry Blake responded. “Somehow time doesn’t count much with wartime friendships. It seems as if I’d known you for months—Moira.”

A low laugh bubbled in the girl’s throat. It wasn’t a giggle—just a good-humored, friendly chuckle. Lieutenant Moira Stevens rose several points in Barry’s estimation because of it.

“I guess I can safely tell you the latest news about Captain O’Grady now,” she said, changing the subject. “I heard the doctor say this morning that he is out of danger. When you first came to your senses the captain was just hanging between life and death. If I’d told you the truth then, you might have worried yourself back into a fever.”

Barry did not speak. He gazed across the clearing at a row of tall cocoanut palms. All at once the tropical night seemed very beautiful.

“So the Old Man is here—in this hospital,” he said at last. “When do you think I might see him? I—I’d like to talk with him about Sweet Rosy O’Grady ... tell him she’s not beyond repair.”

“I’ll ask the medical officer in charge, Barry,” the girl promised, as she rose to her feet. “Come, now! It’s time you were getting to bed. Take my arm—that’s it—and we’ll go back to the ward.”

The following day Moira took Barry to see his Old Man for a three-minute period. Captain O’Grady looked shockingly thin. His wide, humorous mouth was drawn with lines of pain, but his blue eyes had the same smile that Barry remembered.

“What brought you here, Barry?” he asked as he released his co-pilot’s hand. “Another raid on Rabaul?”

“Nothing so pleasant,” Barry grinned. “The Japs raided our airport the next night after you came to this hospital. The raid was a cover-up for a landing of paratroops and field guns on a ridge above the field. I got cut up a few days later helping to clean them out with tommy-guns and grenades. All of Rosy’s crew went along and had a great time.”

Captain O’Grady’s face sobered.

“I see,” he murmured. “The Jap guns had shot up the field so you couldn’t get any planes off to bomb them. You boys were wrong, though. You had no right to risk half a dozen highly trained Fortress men in a land skirmish. Why did you do it?”

“That’s hardly a fair question, Captain!” Moira Stevens broke in. “You’d have wanted to go yourself if you’d been there. Would you be happy, sir, sitting in the shade of your plane while your friends were fighting to save it for you?”

“Nurse Stevens,” the Old Man replied with a wry smile, “you’ve knocked out all my guns. I’m completely at your mercy, and you know it.”

“In that case, sir,” Moira said, “Lieutenant Blake and I will leave you to make the best landing you can.... Come along, Barry! Time is up.”

As she pulled the young co-pilot toward the door he turned for a last word.

“I’ll be back to see you again as soon as the nurse will let me, Captain,” he said. “And, by the way sir, Sweet Rosy O’Grady is only grounded until she can get repairs. I—er—thought you’d like to know.”

In his later conversations with the Old Man, nothing was ever said about the Captain’s missing arm. They talked as though one of these days would see him again at the wheel of a flying fort. But both men knew that it was all talk. Before long Tex O’Grady would be back at home in the States with the only person in the world that he loved better than his warplane—sweet Mrs. O’Grady herself.

Six weeks from the day he came to the Queensland hospital, Barry Blake received his new orders. He was to report at the new airplane repair base immediately upon being discharged.

Barry was exultant. He demanded that Moira bring the medical officer in charge to examine him at once. For the past week, he told her, he had been feeling more like a prisoner than a patient—without even a prisoner’s excuse for sticking around. Furthermore, he declared, a certain blonde, blue-eyed lieutenant had been neglecting him shamefully.

Moira Stevens wrinkled her pretty nose at him.

“As a nurse I have no interest in perfect physical specimens,” she replied. “Sick men are my job. But if you haven’t forgotten me when this war is over, it might be fun to get together and compare notes.”

She flashed him a smile that took the chill out of her words.

“Hmmm!” murmured Barry as she swept out of the ward with a rustle of starched uniform. “They don’t make ’em any finer than Lieutenant Moira Stevens. And I mean, definitely!”

The colonel in charge gave Barry an examination that overlooked nothing.

“You’re fit for service, Lieutenant,” he said. “If you were my age, you’d be in bed for another six weeks. Be thankful that nineteen years heals just twice as fast as forty-five! Er—by the way—at eleven thirty you will report to Captain O’Grady on the west ramp outside the hospital. That is all.”

Barry had intended to see the Old Man before leaving, but being ordered to do so puzzled him. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was already ten-thirty. He would have just comfortable time to shave, dress, and check over his few personal effects that had been sent from the New Guinea airport.

As he stepped out onto the west ramp, the sight of several “brass hats” halted him in his tracks. A mere second lieutenant had no place in such company! Then he glimpsed Captain O’Grady in a wheelchair, chatting with the highest-ranking officer.

Barry glanced at the time—eleven-thirty. Recalling that he was there by order of the colonel gave him courage. He waited until O’Grady recognized him, then stepped forward and saluted.

“General Morse,” the captain said with grave formality, “this is Lieutenant Barry Blake, who brought our crippled Fortress home after the raid on Rabaul. Although wounded, he landed the plane under almost impossible conditions, risking his own life to save mine!”

As in a dream, Barry found himself taking the general’s outstretched hand. He tried to make some appropriate answer, but no words would come. All at once he found himself the center of everyone’s attention. General Morse was pinning something on his breast. In the background the colonel and the brass hats were standing at attention—to honor him.

Barry caught his Old Man’s eye, and it steadied him. He saluted, met the general’s handclasp, and stepped back. The tableau of high-ranking officers broke up and passed on into the hospital.

“Sit down with me, son,” O’Grady invited him. “Moira Stevens will join us in a few minutes for lunch. There’ll be just the three of us. You don’t know how pleased I am, Barry, that I could be present to see you decorated with the Purple Heart.”

Barry touched the bright medal wonderingly.

“I feel, somehow, as if it ought to belong to you, sir,” he answered.