The weeks that followed were more crowded than any Barry Blake had known. Drills, monotonous, tiring, but excellent for physical “tone,” occupied the first few days. On Monday of the second week the regular training schedule began.

Mornings were devoted to Ground School. Barry and Chick put their best into it, knowing that study was vital to passing later tests. There were five subjects: Airplane and Engine Operation, Weather, Military Law, Navigation, and Radio Code. Of them all, Barry Blake preferred the first. His hobby had been flying model planes since he was in short pants.

The classroom in Hangar V with its blueprints, charts, takedown and working models made him feel at home. Here he “ate up” every lecture on Fuel Systems, Motors, Electric Systems, Engine Instruments, Wheels, and Brakes. The floor of the great hangar itself Barry found still more fascinating. Here were displayed the real planes and their parts, with cutaway and breakdown views. They gave him his first intimate contact with the powerful, fighting ships that he hoped soon to fly.

Flight instruction, in the BT-9 and BT-14 training planes, was always a mixture of anxieties and thrills. There was much to learn, and little time to learn it. In these ships, twice as big as the primary school “kites,” the speeds were higher, the controls more quickly responsive. The gadgets on the instrument panels were just double in number. And the instructors—!

“Lieutenant Baird has it in for me, Barry,” Chick Enders confided, as they headed down the concrete apron toward their ships. “No matter what I do, he just sits back and sulks. All the encouragement I’ve had from him is a grunt or a glare—ever since the day I taxied into the wrong stall with my flaps down.”

A step or two behind him, Barry glanced down at Chick’s short legs twinkling below the bobbing bustle of his ’chute. In spite of himself Barry chuckled. The idea that anybody could “have it in for” a fellow as homely and likeable as Chick was just too funny.

“Perhaps Lieutenant Baird has other troubles,” he suggested. “Remember, when your flight period begins he has already spent an hour with a hot pilot by the name of Glenn Crayle. That lad is enough to curdle the milk of human kindness in any instructor. I wouldn’t worry about it, Chick. You passed your twenty-hour test all right, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Chick admitted. “Maybe it is Crayle, more than I, who’s responsible for the lieutenant’s sour puss. Crayle’s a born show-off and a sorehead as well. Even the processors couldn’t prick his bubble, and they tried—oh-oh! G-gosh! I—er—hello, Crayle! I—uh—didn’t see you coming.”

Walking fast, Cadet Crayle passed the two friends with a glare. They turned and watched him disappear into the Operations Office. Chick Enders let out his breath in a long whistle.

“He must have heard all we said about him before he zoomed past us,” Barry said, with a dry smile. “Oh, well! It’s the truth, and it may do him good when he thinks it over.”

Practicing his chandelles that afternoon, Chick gave less thought to his instructor’s sour mood. As a result he did better than usual. Barry Blake, for his part, forgot the incident completely. It was not until special room inspection, the following Saturday morning, that he recalled Crayle’s ugly look.

Barry Blake was room orderly that week. This meant that he alone was responsible for the general neatness of the quarters he shared with Chick and Hap Newton. For ordinary morning and evening inspection the preparations were simple. Beds must be made, the room must be swept and dusted, and everything had to be in its proper place.

On Saturday, however, all three roommates pitched into the work. Everything must be in perfect, regulation order—each blanket edge laid just so, each speck of dust wiped up. Shoes, clothing, equipment must be spotless, or demerits would fall like rain.

To make sure that Barry had overlooked nothing in his dusting, Chick and Hap went over the furniture with their fingers, searching for a smear of dust. They found none, until Hap tried the bottom of the waste basket.

“Two ‘gigs’ for you, Mister Blake—if the inspecting officer had found that,” he remarked, with a wink at Chick.

“You’re dead right, Hap,” Chick spoke up, wiping his finger over the same spot. “The inspecting officer will do it with white gloves, you know. And if he gets a smear—”

“Aw, drive it in the hangar, fellows!” Barry protested with a grin. “Give me that waste basket and a rag. And then go wash your own hands.”

“Okay—but not in the washbowl I’ve just finished cleaning!” retorted Hap. “It’s too near inspection time. I’m going down the hall.... Coming, Chick?”

Barry polished the bottom of the waste basket as if it were brass. As he put the cleaning rag away, he glanced about him.

“If this room were to be any cleaner, it would have to be sterilized,” he declared. “Bring on your white gloves, and let’s see what they can find now. Guess I’ll have just time to join Chick and Hap down the hall and get back before inspection.”

The three roommates had figured almost too close. They were just starting back to their room when call to quarters sounded. As they hurried into the hall, a uniformed figure darted across the farther end.

“Say!” hissed Chick Enders. “Didn’t that mister come from our room?”

“I thought so,” muttered Barry. “He looked like Glenn Crayle! I wonder....”

There was no time for more speculation then. Official footsteps were approaching. The three cadets were just able to reach their room and stiffen at attention by their beds before the inspecting party came in view.

The officer in charge was Captain Branch, whose piercing black eyes had never been known to miss a spot of dirt. Square-jawed, quick-moving, he entered the room accompanied by a cadet officer with notebook and pencil. His thin, sensitive nostrils sniffed the air.

“Who,” he asked sharply, “has been smoking here within the last few minutes? The room smells foul!”

A tense, five-second silence followed. Barry Blake broke it.

“I don’t know, sir,” he managed to say. “It was none of us three. We don’t use tobacco.”

The muscles of the captain’s jaw bulged. The thin line of his lips hardened.

“What is your idea in leaving rolls of dust under your bed at inspection?” he demanded bitterly. “And dirty soap on your washbowl? And that can of foot powder on the desk? And that drawer—”

He broke off, to stride across the room. From the crack of a drawer in Barry’s desk drifted a tiny feather of smoke. Captain Branch jerked it open. There, on a charred paper, lay a smouldering cigar.

With his face like a marble mask, the officer tossed the cigar into the washbowl.

“Gentlemen,” he said heavily. “This is an idiotic defiance of authority. Unless you can clear yourselves immediately in a written report, appropriate punishment must follow. That is all.”

Not until the captain was out of hearing did the roommates dare to look about. Then, with a sigh that told more than words, Barry stooped and picked up two big, fuzzy “rats” of dust. Wordless, Chick Enders took the can of foot powder from the desk and wiped up what had been spilled.

Hap Newton groaned.

“It was Crayle, all right,” he declared. “I recognized him by the way he carries his head.... But why? Why should he want to sabotage us?”

“I think I know,” said Barry. “Two days ago he overheard Chick and me talking about him. What we said was true enough, as this frame-up proves—that Crayle is a sorehead, with an inflated ego.”

“Inflated and inflamed, both!” Chick Enders exclaimed. “He’s always trying to tell what a hot pilot he is. He hates anybody who shows him up.”

A hard grin stretched Hap’s wide, good-natured mouth.

“We’ll show him up for a sneaking rat,” he said. “Nose up to the desk, fellows, and we’ll get busy on that written report....”

“Pull out of it, Hap!” Barry Blake interrupted. “We’ll only do a ground loop that way. Our best maneuver is to say nothing about Crayle and take our medicine. We can’t prove a thing against him, anyhow.”

Hap Newton’s jaw dropped. He sat down hard on his chair.

“You-you’re crazy, Blake!” he gasped. “We’re likely to be dismissed from Randolph for what’s happened this morning. Why should we sacrifice our wings, our reputation—everything we value here—to protect a yellow snake-in-the-grass like Crayle? That’s what it will mean!”

“We’ve circumstantial evidence that Crayle did it,” Chick Enders put in. “He had no business in our quarters. And it would have been idiotic for us to stand inspection in a room as raunchy as this, if we could help it. That ought to be plain to anybody. Get your pen and paper out, Barry.”

Seated at the desk, Barry Blake shook his head.

“We won’t make anything plain by accusing Glenn Crayle, fellows,” he stated. “That mister may be a fool in some ways, but he’s covered his tracks. Remember, we only thought that he came from our room. And, from the captain’s viewpoint, it would be natural for us to accuse someone else if we were guilty.”

Barry let those points sink into his roommates’ minds for a full minute.

“On the other hand,” he went on, “suppose we face the music. That is what Captain Branch would expect us to do if we were innocent and had no proof. We’ll pay a stiff penalty, of course, but I don’t think we’ll be dismissed from the Field.”

Hap Newton rose and stared out of the window. Chick Enders passed nervous fingers through his short, tow-colored hair.

“You’re right as always, Barry,” the homely cadet said finally. “There’s a paragraph in ‘Compass Headings’ that says: ‘Flying Cadets do not make excuses.’ I have a hunch we’ll be doing punishment tours for the rest of our course, but I’m ready to suffer in silence.”

Hap Newton grumbled and fumed, but he, too, gave in.

“I’ll get even with Crayle,” he added vengefully. “I’ll fix him—”

“No you won’t, Hap,” Barry cut in, “unless you’re willing to fly at his level. The ceiling’s zero down there. Come out of the clouds, fella! And help us clean this room for the second time today.”