With its four engines singing a song of power that would be sweet music to the ears of any pilot the Flying Fortress thundered its way southwestward through the night-darkened Pacific sky. The aircraft was on the automatic pilot, and both Dawson and Freddy Farmer sat outwardly relaxed at the controls, but inwardly on the alert for the slightest miss in any of the engines, or for anything that would indicate that all was not as it should be. The Los Angeles Air Forces base was six hours behind them. Another six and they should be over Hickam Field, on Oahu Island, waiting for the permission signal to land.

Suddenly, with a little chuckle, Dawson broke the silence that had existed for some minutes between them. Freddy Farmer glanced across at him with a questioning frown.

"What now, Dave?" he asked.

"Us," Dawson replied, and chuckled again. "I guess we're getting old, Freddy. I mean, we seem to scare pretty easy these days. And I'll admit that I was as jittery as a hen on a hot stove until we got this Fortress off the ground, and into the air. I actually had little chills running up and down my back, as though I expected to feel a nice white-hot bullet cut into it at most any second. But heck! Not a thing happened. I didn't see a thing that looked Jap, did you?"

"No, I didn't," Freddy Farmer replied. "But my imagination certainly gave me a lot of trouble. Every time one of those mechanics put a bag of mail aboard, or a case of those medical supplies we're taking over, I had a brief moment of feeling positive that he was a Japrat, buck teeth, and all. But, as you say, nothing happened."

"Yeah," Dawson murmured, and peered out at the wall of night darkness that completely circled the aircraft. "Just another airplane ride for us. And that doesn't make me mad at all. I wonder if the field radioed Dago when we got off? Vice-Admiral Carter sure sounded plenty worried on that phone."

"Yes, he ..." Freddy Farmer said, and then cut himself off short.

"What's the matter, Freddy?" Dawson asked, as a sudden clammy sensation rippled through his chest.

"Down there," young Farmer replied, and pointed off and down to the left. "Is that a light blinking, or am I seeing things?"

Dawson leaned forward slightly and stared in the direction of Freddy's pointing finger. A couple of seconds later he saw the unmistakable flashing of a light. Because of the Flying Fortress's altitude it was no more than a pin-prick of light. But it was very real just the same.

"Yes, I catch," he finally grunted. "Probably one of our ships requesting us to flash our identification signal. The heck with them. They should know that no Jap plane could possibly be in this neck of the woods."

"But what if they open fire, if they have flak guns aboard?" Freddy murmured as they both continued to watch the blinking light far below. "There's such a thing as a lucky hit, even at our altitude."

"Okay, if you insist, pal," Dave grunted, and started to reach out his hand. "But ... Hey! Did you catch that, Freddy? That looked like the old SOS to me."

"It was!" young Farmer replied with a nod, and hunched forward a bit more on his co-pilot seat. "Wait a minute! He's trying to send something else. K ... D ... J? K, D, J? Wonder what that means?"

"Take a look in that signal book in the pocket beside you," Dawson said. "I think those things have surface ship signals as well as aircraft signals. Take a look anyway."

It didn't take young Farmer more than a few seconds to find what he was hunting for. Excitement rang in his voice as he spoke to Dawson.

"Here it is, Dave!", he cried. "K, D, J. Attacked by enemy force! Please give assistance."

"Attacked by enemy force?" Dawson echoed sharply, and squinted hard down at the still blinking pin-point of light. "Must be some ship nailed by a Jap submarine. Maybe we'd better slide down for a look. At least that should scare the Jap sub away, if there's one still lurking around. A Jap submarine east of Pearl Harbor? Well, what do you know? Get back at the port gun slot, Freddy, just in case we get the chance to take a crack at something. And I think I'll drop a flare so's we can get a good look."

"No, don't, Dave!" young Farmer said sharply, and gripped his arm as though to restrain him.

"No?" Dawson echoed. "Why not? We won't be able to see much in this dark. And certainly not a Jap submarine, if there's one on the surface."

"I know," Freddy said with a shrug. "But I've got a funny feeling. A flare would light us up nicely, too, you see? Let's play it cautious, what say?"

"Okay, okay," Dave said with a grin. "Maybe you have got something there. Anyway, get back to the port gun slot, and I'll slide us down a bit."

"Right you are," Freddy said, and slid out of the co-pilot's seat and made his way aft.

Dawson had already throttled the four engines, and was sending the Flying Fortress sliding down through the Pacific night sky in a series of ever widening circles. He circled to port so that he could continually keep his eye on the blinking light that grew bigger and bigger as the Fortress lost altitude. And the light kept on sending two sets of letters. The standard SOS and KDJ. A couple of times Dawson was tempted to signal back that they had caught the signals and were coming down to find out what they could do to help. Each time, though, something seemed to stop him from showing the bomber's signal light. He had even switched off the cockpit light, and he was not allowing the engines to show any exhaust plumes that might reveal the Fortress' exact position.

"Guess I must be as jumpy as Freddy!" he grunted to himself. "But maybe it is best to play it safe, even if it must be one of our surface ships down there. There's no telling what can happen next in this cockeyed world. And, boy, Freddy and I should sure know that by now. Yeah! So we'll sneak down and only let them know where we are by what sounds of our engines they can catch."

With a nod for emphasis, he flipped up the switch of the Fortress' inter-com system, and put his lips to the mike.

"Have you hooked this thing up at your end, Freddy?" he asked into what he guessed was a dead wire.

But he was wrong. Young Farmer's voice was in his earphones instantly.

"Yes, Dave. Can you see anything yet, besides the signal flashes?"

"Nope," Dave replied. "But we're only at eight thousand now. Whoever's signalling is sure a persistent guy, isn't he? Is he so deaf he can't hear us coming down, do you suppose? You haven't caught any different signals, have you?"

"The same two groups of signals over and over again," young Farmer replied. "I fancy they'd stop, though, if we acknowledged. But I wouldn't, Dave, if I were you. I still have a funny feeling about this business. It just doesn't seem quite right to me, but blessed if I know why. I ..."

Freddy never finished the rest. He never did for the reason that at that exact moment a stab of orange red flame showed down by the blinking light. Dawson saw it and had only time to stiffen slightly in the seat before the night darkness all about the Fortress was lighted up as brilliantly as high noon by a bursting star shell. And hardly had the white light virtually exploded in front of Dawson's face before the air all about was filled with the roaring thunder of bursting flak shells.

For the infinitesimal part of a split second Dawson sat as a man struck dead. Then with a wild yell he shook himself out of his trance, rammed all four throttles wide open and threw the Flying Fortress up and around in a steep climbing turn. The first star shell had died out by then, but a second and a third one had taken its place, and the silvery brilliance that seemed to flood everything was punched red and orange here and there by flak shells seeking out the Fortress.

"A trap, a trap, and I all but flew right down into it!" Dawson yelled angrily. Then as he looked down over the side of the plane, cold rage shook him from head to toe. "Freddy!" he shouted into his inter-com mike. "Do you see what I see, Freddy? It's a submarine. A Jap submarine. The dirty rats! They pulled us almost down to the muzzles of their cocked anti-aircraft guns. The stinkers. If they'd waited just a minute longer they couldn't possibly have missed. Hey, Freddy! You okay, kid? Did we get hit by anything?"

"Not that I can see from here!" young Farmer called back. "But I guess my feeling meant something, what? The dirty beggars! I wonder how often they've pulled this killer's trick on lone planes flying out to the Islands? Praise be they're rotten shots. Look! They see that they can't get us now, so they're preparing to dive. They're ... I say, Dave! What the devil's wrong? Is the plane out of control?"

"Out of control, nothing!" Dawson roared as he sent the huge bomber over on wing, and down. "I mean it to go this way. Show me some of that sweet shooting of yours, Freddy! I'll take you right down on top of them, and nuts to their flak fire. Boy! If we only had a depth charge or two, or a bomb. But give them what you can, Freddy!"

"Right you are!" young Farmer's voice echoed in Dawson's earphones. "Just get me a little lower, and level us off. I'll make the dirty blighters dance."

The Jap submarine's fire was still pretty heavy, but Dawson sent the Fortress thundering right down through it as though it didn't even exist. The submarine was getting under way, and one by one the deck guns ceased fire as the gun crew quit them and scampered along the wet decks to the conning tower. Two or three of them reached the ladder leading up to the bridge, but that's as far as they got. Freddy Farmer's port-slot fifty-caliber guns started to speak their piece, and the running Japs were knocked flat as though invisible hands had jerked their feet out from under them. Those behind the ones that fell kept on coming like men crazed by fear who didn't know any better. Anyway, they ran straight into the withering fire that had cut down the others, and their rotten lives were promptly snuffed out in exactly the same way.

Not a gun fired back at the Fortress, now, as Dawson kept circling the target so that Freddy could work his slot guns continuously. The undersea craft was driving hard through the water with its diving planes undoubtedly all set to be run out for a crash dive the instant those who survived the death that sprinkled the deck were inside and the conning tower hatch closed tight. But Freddy Farmer was seeing to it that none of those scampering Japs on deck survived his withering fire. He relentlessly cut them down one after another like tenpins. And then as Dawson veered the Fortress even closer to the trapped submarine, young Farmer sent a hail of explosive bullets practically straight down the still partly opened conning tower hatch.

"Have some of those, you filthy beggars!" Dave heard Freddy's voice screaming over the inter-com. "Pull a trick like that on us, what? Well, how do you like some of the same? How do you like it, what?"

"They don't like it even a little bit, pal!" Dawson shouted impulsively into his own flap mike. "Not even a ... Hey! Ye gods! You've hit something, Freddy!"

Hit something was right! A column of livid red flame suddenly belched up out of the conning tower hatch. The silver light from the floating exploded star shells had just about died away, but now the sky and the sea were bathed in a blood red glow as the column of flame mounted higher and higher, and then fountained outward in all directions. It came so close to the circling Fortress that Dawson gasped out a strangled cry of alarm and quickly banked off in the opposite direction. As soon as he was clear of the area of falling fire he banked the Fortress again so that he could look back at the doomed Jap submarine.

And doomed it was. Even as he saw it again there was another violent internal explosion that seemed to lift the craft clean out of the water. It actually seemed to hover motionless in mid-air for a moment, and although Dawson was not sure, he thought he saw the thing break in half, and both halves fall back into the water with mighty splashes, and then disappear completely beneath the flame-tipped waves. At any rate, an instant later the submarine just wasn't there any more. There was nothing but a blazing whirlpool of oil to mark the spot where it had been. There was not even a single piece of floating wreckage in that ever widening circle of blazing oil.

"And that's one Tojo can sure mark off as gone for good!" Dawson muttered, and nosed the Fortress up for altitude. "What a way to die, even for a dirty Japrat."

With a little shuddering shake of his head he took his gaze off the blazing patch of oil slick, and turned his attention forward.

"Okay, Freddy, boy!" he called into his inter-com mike. "Come on up front and get your cigar for hitting the bull's-eye. And how you did, pal. How you did!"

There came no reply from Freddy over the inter-com, nor did the English youth come up forward in person.

"Hey, Freddy!" Dave shouted, this time even louder. "Can you hear me? Anything wrong back there? Hey, Freddy!"

Ten full seconds of silence ticked by, and an eerie chill started to close about Dawson's heart. Why hadn't Freddy at least answered if he wasn't coming forward just yet? Was something wrong? Had a chance shot from that rotten Jap submarine nailed old Freddy? But that couldn't be. He'd heard Freddy's port-slot guns still slugging away long after the last gun on the submarine had gone silent. Then what was wrong?

Those, and a hundred and one other torturing thoughts raced through Dawson's brain as he put the Fortress back onto the automatic pilot, unhooked his safety harness, and scrambled out of the seat and went aft. As he pushed through the door leading into the bomb bay he stopped dead in his tracks and then instantly dropped flat on his hands and knees. A sea of acrid smelling smoke had come swirling through the compartment door opening, and although his own heart seemed to be pounding against his very eardrums he was able to hear the faint crackling of flames. And he could see that the swirling smoke inside the bomb-bay was tinted by fire.

"Freddy! Freddy!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Are you trapped in there? Can you hear me? Where are you, Freddy?"

"Back here, Dave!" came the muffled reply through the swirling smoke. "Give me a hand, quick. The mail sacks. The blasted things are on fire. Mind the bomb-bay doors, Dave! I've opened them to toss these things out. Give me a hand, Dave. I don't think I can make it alone. Blast! That thing's hot!"

Long before Freddy Farmer had stopped speaking Dawson was crawling through the door opening on his hands and knees. It was like crawling into the middle of a blast furnace. The acrid smoke stung his eyes and almost blinded him. It seemed to pour down his throat and gag him, and he was frightfully afraid that he might misjudge his movements and go hurtling down through the opened bomb-bay doors.

But he did not misjudge, and after what seemed an eternity spent inside a hot stove, he reached Freddy Farmer, who was hauling smoking and flaming mail sacks along the floor of the compartment and then dropping them down through the opened bomb-bay doors. Young Farmer looked like a smudged-faced ghost in the red glow of the burning sacks. His helmet and goggles were gone, and his flying suit was badly scorched in a couple of places.

"What happened, Freddy?" Dawson choked out as he grabbed a smoking mail sack off the pile and hurled it down toward the night-shrouded Pacific. "We stop some of their flak? But how the dickens did these sacks catch on fire?"

"Don't know!" Freddy choked through the smoke. "Can't understand it. Just happened to look back in here to check if anything had been hit, and found the whole blasted place full of smoke. Saw a couple of stabs of purple light, and then the whole business broke into flame. Didn't dare waste time calling you. Think the fire got the inter-com wires, anyway. Boy! Suppose I hadn't happened to look in here!"

Dawson simply shuddered and dragged another sack off the pile. He didn't bother to make any comment. It was horrible enough just to think about the whole rear end of the Fortress catching fire. Besides, there was too much of the stinging smoke in his nose and throat to permit any unnecessary talk. They still weren't out of danger. No, not by a jugful. At that very moment, as Dawson kicked a smoking sack toward the bomb-bay opening, a tongue of purple white light shot out of its heavy canvas covering. A hissing sound filled Dawson's ears, and then the mail sack went tumbling down through the air. Dave's breath seemed to stick in his throat, and his heart turn to stone, as the terrible realization came to him. He heard Freddy Farmer cry out in stunned amazement but he could not have turned his head Freddy's way at that moment, even if not doing so had cost him his life. Half frozen with fear, he stood gaping at the bomb-bay opening down through which the flaming mail bag had just disappeared.

Then, snapping out of his trance, he whirled around and practically threw himself at the three or four smoking mail bags left. Fire burned his hands a little, but he hardly felt the pain. His only thought at that moment was to get every last one of those mail bags out of the plane. And a few moments later the last one of them went spinning down through the opening out of sight. By then an up-draft had cleared away most of the smoke. For a moment Dawson and Freddy Farmer stared at each other in the pale glow of a single bulb in the compartment ceiling that had not been reached by the flames. Then, as though still in a trance, Dawson reached out and pushed the button that closed the bomb-bay doors. And then the two of them more or less reeled back to the pilot's compartment and dropped gasping for air into their seats.

"The first aid kit, beside you, Freddy," Dawson finally managed to force the words from his lips. "Better get it out and use some of the tannic jelly on our hands. No sense taking chances. Good grief, Freddy! There were time fire bombs in some of those sacks. Somebody figured to make us bail out, and flame this thing down onto the deck!"

"Yes!" Freddy Farmer said in a tight voice. "A little Jap friend of ours. Who else could it have been? It couldn't have been anybody else, Dave. The dirty blighter. He probably didn't trouble to use his gun. Didn't even have to get close to us ... But, good gosh, Dave! How in the world did he get the chance to do it? How did he know when he shadowed us up to Los Angeles that we were going to take the very first plane off, and that we'd carry the mail?"

"I don't know," Dawson mumbled, and rubbed some of the tannic jelly on his smarting hands. "It's like one of those impossible cockeyed things you read in dime thrillers. Maybe he didn't do it, himself. Maybe he has pals at the L.A. Base. He certainly had one at Dago. Maybe he didn't even show his face to anybody, except a pal or two of his. And maybe we're just kidding ourselves. Maybe he didn't have a thing to do with it. Maybe it was just plain sabotage by some other rats he never even met. I—gosh! I'm almost beginning to feel sorry that you belted that submarine down to the bottom, Freddy. Believe it or not, those rats, while trying to knock us down with their little trick, actually saved our lives."

"What's that?" Freddy asked sharply. "Dirty Japs save anybody's life? Not a bit, they would!"

"Not knowingly, no," Dawson said, and absently checked the course of the Fortress that was still droning along on the automatic pilot. "But those submarine birds did, just the same. Supposing that sub hadn't showed at all? Supposing you hadn't gone back to work the guns, and looked into the bomb-bay? We would suddenly have found ourselves sitting on the front end of a flying ball of fire. See what I mean?"

"Too vividly!" young Farmer said with a violent shudder. "Why, the blasted fire might even have reached the gas tanks before we could have bailed out. Gosh! maybe I am a little sorry that I sent the lot of them to the bottom."

"Well, don't be too sorry," Dawson said grimly. "They're still Japs. And there's still a lot of their cutthroat brothers on the face of the earth that need the same kind of treatment."

"And will get it, too, if I have anything to do with it!" Freddy Farmer echoed, tight-lipped.