Never before had Dave Dawson been so eager, so all on fire, to establish the identity of a sighted plane as he was now. Every nerve and muscle in his entire body became tensed, and actually ached from the strain. Time and time again, as the prop clawed his Hell Cat upward and to the right, he shoved up his goggles and dashed his free hand across his tired eyes as though by so doing he would improve his vision.

Truth to tell, under any other conditions he would have been able to get a clear view of the plane even before he started to climb toward it. But the position of the dying sun, the glossy red surface of the Southwest Pacific below him, and the tiny patches of cloud that still hung in the sky were all against him. They all worked to distort the distant plane into all kinds of shapes and outlines. It was something like trying to study a fly through red-colored glasses as the fly circled about a brilliant white light. One instant he would almost see it clearly, and the next it would seem to fade from view altogether, and send his pounding heart racing up into his throat.

"That Nazi rat, or you, Freddy?" he muttered aloud. "And forgive me, Freddy, but I hope that it isn't you. Because if it is you, fellow, then we have lost. He'd have to be out in the open now. So if that ship is yours, Freddy, it can't mean anything else but that he is way out in front of us, and too close to Truk for us ever to hope to get him. You see ..."

But Dawson didn't finish the rest of that sentence. It was as though a thin curtain had been pulled across the face of the setting sun. A mighty shadow pushed eastward across the face of the world, and there was considerably less blinding crimson light. The plane, now little more than half a mile away, and less than a thousand feet above Dawson's aircraft, stood out sharp and clear. And the plane was a U.S. Navy Hell Cat.

"The markings, the markings!" Dawson breathed, and strained his eyes hard to see something besides the sharp, clear silhouette of the other plane. "Is it F Dash Fourteen? Or Freddy's number F Dash Twenty? Please make it Fourteen, Lady Luck! If you never give me another good break, please give me just this one. Make it Fourteen, please!"

Five, ten, fifteen seconds ticked by. They seemed as years in length to Dawson. Cannons boomed in his brain, and he felt pins and needles in his veins, not blood. He wanted to shout and yell at the top of his voice. He wanted to do anything that would make it possible for him to see the identification markings on that other plane. The urge was great to let fly a few blasts from his fifty-caliber guns to attract the attention of the other pilot, but with an effort he fought down that urge.

If the Nazi was flying that other Hell Cat, it would be the worst thing in the world for Dawson to fire his guns. At least at this early moment. It would be bad because the other Hell Cat was still some distance away and slightly in front of Dawson's plane. In other words, there was still time for the pilot of that other plane, if he was the Nazi, to keep a safe distance from Dawson and outrun him to the protection of Zeros from Truk.

No, this was a cat-and-mouse play. If that was Freddy Farmer then this stealing up unnoticed was a waste of time. But if it was the Nazi then this maneuver was the best bet in Dawson's bag of air fighting tricks. Right! Get in close, and make sure. Make sure, and then tear in for the kill. And a kill it would be, if that pilot was the Nazi.

"Steady, guy, steady!" Dawson murmured as his nerves began to twang like harp strings. "No matter who it is you'll find out soon. So don't overplay it, fellow. If it's him, then this will be your last chance. No more chances after this one. No. This is the pay-off, the old make or break. The ..."

Perhaps Lady Luck smiled upon Dave Dawson at that moment, but most likely it was the result of action by the other pilot. At any rate, the other Hell Cat veered slightly toward the south and the rays of the dying sun played full upon the side of the fuselage. And like magic the plane's markings stood out in bold relief. The markings, F Dash Fourteen!

"You, it is you!" Dawson panted, and slid his thumb up to the stick button that controlled the electric firing of his gun. "It is you, and I've got you cold. Cold as a chunk of Arctic ice!"

The gods of war in their high places thought differently at that instant. Even as Dawson's thumb started to press down on the trigger button the other Hell Cat swerved sharply and cut right out of the Yank air ace's sights. True, the maneuver brought the Nazi even closer. In fact, that one maneuver sort of put the two aircraft on even terms. That is to say, the Nazi no longer had any safety lead over Dawson's plane. Neither could outfly the other on the flat, now, unless one of the engines went bad.

"Okay by me, chump!" Dawson grated as he relaxed thumb pressure on the gun button. "Make the turn and ..."

And right then and there the Nazi proved that his maneuver had a purpose. It proved that he had, for some time at least, been aware of the fact that Dawson was sneaking up on him. In other words, the Nazi's swerve was not to change course toward the Truk area. On the contrary it was a deliberate air battle tactic. A swerve to the left, and then suddenly the Nazi came spinning around and down like a flame-spitting demon from Satan's domain.

A far less experienced pilot than Dawson would have died then and there. He would have died, hardly realizing what had hit him.

Too many, many times, though, had Dawson scrapped with the best that the Nazis or the Japs had to offer not to be able to react instinctively to approaching danger. Thus it was, and almost before the thing had become a thought in his brain, he pulled up straight for the sky in the nick of time. The Nazi's withering fire missed him.

At the speed the diving Nazi was traveling it was impossible for him to haul up his nose and get a new bead on Dawson's zooming ship. As a result he undershot his target and went cutting down across the sky.

"Which makes me top man now!" Dawson yelled, and kicked his Hell Cat over and down. "And I kind of like that. Now, wiggle and squirm, you rat. Let me see you twist away from these little things."

Thundering down almost at the vertical, he lined up the other Hell Cat and let go with all of his guns. That is, almost all of his guns. Something was wrong with two of them, and they did not fire. The others, however, did their stuff. And with grim satisfaction Dawson saw his tracers chew into the tail of the Nazi's plane. It wasn't enough, though. The Hell Cat is a very, very tough ship. It can absorb all kinds of punishment, and the Nazi's Hell Cat was no exception to the rule. Dave Dawson saw it stagger a little in the air, but before he could correct his aim the Nazi was prop clawing upward and around to the left.

"Not enough, huh?" Dawson gritted, and hauled out of his own dive to follow through the Nazi's maneuver. "Well, I'm just the guy who can give you more. Like this!"

He was not in position for a tail shot then. The Nazi had pulled out too fast, and his Hell Cat was not letting him down. As a matter of fact, though, it was the kind of a shot that Dawson liked best of all. A rear quarter shot that would permit him to rake the other plane from prop to tail before its pilot could do anything to get out of the way.

The Nazi pilot seemed to sense that truth, and there was no reason he shouldn't sense it in view of the fact that he had been flying as a dirty Nazi spy in Uncle Sam's Navy. Anyway, he belted his plane hard over on wing and tried to whip it down to the vertical. But Dawson followed right through and pressed his trigger button. And it was then that it happened!

Rather, it was then that it didn't happen!

With the Nazi cold meat in his sights, not a one of Dawson's guns fired a shot. Maybe it was that a stray bullet from the Nazi's opening burst had hit something that threw the firing mechanism out of whack. Maybe it was for any one of a hundred different reasons. The cold hard fact was that not one of his guns spoke its piece. And in the next split second the Nazi was out of his sights and in the clear.

During that brief split second Dawson's brain seemed to freeze solid in unbelievable horror. Yet instinct was at work again. Instinct that made him try every way he knew to get his guns working. But it was all in vain. The joke was on him, and the war gods up in their high places were screaming with insane glee.

"No! Oh, no!"

From countless miles away Dawson's own sobbing words echoed back to him. His heart was lead in his stomach, and his head was filled with the flames of an all-consuming rage. Yet with all that he did not give up the ghost and just let his Hell Cat roar down across the sky. The Nazi did not know that his guns had gone out on him. Ten to one the Nazi simply thought that he had kicked his own plane out of the line of fire, and so Dawson had saved his bullets for another try.

At any rate Dawson did not give up. He was made of better stuff than that. Gunless though he was, he still had the advantage of position. He had the Nazi on the defensive, and as long as he could keep the offensive he had not truly lost.

"And after all, I've still got one trick left!" he said hoarsely. "One trick that will stop you from reaching Truk, so help me!"

As though the Nazi pilot had actually heard the words, the other Hell Cat zoomed for altitude in a pilot's trick to cut the corner and drop down from above. Dawson was not to be tricked by that one, however. He zoomed himself, and prevented the Nazi from cutting in behind. The Nazi tried it again in the opposite direction, but Dawson stayed right with him, and even improved his position in relation to the Nazi's plane.

But it couldn't last, and no one knew it better than Dave Dawson. A half dozen times he got the Nazi in a cold meat position, and was helpless to do anything about it. And by then the Nazi knew, or could make a pretty good guess as to what was what. As a matter of fact, in the very next moment the movements of the Nazi's plane proved what was going through the pilot's head. The Nazi started to zoom up off to the left, and then deliberately cut off the zoom and flew right smack across Dawson's sights. Hot tears of rage almost blinded Dave as he saw the Nazi's Hell Cat sail by looking as big as a battleship. The greenest pilot ever to fire an aerial machine gun could not have missed that target completely.

It was then that the Nazi pilot knew for certain, and as his helmeted head was turned Dawson's way for an instant Dave thought he saw the other's face flame up in a look of mad triumph. Dave thought he saw that look, but it might have been his imagination. To tell the truth, his whole attention was on something else. The time to lose or win had arrived. He had fooled the Nazi as long as he could. By his flying he had made the Nazi wonder a little, and then wonder more and more until the Hitlerite took a chance to find out for sure. He did find out, and he probably thought that victory was his now. He could swing away and go on to Truk without danger. Or he could first stick around and polish off this gunless American who had intercepted him.

Yes, perhaps the Nazi thought all those things as he sailed by the front of Dawson's nose and received not a single bullet. But what he probably did not realize was that his instant of mad triumph was Dawson's moment for a last desperate gamble. A gamble in which one and perhaps both could lose.

"Make the most of it, rat! Here I come!"

Words? Had he spoken them? Or had they simply been the echo of a thought racing through his whirling spinning brain? Dawson didn't know, and he didn't care. He wasn't thinking of anything, now. That time had passed. The time had passed for everything save for mad, furious, smashing action that would stop this Nazi from reaching the Truk area, and rob Admiral Shimoda forever of what he was now probably waiting for with gleaming eyes and drooling mouth.

In the next split second a hundred and one things loomed up large in Dawson's brain. He saw the Nazi's marking F Dash Fourteen stretched up tall as a house. He saw the color of the fuselage with the last rays of the sun dancing off its smooth surface. He saw the Nazi's Hell Cat start to swerve violently. He saw its nose drop down and its tail kick up. He saw the Nazi turn his head and saw him impulsively fling up one arm. He really saw this time the look of wild terror that flooded the Nazi's face.

"Nope! You still lose!"

Like a soothing, comforting whisper those words filtered back to Dave Dawson. And then he slammed his Hell Cat over on left wing, and kicked top rudder with every ounce of his strength. For the infinitesimal part of a split second his plane and the Nazi's plane seemed to hang motionless in mid-air. And then his lower wing sliced against the Nazi's fuselage and cockpit hatch.

He knew that, because he saw it in the fraction of time allowed. And then all the furies of land, sea, and air exploded all about him. All the colors of the rainbow surged into his brain in brilliant balls that blew up in a terrific crescendo of sound. Ten thousand spears of fire pierced every square inch of his body. And demons with red hot sledge hammers pounded their way down into his brain.

Then for an instant, and as though by magic, all sound faded away, and his vision was as clear as crystal. Directly in front of him, so close that he could almost reach out his hand and touch it, was the smoking wreckage of two Grumman Hell Cats entwined about each other. He clearly saw the markings F Dash Fourteen on one of them. But he could not see the cockpit as a section of wing covered it like a steel band. He thought he saw something start to fall slowly away from the hovering mess of wreckage, but a red film slid across his eyes and the falling object was blotted out.

Yet even as the red blurred his vision his whirling brain functioned at lightning speed. He knew that he had been thrown clear of his Hell Cat, and that he had seen the two crashed ships as his body went tumbling seaward in a free fall. Fall? He was falling? Then he had to yank the rip cord ring of his parachute. Where was it? He couldn't find it. Or was that because he couldn't move his right arm? Couldn't, because there was no right arm there now? Had he lost his right arm?

But what did it matter? Why bother to pull his rip cord ring anyway? The opportunity to float down to his death, rather than hurtle down and get it over with quickly? Death was death, no matter how it came to you. Certainly it was. You only died once. And this was it, for him. Well, weren't a lot of others doing the same thing in this war? Sure! Thousands of them. Millions of them. Wonder what Freddy Farmer will say? Wonder where Freddy is, now? Good old Freddy Farmer. No fellow ever had a pal like Freddy. God created only one Freddy Farmer. Good old Freddy....

What was that noise? It would be nice to see once more. Blind as a bat, now, though. Everything red, and growing redder. A deep, deep red. A funny noise, that. Like a plane. The planes of other pilots who had died? Did a pilot go on flying after he was dead? As dying people hear voices of those who have gone before them, did a dying pilot hear the planes of pilots who had already gone? A funny sound, but a nice sound. Just like an aircraft engine. No sound in all the world so deeply thrilling as the sweet song of an aircraft engine, and the hymn sung by wings in the wind. You had to be a pilot to know that.

So this was it? Well, that was okay. No pain at all. A sort of comforting silence. Like slipping off to sleep in a nice soft bed.