Dave's whole body was trembling from wild excitement and torturing suspense before Freddy Farmer came to a halt right under the wing of one of the Messerschmitt One-Tens, and not an inch less than fifteen feet in back of the armed Nazi guard comfortably slouched in his canvas chair. For one awful second Dave was afraid that Freddy was going to attempt to creep right up to the man, but the English youth stopped a good fifteen feet short.

In the glow thrown by the oil-pot flare Dave had a good look at the German's profile. It wasn't, however, anything very pleasing to look at. The man had the hawk like features and weak undershot chin, so common to Nazi soldiers. His neck was much too small for his head, and looked like a stick poked up out of a hole formed by the collar of his cheap cloth tunic with a lump on the top. However, funny and dopey as the man looked, there was nothing funny or dopey about the rifle in his hand, or the hand grenades hooked to his belt. Those were certain death if he were given even a second in which to use them. There was also a question of the Nazi's mouth. One startled roar and his mates would undoubtedly come on the run.

Dave scowled in the semi darkness and suddenly wished he'd made Freddy tell him of the plan. If that Nazi let out a yell, or if he had just enough time to grab up that gun, it wouldn't be so good. Freddy would be forced to fire, and the sound of shots would surely bring other Nazis before they could leap into those planes, kick the engines into life and get away. Maybe he'd better....

Dave cut off the thought and checked his hand reaching out to touch Freddy as he saw his pal lift up the Luger and draw a dead bead on the back of the Nazi's head. A second later the English youth spoke in German and his voice was like steel hitting against steel.

"Don't move, or you're a dead man, soldier!" the words came off Freddy's lips. "My gun is pointed right at your head, schweinehund! One move and there'll be a bullet in it, I promise you!"

The Nazi stiffened. The half smoked cigarette dropped from his fingers to fall into his lap, but he made no move to brush it off. Freddy Farmer sighed faintly, and then he was away from Dave like a shot leaving the muzzle of a gun. Dave hardly had time to blink before he saw the English youth half crouched right in back of the Nazi and with his Luger pressed against the man's head. Dave leaped to his feet and dashed out just as Freddy snatched the Nazi's rifle away.

"Boy, that was fast, Freddy!" Dave panted. "Just keep him like that, while I unhook those hand grenades. Hot dog! Eight of them. Two more than I counted on!"

While Freddy held the gun hard against the Nazi's head Dave bent over him and unhooked the eight hand grenades from the man's belt. As he placed them gently on the ground to one side, the Nazi made a faint gurgling sound in his throat.

"What is this?" the fear whitened lips gasped. "You are Englanders!"

"And plenty homesick!" Dave grunted. "Now out of that chair and down flat on your face. Hurry, before I kick you out of it. Face down, and hands behind your back!"

The Nazi didn't need any urging by Dave's foot. He quickly slid out of the chair and stretched out face down on the ground with his hands crossed behind his back. The man's belt, his handkerchief, and strips torn from the canvas chair did the trick. In less than two minutes he was gagged and tied up tight as a drum.

"Okay, Freddy!" Dave said and gave four of the hand grenades to him. "Three loud cheers for us. You take the end plane. I'll take the next one to it. Don't forget our arrangements! And ... and the last one back to England is a dope. Be seeing you, pal!"

The pair clasped hands quickly, looked deep into the other's eyes, and then without another word between them turned around and sprinted for the two end Messerschmitt One-Nines. Dave leaped into his, fumbled for the safety belt harness in the shadowy darkness and fastened it securely about him. Then he ran his eyes and hands on the instrument board and gadgets to familiarize himself quickly with their various functions. Then he slipped the cockpit set of radio headphones over his ears, and reached for the throttle and starter button.

He did not press the starter button instantly, however. He rested a finger on it and turned his head and peered through the bad light at Freddy Farmer in the next One-Nine. The English youth had apparently done things at top speed, too, for just as Dave turned his head so did Freddy, and their eyes met.

"Tally-ho, Dave!" Freddy shouted.

"And how!" Dave roared back.

A split second later the starting gears on both engines whined out their unpleasant note. And a few split seconds after that both twelve cylinder liquid cooled Daimler-Benz engines roared into life. The instant Dave's caught he throttled it slightly and raised a hand to wave to Freddy to take off first. And at that same instant a savage blast of rifle fire broke out from somewhere behind. There was the blood chilling clatter of a machine gun, too. And Dave felt the Messerschmitt One-Nine tremble slightly as bullets tore into its tail.

He didn't waste time to turn his head and investigate. He simply snapped a glance to the side to make sure Freddy's plane had started moving forward, then kicked off his wheel brakes and rammed the throttle all the way forward. The plane lunged ahead as though tightly coiled springs had been released. The engine howled out its note of mighty power, and the yammer and chatter of machine gun and rifle fire from behind seemed to double in fury. Yet, clear above the inferno of sound came an unintelligible roar of rage that made Dave's heart start violently in his chest.

"Ox Face!" he gasped and hunched himself low over the controls. "Has he got a head of cast iron! He shouldn't be waking up until sometime next week. Okay, girlie! Off you go!"

As he spoke the last he hauled the stick back, cleared the ground and went prop clawing straight up toward the night sky. Just off his right wing and flying in beautiful formation was Freddy Farmer climbing upward right along with him. Dave grinned and felt a surge of pride in his breast.

"Good old Freddy!" he whispered. "Gosh! What that lad has done today would fill a book. A couple of them. He...."

A crash of sound and a blaze of light off to his left cut off the rest and jerked his head around. The glob of red and orange in the night sky was a familiar sight to Dave, and he recognized it instantly. Anti-aircraft gunners on the ground were groping for them in the black sky. A second glob of red and orange flame appeared in the sky, but twice as far away as the first, and Dave's heart slid back down out of his throat.

More anti-aircraft bursts appeared in the sky but as none of them was close Dave didn't give them a second look. He held his ship steady, prop-clawing upward and straight westward toward the English Channel. A couple of minutes later the anti-aircraft fire was far behind and rapidly giving it up for a bad job. At just about that same time Dave saw that his altimeter needle was right on the eighteen thousand foot mark. He automatically leveled off from his climb and turned his head to see the shadowy blurr that was Freddy Farmer's plane doing the same thing. For perhaps five seconds the planes roared straight ahead on an even keel, then Dave saw the exhaust plumes from Freddy's plane wink out, and the craft start turning around in a wide arc toward the north. The English youth had killed his engine and was starting the long silent glide back that would take him over the glider hangar area from the north. Dave swallowed a lump in his throat, cut off his own engine and went gently gliding around and to the south.

"Luck, old pal!" he spoke in a husky whisper. "We're going to make it okay. I've got the old feeling, Freddy. The old hunch. Be seeing you soon in dear old England. Yup! The home of tea and crumpets!"

Dave grinned in the darkness, and nodded for emphasis, but he couldn't kid himself. There was an icy emptiness in his chest, and the eerie tingling sensation at the back of his neck. In fact, for one crazy moment he was filled with the almost uncontrollable urge to call out to Freddy over the Messerschmitt's radio and suggest they call all bets off, and go streaking home to England, instead. He angrily killed the urge even as it was born in his brain, squared his shoulders and held the plane in its long flat glide southward and around toward the east. In spite of it being night he could clearly see the hair pin bend in the Lille River. And as the Messerschmitt's wings whispered their way lower and lower down through the air he caught sight of a few lights spotted here and there on the murky carpet of ground below.

He imagined that one of those lights came from General von Peiplow's test laboratory, and office, in the patch of woods. He imagined the Luftwaffe high ranker at the open door and scowling in savage defeat up at the heavens toward England. He imagined those things, chuckled softly, and made a face earthward.

"Just stick around, von Peiplow, old sock!" he grunted. "The old balloon's going up any minute, now. Any minute, now!"

As he spoke the last he squinted at the altimeter dial that was just faintly visible in the pale glow of the single instrument board light. The needle had moved down to close to eight thousand feet. That fact startled him for he felt he had started his downward glide but a couple of seconds ago. But it had been more than that. And as he took another look down over the side at the guiding bend in the Lille River, he saw that he was in correct position to the south of the glider hangar area. It was time to glide around due north and ease down the last thousand feet or so before Freddy's signal would come over the radio on the agreed wave length reading he had tuned at several minutes ago.

Banking gently around and down, he reached out with his free hand and made sure his four hand grenades were still in an empty map box where he could reach them without wasted movement. His own safety, and Freddy's too, rested in their getting rid of those hand grenades fast and clearing out from over the area twice as fast. If their planes received the full force of the explosion's concussion, the wings would be torn off like paper, and....

Suddenly, without the slightest sign of warning, the inky darkness of night was shattered apart by a thunderous roar of sound and a seething ocean of red, yellow, and orange flame that seemed to come boiling upward from the ground below. The plane bucked, and shivered, and lurched crazily forward. And for one horrible second a mighty invisible force tore Dave's hands from the controls. Head whirling, and his lungs seeming to burst right out through his ribs, he fought with every ounce of his strength to keep the plane from plunging wildly downward out of control.

Freddy Farmer! Where was Freddy? Did he get through? Was Freddy all right? The radio! Was it working? Would that signal come through from Freddy? Darn the blasted thing! Would it never speak?

Those and countless other thoughts spun and raced through his brain. Then a planet of fire rushed up out of nowhere. It seemed to crash straight into the nose of the Messerschmitt and explode in a roar that shook the very heavens apart. Dave felt as though unseen steel claws were tearing strips of flesh from his bones, and hammering his brains to pulp. He didn't know what it was. He didn't know what had happened. He only knew that he was spinning down into a limitless void of roaring thunder and boiling flame. Down ... down ... down into the raging inferno of another world.

"Ox Face! Ox Face! Dave! Are you okay? Ox Face, Dave!"

Like a half drowned man he faintly heard the voice of Freddy Farmer in his ear phones. For a split second he thought he was simply hearing things in his dreams. Thought that he was dead and simply hearing the echo of Freddy's voice reaching across the great void between life and the hereafter. But he wasn't dreaming, and he wasn't dead. Far, far from it, in fact. The Messerschmitt was in a crazy spin, but it was slowly spinning down through clear night air. High above him the sky was splashed with red, orange, and yellow fire. And as he snapped a glance up toward it he realized what had happened. By accident ... or perhaps Nazi anti-aircraft gunners below had spotted the moving silhouette of his plane against the faint light of the stars ... the Messerschmitt had been caught cold in the bracket fire of several bursts of the famous "flaming onion" type of anti-aircraft shell. The crazy sea of colored flame, the roar of sound, and the terrific concussion of the shells exploding practically on the propeller hub had thrown him haywire, and tossed the plane into its crazy spin.

The Messerschmitt, however, still had plenty of flying in her bones. He realized that the instant he touched the controls and started to pull out of the spin. Then out the corner of one eye he caught the flicker of twin exhaust plumes etched against the darkness of night. And a split second later came Freddy Farmer's repeated cry in the earphones.

"Are you all right, Dave? Ox Face, Dave!"

"Ox Face, pal!" he roared into his own mike. "Down, and let them have it!"

Even as the last burst from his lips he kicked the Daimler-Benz into life again and stuck the Messerschmitt's nose straight down. The engine screamed out its song of power, and the wings shrilled their high note as they sliced down through the air. Body hunched well forward, and every muscle braced, Dave fixed his gaze on the ground below, and held his breath. Split seconds, infinitesimal periods of time ticked by, but it seemed as an agonizing life-time to Dave before he clearly saw the wide expanse of ground hangar camouflage below him. He snapped a glance at his altimeter and saw that the needle was at the five thousand foot mark.

"One thousand feet more, Freddy!" he screamed into his radio mike. "We'll make sure we don't miss with any of them. Luck, pal!"

"Luck, Dave!" came the faint reply in his earphones.

And then the altimeter needle was at four thousand feet! Dave tore his hands from the controls for a brief instant, grabbed up the hand grenades, jerked the little strings that freed the detonating pin, and hurled, the lot over the side. The split instant they left his hands he grabbed for the controls again and started to haul up out of the vicious power dive.

The plane jerked and bucked, and fought savagely to stay pointed downward. But Dave battled with it tooth and nail, and got the nose to swinging upward. Terrific pressure pressed him down in the seat. He felt that his neck was going to snap in two, and that his backbone and ribs were going to be forced right down into his thighs. Glaring white light filled his brain, and there was the roar of a thousand Niagaras in his ears. For perhaps ten full seconds he was completely "blacked-out" by the terrific pressures exerted on his body. Then the white glare faded away from his brain, there was less roaring in his ears, and the Messerschmitt was streaking straight forward toward the west on an even keel. He forced himself up from his half crouch and glanced to either side for sight of Freddy Farmer's exhaust plumes.

He saw them off to his left rear, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. And then suddenly it happened ... down below!

There were a half dozen spurts of flame that shot upward from the night shadowed ground. Then quick as a flash a pool of flame spread out in all directions. It came spouting upward as though the very earth had split apart and the raging inferno of flame at the core of the universe was belching up through. A beautiful and terrifying spectacle of Satan's fireworks spreading across Occupied France. And then came the sound of the explosions! There are no words to describe it. It was like the whole world blowing up. It was like a thousand worlds blowing up at the same time.

The bellowing blast seemed to drive Dave's eardrums right into his head though he was thousands of feet up in the air. Wave after wave of concussion swooped up to catch the Messerschmitt in its grip and toss and whip it about in the sky as though it were a leaf caught in the vortex of a tornado. For a moment Dave fought to keep control of the plane, but he might just as well have put out both hands and tried to push back those mounting waves of explosion blast. He was forced to let go of the controls and use both hands to hang on and keep himself in the seat.

The Messerschmitt danced and spun all over the inferno lighted sky. Unseen fists pounded and hammered every square inch of his body, and seemed to drain every drop of blood from his brains. He didn't wonder if he was going to live or to die, because his brain was too stunned, too befuddled to even begin to function properly. Like a man bordering on complete unconsciousness he did what he could to stay with the plane as it whipped up on its tail, nose pointed straight toward Heaven, one second, and went spinning drunkenly over on its back the next.

And then slowly the plane stopped banging around the sky. It fell into a half power dive and stayed there. Invisible giants stopped thumping Dave's body, and his concussion dulled brain began to work once more. With a mighty effort he dragged air into his burning lungs, and clutched hold of the controls and started to get the nose up.

"Freddy!" he mumbled thick tongued into his radio mike. "Are you okay? Okay, pal?"

Three seconds ticked by, but they were three eternities to Dave. Was Freddy gone? He had been farther behind. Had the explosion caught him, and was Freddy dead? The horrible thought made Dave cry tears of blood in his heart. He jerked both hands from the controls and grabbed the radio mike between them as though that would help to carry his voice out over the air.

"Freddy!" he bawled at the top of his voice. "Freddy! Check back to me! Are you okay? Are you still around?"

"I think so, Dave!" came the voice in the earphones, and tears of joy streamed down Dave's cheeks. "Yes, I guess I must be. I hear your voice, see your exhaust plumes, and this bus is still flying. Yes, I fancy I must still be alive. But, good grief! It was like the end of the world, wasn't it? And, look down, Dave! It's as if all of France were on fire!"

Dave had to wipe the tears from his eyes before he could take a good look. And when he did a shudder ran through him. The ground behind and below was like a lake of liquid flame. Flames of all colors danced across its surface, and great columns of dirty white smoke, tinged a weird pink at the base, reached up high into Heaven.

"The lot of them gone, and good riddance!" Dave heard his own voice speak out grimly. "Okay, Hitler, think up something else new to toss at us. And we'll knock that forty ways from Sunday, too!"

"Jolly well right!" came Freddy Farmer's voice over the radio. "But, I say, Dave! Let's head for home, shall we? This business may bring some Nazi night fighters for a look, and I think I've had enough excitement for tonight. How about you?"

"Check, and double check!" Dave shouted. "Give her the gun, pal. England, here we come!"

A little under an hour later two German Messerschmitt One-Nines dropped down out of the night sky onto the home drome of the Eighty-Fourth Squadron of the R.A.F. Fighter Command. A group led by Squadron Leader Markham rushed out as the wheels touched and the two very battered looking planes were braked to a halt. When Dawson and Farmer climbed wearily down from the pits Markham's eyes popped wide, and his jaw dropped down on his chest.

"Dawson, and Farmer?" he cried in stark disbelief. "You two? Great guns! Where did you come from? We thought you were dead. Barker reported that you both had gone down. In an hour we were going to lead Fifty-Seventh Bombers over there and blast that spot from the face of France. Barker's pictures didn't show a thing, but we were going to bomb it anyway, and ... God be thanked! You two are still alive!"

In his great joy Squadron Leader Markham leaped forward and bear hugged them both before they could do anything about it.

"Now, tell me all about it?" he demanded.

"Could we sit and eat a bit first, sir?" Freddy Farmer asked in an apologetic voice.

Dave chuckled.

"For once I agree," he said. "It's a good idea, sir."

"Well, blast my eyes for being so selfish!" Markham shouted. "Of course, of course, chaps. You can talk while you eat."

Some thirty minutes later Dave poured his third cup of tea.

"And so that's how it was, sir," he said. "We were lucky as all get out. But von Peiplow, that Colonel Ox Face Comstadt, the hired help, and all that glider and radio stuff, just isn't around any more. I've got a hunch that Hitler will kind of give that glider idea up as a flop. You got anything to add, Freddy?"

"Not a thing," the English youth said through a mouthful of food. Then turning to the Squadron Leader, "But don't believe all that rot about what I did, sir. It isn't true. Phew! The way Dawson talks you'd think he was just along for the ride. Just twist all that praise around to him, and you'll be closer to the truth."

Markham smiled, sighed, and gave a little shake of his head.

"What you two will be doing next!" he grunted. "I don't dare even guess."

"Well, please count me out," Flight Lieutenant Barker broke in with a laugh. "I was the one who really just went along for the ride. I could just as well have stayed home."

"No, I don't think so," Dave said with a grin. "I'm sure that the fact that you did escape stopped von Peiplow from jumping on us before we had a chance to get away. Yes. I think you were really his big worry, Barker. And he held off on us until he could think things over. And his taking that time out was our lucky break."

"Well, maybe," Barker said with a shrug. "Just the same, I'm serving notice, old bean. I don't want to be picked for another one of those shows."

"Quite!" Freddy Farmer chimed in. "Don't ask me either. I fancy this one will last me until long after the war's over."

Dave snorted and dumped some sugar in his tea.

"What do you mean, ask you fellows?" he grunted, then grinned. "I hope to kiss a pig I'm not even going to ask myself!"

THE END