It lacked twenty minutes to take-off time, and Dave was hurrying through the hangar deck to go top side and report to his Section Leader, when suddenly a groan off to his left slowed him up. He heard the groan again, and stopped in his tracks and stared hard into the shadows beyond some parked bombers. An instant later he saw two feet sticking out from under a wing. He bent over and scrambled under the wing. A man lay stretched out on the deck. His eyes were closed, there was a blood-smeared cut on the left side of his head, and he was groaning as he struggled weakly to force himself up to a sitting position.

Dave cried out in sharp alarm and gave the man a helping hand. The man was Freddy Farmer, and he was acting as though a building had just dropped down on top of him.

"Easy, Freddy, old pal!" Dave soothed, and put his arm about his chum. "Take it easy. Lean on me. It's Dave. Gosh! What happened, Freddy? Are you okay?"

The sound of Dawson's voice pried open the English youth's eyes. It was a few seconds before he could focus his eyes on Dave's face, and even then they held a blank, befuddled look.

"I don't know," he mumbled, and gingerly touched his fingers to the cut on his head. "Ouch! My blasted head feels in six different pieces. I don't know what happened, Dave. Some chap bashed me, but I don't know who. I didn't see him. I—"

Freddy paused and glanced about as though to make sure where he was. His eyes opened wide in surprise.

"But I was way over there on the port side!" he gasped. "Just about to go up that companion ladder to the flight deck when suddenly I got a terrific bash on the head. I didn't hear anything, or see—Wait, Dave! I didn't see his face, but I remember seeing his legs as I fell down. He was wearing pilot's jumpers, so it must have been one of the pilots. It—Good grief, Dave!"

"Check!" Dave breathed excitedly. "Our rat friend has made himself known. This is the break, Freddy! This is the break!"

"Break, my hat!" the English youth growled, and slowly got up onto his feet. "You call having my head practically bushed in, a break? The beggar probably thought he'd killed me, and didn't bother to make sure. Just dragged me over here and left me to be found a corpse."

"And what a lucky corpse you turned out to be!" Dave said with a tight chuckle. "Hold everything, pal. Don't take things too fast. You got a nasty crack. A clean one, though. The ship's surgeon will fix you up in no time. Here, hang on me, and we'll go hunt him up."

"I'm all right!" Freddy protested, and hung back. "Stick to the subject. How do you figure my coming a cropper was a break? I certainly don't follow you there!"

"Sure it's a break," Dave said excitedly. "The luckiest break you and I ever bumped into. And it was certainly luck, all of it. Don't you see, Freddy? Our little rat friend is worried. He's not sure whether we've got him spotted or not. He's got a job to do, see? He wants to be sure he'll be able to do the job, so he tries to remove us from the picture by crowning you. Get it?"

"Of course I don't get it!" Freddy Farmer snapped. "You're talking in blasted riddles, Dave. Make sense!"

"Look, pal!" Dave said slowly. "We know darn well now that he's a pilot, don't we?"

"Well, the lad who bashed me was, and is, a pilot," the English youth admitted with a nod that made him wince.

"Okay, he's a pilot," Dave continued. "That means he plans to make contact with the Japs by air, when out on patrol. He doesn't know if we are keeping an eye on him, so he slugs you so that we won't go on patrol this trick. See?"

"But what if we don't make the patrol?" Freddy cried. "What's that—?"

"For cat's sake, get it, Freddy!" Dave almost shouted. "It means that he is in our section! It means that he is in our section and tried to make sure that we wouldn't be aloft to keep our eye on what he did. Don't you see? It has to be that. If he were flying with some other section, it wouldn't matter to him whether we flew our patrol trick or not. But we're in the same section. So he lays you out just before take-off time, figuring that before I can be assigned somebody else to fly with me our section will be off and on its way. And I'll have to wait over, or go off with the next section."

"Good grief, yes, of course!" Freddy Farmer breathed fiercely as his eyes got as big as dinner plates. "For once, you're absolutely right, Dave. The beggar is in our section. He has to be."

"Doggone right!" Dave echoed, and took hold of Freddy's arm. "Now you come on aft to the sick bay, and get fixed up. I've got to work fast and get the Exec to assign me somebody else to take your place. Perhaps—"

"Somebody to take my place!" Freddy Farmer cried angrily. "Over my dead body! That's rot. I'm making the patrol with you. I—"

"But, Freddy, you got slammed pretty—"

"You can shut your trap, Dave Dawson!" the English youth snapped viciously. "After all this waiting, if you think I'm going to go on waiting while you make this patrol and perhaps get yourself into no end of trouble, then you're completely balmy. Now, let go of my arm, and stand aside, or you'll be the one to get bashed. And I mean it, Dave. I'd still make this patrol even if the blighter had broken both my arms and both my legs."

Dave hesitated a fraction of a second, then shrugged and sighed.

"You always were a hard-headed cuss," he grunted. "So I guess maybe he didn't do so much damage as that. Okay, you old war horse. No sense our breaking up the furniture. Come along. But let's both keep our eyes skinned as we go topside. Look for a show of surprise on anybody's face. Do you suppose he's two guys? The pilot and the rear gunner?"

"I don't care if he's a whole blasted squadron!" Freddy Farmer growled as he pulled his helmet over his wounded head. "All I want is to see the beggar make a slip, and be able to get at him. Nobody can bash my head, and least of all some skunk Axis spy. Let's go."

Keeping step, the pair hurried across the hangar deck and went topside. Six Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers had been rolled into take-off position, and were waiting with props ticking over. There was a pilot and gunner in each of five of the planes, and as Dave and Freddy trotted toward their plane they cast keen glances at the flying members of their section. But it didn't gain them a thing. As a matter of fact, not a helmeted and goggled head was turned as they loped across the flight deck and legged into their Devastator that was parked in number four take-off position.

Two minutes later they were all set and ready to go. A minute after that a flight officer came along the line of planes and handed each pilot a copy of his patrol chart. And five minutes after that the Flight Operations officer on the flight bridge pointed his finger at the Number One plane, and nodded. The engine of that Devastator roared up in full throated song, the deck mechanics stepped back from the wing tips, and the plane rolled forward, picking up speed with every revolution of its propeller. In less than nothing flat it was a moving battle grey streak that finally let go of the deck and went curving upward over the bow of the Indian toward the blue heavens above.

Hardly had the Number One plane cleared its wheels before the Flight Operations officer stabbed his finger at the Number Two plane. It streaked off in a thunderous roar, and the finger was pointed at the Number Three plane. Then Four, then Five, and then Six, and the patrol was in the air climbing for altitude before taking up formation for the flight far out over the reaches of the Pacific.

Flying with the nonchalant ease, yet constant alertness, that comes with experience, Dave held the Devastator steady and twisted around to glance back at Freddy Farmer. The English youth was just a wee bit pale about the gills, but there was a bright look in his eyes, and a tight grin on his lips. Dave winked and nodded down at the Indian.

"Want to change your mind, pal?" he called out. "I can take you down with no trouble at all. How do you feel?"

"Never better!" Freddy shouted. "Just take me down, and it'll be the last landing you'll ever make. I'm up here to stay, my little man!"

Dave laughed, but there was just a little tightness to it.

"And do I hope that's the truth!" he cried. "Didn't see anything as we went to the plane, did you?"

"Not a sign," Freddy replied. "I don't think any of them even looked at us. Maybe he figured he'd done the job good on me, and that only five planes would take the air."

"Well, the rat knows different now!" Dave grated, and turned front. "He knows there are six ships up here, and that we're in one of them."

As Dave spoke the words he let his gaze wander from plane to plane in the formation. Oddly enough, a lump formed in his chest, and there was an empty feeling in his stomach. He had met and talked with every member of that patrol in the air. Kidded with them, played cards, and done all of the things one does with one's shipmates. It was hard, terribly hard to believe that one of them, possibly two, were earning blood money from Berlin or Tokio. Every one of them had struck him as being a swell guy. A swell guy, or one of the best actors that ever stepped on a stage. It didn't seem possible that savage hatred for the United States, for the whole civilized world, was flying along in the formation. It just didn't seem possible. Could he be wrong? Could both Freddy and he be all wet in their deductions? Had Freddy actually been slugged by accident, perhaps by a blundering mechanic carrying something heavy? Had he got scared at what he'd done, and dragged Freddy under that wing and taken to his heels? And had Freddy made a mistake about his wearing pilot's garb? Could it have been simply that?

Those and countless other questions churned around in Dave's head as he stared at the other planes in the formation droning northward over the seemingly endless sky blue waters of the Pacific. Whether the answers that came to mind were right or wrong, he had no way of telling. Only time would tell that. In a short while the formation would spread out so as to cover as great an area as possible. Then would be the time for the murderer of Commander Jackson and Lieutenant Commander Pollard to make his move, whatever it was going to be.

However, when the Indian and her destroyer escort disappeared from view down over the lip of the southern horizon, and the patrol planes were spread out in wide line formation, nothing happened. Each plane continued droning along its prescribed course, its pilot and gunner keeping a constant lookout for telltale shadows under the water below them that might be Japanese submarines. And as the minutes piled up on one another, nothing continued to happen. Fresh doubts and fresh worries tugged at Dave's brain. Then, as a sudden thought came to him, he turned his head and stared thoughtfully at Freddy Farmer.

The English youth grinned, opened his mouth to say something smart, but checked himself as he saw the little lines of worry on Dave's forehead.

"What now?" he asked. "Did you forget something back on the ship? Or is this another hunch? Know what I've been thinking?"

"I think I have an idea what it is," Dave said. "The same thing I've been thinking, maybe. That he's suddenly called things off. He realizes that he didn't stop us from making this patrol, so he's decided not to take a chance yet. That it?"

"Something like that," the English youth replied with a grave nod. Then with a puzzled twist of his head, he added, "But maybe a little more than that. I mean that perhaps something else hasn't turned out as he planned. Perhaps he was sure that we'd sight enemy craft, but we haven't, so there isn't anything he can do but stay with the formation."

"Yeah, I get what you mean," Dave grunted. "If he should break formation cold, now, and go tearing off on his own, it might make the Section Leader go tearing after him to herd him back into place."

"Yes," Freddy said. Then, with a startled look: "Unless he happens to be the Section Leader!"

"Boy, the things you can think up!" Dave cried. Then, with a curt shake of his head: "No, that's out, I'm positive. Our Section Leader wears the Navy Cross and the Navy Medal of Valor. If he won those and then turned Axis spy and killer, then I give up. That would be too much for even me to believe. No, Freddy, our Section Leader is the one bird in this bunch who's okay in my book."

"Quite, and in mine, too," Freddy said. "It was just a sudden thought that hit me. I spoke it without thinking. No, it has to be somebody else. But I wish the blighter would tip his hand and do something. We're getting near the end of the patrol, and we haven't sighted a thing. We'll soon be turning back, and then it will be too late for him to try anything. He'll—I say!"

"What's up?" Dave cried as a look of horror flashed over the English youth's face for an instant.

"Listen!" Freddy cried. "If the beggar has decided to pass it up this time and try later, it'll be up to you to get your head bashed, see? I've had my share of it. Next time it's you."

"There's not going to be any next time!" Dave growled. "There just can't be. Whatever's going to happen has got to happen on this patrol. Any more of this nerve slicing waiting, and I'll go bats."

"You won't be alone, I fancy," Freddy murmured, and returned to studying the rolling blue swells of the Pacific below.

Dave turned front and gave his attention to his flying. And for the next twenty-five minutes the Devastator droned along on its job of flying, with neither of the two youths saying a word. At the end of that time the Section Leader fired a brace of very-light signals into the air to signify that the patrol had reached its farthest point north. Then he banked around toward the south again. The five other planes banked around, and as the turn was made Dave glued his eyes on the other planes and half held his breath in expectation. But he was doomed to disappointment. No plane refused to turn and went streaking away on its own. All of them swung about gracefully in formation and started drilling back toward the south and the Carrier Indian far down over the edge of the horizon.

"Well, so that's that!" Dave muttered bitterly. "I was either all wet, or he decided not to take the chance this trip. Or maybe it was because we didn't sight any—"

He didn't finish the rest. At that moment Freddy Farmer's fist came down on his shoulder, and the English youth's voice cried out in wild excitement.

"Look at Number Two plane way over there, Dave! It seems to be having engine trouble. It's spouting smoke from the exhaust, and is nosing down!"

"A forced landing!" Dave cried without thinking as he watched the Number Two plane start to lose altitude. "What a tough break for those two guys! They'll have to sit down and float until—Hey! What am I talking about? I must be nuts! Freddy!"

"Absolutely!" the English youth cried, and nodded his head vigorously. "It's easy to give your engine a bad mixture feed and make the exhaust smoke. An easy trick when you want to break away from a formation, and make it look as though you have to. Dave! I'll bet you anything you want that that engine hasn't got anything more wrong with it than ours has!"