A thousand little demons seemed to be screaming their mocking laughter in Dave's ears as he watched the two parachute envelopes billow out and catch in the wind. Seething white rage boiled up within him, and he impulsively started to kick his Devastator around and down toward those two flying garbed figures swaying like clock pendulums at the ends of their parachute shroud lines. But even as he started to drop down, he made strangling noises in his throat and pulled the Devastator up onto even keel.

"I can't do it!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't shoot them like a couple of helpless dogs. That's murder. That's the Nazi way. That's not our way. I just can't do it."

"But we've got to do something, Dave!" Freddy Farmer screamed in his ear. "Satan himself must have saved them. And look, Dave! That leading cruiser! She's shot one of her scouting planes off the forward catapult. A seaplane! They're going to land and try to pick them up, sure as you're born. That means they know perfectly well who those two beggars are, and what they've got."

Dave nodded grimly, but didn't bother to make any reply for the moment. Icy fingers were once again coiling about his heart. He knew that Freddy Farmer had spoken the truth, if the truth had ever been spoken by anyone. Yes, it was certain that the commanders of those two Jap cruisers knew that the two U. S. Naval Aviation clad figures floating slowly down toward the water possessed the information that the entire Jap Navy had been waiting to receive.

Word of what had happened aboard the Indian in San Diego harbor a few weeks before had of course leaked ashore. Axis Fifth Columnists had gathered up that news and passed it on higher up. It was a dead certainty that the instant the Indian had weighed anchor and sailed out of San Diego harbor, word had been flashed to the Japanese Navy command, and from there to all of the Nipponese sea units on patrol. True, they probably didn't know where the Indian was bound, or what she would do when she reached her destination. Dave felt very sure that the secret of the surprise attack on the Marshall Island group was something the Japs still didn't know, or even suspect. However, it was equally certain that they knew that two of their spies were aboard the Indian. And, also, that they possessed information that was worth a major naval victory to the Japanese. For that reason every unit of the Jap Navy was on the lookout for the Indian. And every one of its brown-skinned rats, from the admirals down, had been waiting with savage expectancy for the spies to make some kind of contact.

That contact was now close to being made. It was unquestionably luck that had sent the bogus Miller and Kaufman off on this particular patrol. And it was undoubtedly luck that had placed these two Jap cruisers just a little north of the end of the plotted patrol course. However, war without luck, and miracles happening left and right, just isn't war. And now there were the two Axis spies floating down toward the water, and there were the two Nipponese cruisers. And one of them had already catapulted one of its scouting seaplanes to land and pick up the two airmen.

All that, and more, whizzed through Dave's brain in nothing flat. Then he tore his eyes off the two men going down by parachute and fastened them on the Jap cruiser's seaplane skimming along the surface of the water. One look, and then he went into action again.

"That's their mistake!" he shouted, and slammed the Devastator's nose down. "Like picking off clay ducks in a shooting gallery. But those rat Japs are asking for it. So they get it!"

Dave emphasized the last with a savage nod of his head and slid his finger over the trigger button. By then the Jap seaplane pilot saw what was going to happen. He hauled the nose of his plane up as though to give battle. Almost immediately, though, he got cold feet and went cartwheeling around toward the east. But it didn't do him any good. He might just as well have tried to zoom up and hide behind the setting sun. Dave had him cold in his sights, and the Jap was caught like a rat in a trap.

One long burst from Dave's wing guns. Another long burst from Freddy Farmer's guns, as Dave banked off and gave his pal an aim, and that was that. The slow Jap seaplane came apart as though it had flown full tilt into a brick wall. It seemed to explode all over the place and hit the water in a shower of small pieces. Dave instantly nosed up and twisted around for another look at the steaming cruisers still a considerable distance away. Even as he spotted them, he saw tongues of flame stab out from their forward decks, and the air about him was filled with a roar akin to that of an express train racing into the yawning mouth of a tunnel. A blood-chilling roar, and then the Pacific sky was splotched with bursting anti-aircraft shells that glowed red and orange and yellow all at the same time.

Dave grinned, tight-lipped, and instantly nosed down. It had been a pretty rotten bit of shooting, even for Jap gunners. But maybe they weren't to blame. Dave's Devastator was too low for their angle of fire, and the shells exploded well above the Devastator. Just the same it was no cause for great joy. On the contrary it was an advanced warning of what the Jap cruiser commanders intended to do. A ten-year-old child could guess what it was, too.

Realizing that it was useless to pick up the two parachutists by seaplane, the Japs were going to hold Dave and Freddy at bay by the sheer power of their concentrated fire, and steam alongside the two spies, who were no longer floating down through the air, but had hit the water and were floating around in their orange-colored life jackets. Dave cast a quick glance down at those two gobs of orange in the water, and groaned in bitter exasperation. How simple if Freddy and he were fighting on Adolf Hitler's and Hirohito's side! All he would have to do would be to stick the nose down at those two orange spots in the water and no more than brush his finger across the trigger button of his guns. Just a short burst and two rats would be dead, never to reveal what they knew. How simple, how easy it would be to do it that way!

But he couldn't. And he knew that deep in his heart, and in his soul. No matter how much he hated the Nazis and the Japs, and all the ruthless, rotten things they stood for, it wasn't a hate that could make him murder in cold blood. He and Freddy would have to accomplish their purpose some other way.

Some other way? Those three words exploded in his brain like bombs. As more shells from the cruisers' guns exploded well overhead, he twisted around in the seat and stared at Freddy Farmer. The English youth was gripping his guns with white knuckles and staring down at the floating spies. But stamped on Freddy's face was the very same thing that was in Dave's brain. It would be so very, very simple. Yet it couldn't be done. It wasn't the way of the civilized white man.

"We've got to try it, Freddy!" Dave shouted, and was conscious of the dry tightness in his throat. "It's our only hope—our only one. If either cruiser gets alongside those two rats in the water—"

Dave stopped and let a shrug speak the rest. Freddy turned his eyes from the surface of the water, looked at him, and nodded grimly.

"Quite!" he said, tight-lipped. "Us against those two blasted cruisers. We're mad even to try it. If a single one of their shells gets close before we've got rid of our torpedo and bombs, why then—"

It was Freddy's turn to cut off his words, and let a gesture of his hand finish the sentence.

"Yeah, we'd probably come down on the moon, or on a star!" Dave shouted, and banked the Devastator around toward the north. "We can get one with our torpedo, and go after the other with our bombs. Darn it, anything to stop them from picking up those two rats, finding out things, and getting busy on the radio. It's a job that can't be done, Freddy. But, heck! We've got to do it!"

"Then get on with it!" the English youth cried. "They may try to catapult more planes, and we certainly can't do a million different things at once."

"Here we go!" Dave roared, and pushed the Devastator's nose down. "Good luck to us both, Freddy. And it's been nice knowing you, pal!"

If Freddy Farmer made any reply, Dave didn't hear it. The engine in the nose was roaring out full blast, and the gunners aboard the two Jap cruisers, realizing what was happening, were opening up with everything they had. The din that hammered and pounded through that section of the Pacific sky was akin to that of worlds colliding. Hunched tight-lipped over the stick, Dave sent the torpedo bomber all the way down until its belly was almost slapping the water. There he leveled off, banked around to the left and headed directly for a broadside shot at the leading Japanese cruiser.

Squinting ahead was like looking into the mouth of an exploding blast furnace. Every gun, from small machine guns and pom-poms to the big stuff, was hurling roaring steel in his direction. Everything else seemed to fade out of his vision. He could see nothing but that moving wall of spouting flame and smoke directly ahead. Split seconds seemed to take years in passing. A hundred times he was tempted to release the torpedo and zoom up for safe altitude. But each time he killed the desire.

The Devastator carried one torpedo, and he had to make it good. He couldn't take any chances of missing the sleek side of that steaming cruiser. He had to get in close, real close, and then slam home the steel fish. A bow hit or a stern hit wouldn't count. It had to be square amidships, where the explosion would tear the heart out of the Jap craft and sink it like a rock. He had to—

The Devastator suddenly seemed to half stop and lurch crazily to the side as a furious blast of fire from the enemy cruiser's guns crashed into it. Dave had the feeling that he had been slapped in the face with a barn door. He went dumb and stiff from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Everything turned into spinning red light before his eyes. He knew that he was lashed to the seat, and that both hands gripped the controls with fingers of steel. But he wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure of anything any more! Was Freddy Farmer still with him in the Devastator? Was the plane still with him, for that matter? Or had the withering blast of gunfire from the Japanese cruiser sent him sailing off into thin air and death?

He mustn't die now. Not yet! The suicide mission had only begun. The aerial torpedo was still in its rack under the Devastator's belly. Or was it? Had the cruiser's gunfire touched it off—and had Freddy and he failed?

"Freddy! Freddy Farmer! Are you with me, fellow? Are you still there, pal?"

Was that his own voice he heard—that faint little squeak that sounded in his ears? If only he could see something besides the darned dancing balls of light. If only he could get his muscles to move. But they wouldn't move. His whole body had been turned to stone, and he was falling straight down through a world of blazing flame. He was—

Suddenly it was as though a gigantic invisible hand had reached out and wiped away all the dancing colored light from in front of his eyes. Like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, he found himself staring at the instrument panel of the Douglas Devastator. He lifted his gaze, stared through the bullet-shattered front of his glass hatch, at the nose of the plane with its whirling prop—and at the shadow-filled Pacific sky beyond!

"You're nuts, you're completely cockeyed. You should be falling down, not zooming up!"

The sound of his own voice seemed to come to him from a great distance. He tried to shake his head, and found that he could. The movement dashed some of the cobwebs and the fog from his brain. He started to turn around in the seat when something hit him a terrific clip on the shoulder. It was Freddy Farmer's fist, and the English youth was yelling his head off.

"Bull's-eye, Dave! A perfect bull's-eye! But I thought for fair you were going to ram us straight into the cruiser's fighting top. Look at her! Look at her! Goodbye, you dirty brown rats! I only wish your big-toothed Emperor was with you. Make war on decent people, will you, you rotten beggars!"

"Hey! What gives?" Dave cried, as his still slightly benumbed brain refused to grasp the true meaning of Freddy Farmer's half screamed words. "What in thunder are you raving about?"

"What's that?" Freddy cried, and peered at him in dumbfounded amazement. "You don't—"

The English youth choked himself off, and the amazement in his eyes changed to a look of alarm. At almost the same instant Dave began to feel a dull ache on the left side of his head. He impulsively reached up his hand and touched strips of his torn helmet. The strips were wet and sticky, and when he lowered his hand it was to see his fingers stained with his own blood.

"Well, knock me for a loop!" he gulped foolishly. "Somebody, or something, must have slugged me!"

"I'll say!" Freddy cried. "A piece of shrapnel, I guess. A lot of it hit us. But are you all right, Dave? Does it hurt much? Had I better take over the controls? The other cruiser is—"

"Cruiser?" Dave boomed. And then like a curtain snapping up to flood his brain with light, he suddenly remembered where he was, why, and what had happened. He had actually fired the torpedo at the cruiser.

Ignoring another question that spilled off Freddy's lips, he twisted in the seat, automatically shoved the Devastator down onto even keel and stared down over the side. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat, and his heart stand still in awe and gruesome horror.

One of the cruisers was way over on its side and well down by the stern—that is, what little he could see of her. Mostly it was a boiling patch of red flame in the water that fountained upward and outward to hurl licking tongues of fire out in all directions. In a crazy sort of way he knew that the cruiser's powder magazine had probably exploded. At any rate, the craft was being ripped to shreds as though her steel plates were so much paper.

Then, suddenly, as he moved his gaze across the water, he saw a sight that made him cry out in terror, and shudder violently. He saw two tiny spots of orange almost directly in the path of the keeled over cruiser. And then he didn't see them any more. A tongue of boiling flame, perhaps an oil drum or something on fire, came slashing straight out of the smoke-filled air and down on that spot. The flames splashed out like drops of molten metal, and white spray rose up like a cloud. The two spots of orange that were the life jackets worn by the two spies disappeared from view as though by magic. When the flames and the spray melted away, the two spots of orange weren't there any more. There was nothing but a smoking slick of oil.

"Poor devils!" Dave muttered shakily. "What a horrible way to die. They were rats, but—but that was a terrible way for even rats to die. They—"

The last was cut off as though by a knife. A section of the sky seemed to drop down and explode right on the nose of the Devastator. For a brief instant Dave found himself in a world of utter darkness. Then the plane went tearing out into clear light again. It was shuddering and trembling like a spent race horse. He knew without looking that the right wing had been blasted by bits of shrapnel, and that the tip was beginning to flutter. Instinct and instinct alone caused him to shove the nose down and lose altitude fast. But even as he went down he knew that losing altitude wasn't going to help much. The second of the Japanese cruisers was just ahead and below. And every gun aboard her was thundering away at the Devastator at practically point blank range.