The smiling lips broke into a chuckle, and Freddy Farmer shook his head in positive negation.
"Not a bit of it, old thing," he said. "I"m not dead, and neither are you. Though by rights you should be. How do the arm and leg feel?"
"Not dead?" Dawson mumbled, as he strived to get his brain functioning faster. "And what arm, and what leg?"
"Yours," Freddy Farmer said. "The left one. Your arm you broke, and your leg you wrenched pretty badly. And you smashed up your face a bit. But, as usual, you"ll pull through. You must have protected the rest of your body with your head when you crashed into that blighter. If you"d only waited, though. I wouldn"t have let the beggar get away. Your guns went out, eh?"
Dawson didn"t say anything for a moment. Instead he used that moment to take stock of himself as best he could. It was rather difficult, because the lower half of his face was bandaged, and the bandages prevented him from looking down his body. It was easy enough to tell, though, that something was wrong with his left leg and left arm. He couldn"t move either of them, and to attempt it started little pains shooting around.
"Yeah, my guns went haywire for some unknown reason," he said eventually. "So I had to down the rat the only way I could. But what do you mean _you_ wouldn"t have let him get away?"
"Well, I don"t think so," Freddy Farmer said. "True, I was still quite a bit away when you barged into him, but I think I would have caught up with him. I screamed blue murder at you over the radio, but I guess your set was balmy, too."
"Didn"t hook it up," Dave said. "At the start, I mean. Decided to keep radio silence. I ... Hey! Then you got the same idea as me, huh? You lost him in that fog, and then decided to light out for the Truk area?"
"Quite," young Farmer said. "I lost you both. My radio was on and I heard all our planes recalled. I ignored the order, knowing blasted well that that n.a.z.i beggar wouldn"t go back. I didn"t think you would, either. I fancied it would be a three-plane race to the Truk area. And that"s the way it turned out. Not bad flying for any of us, what, to get there almost at the same time. But, do you know something, Dave? Know why we didn"t spot that blighter sooner?"
"Because we were blind, I guess," Dawson grunted. "Or maybe he spotted us and hid behind something every time we came along."
"No, it wasn"t that at all," Freddy said. "It was because he wasn"t aboard any of the carriers until the middle of the afternoon of the day we spotted him."
"He what?" Dawson gasped. "But how come...?"
"One of those crazy bits of luck that people have without asking," young Farmer said. "Or perhaps the beggar did have some kind of a premonition that we were coming after him. Anyway, when the force was one day out from Pearl Harbor one of the scouting pilots aboard one of the cruisers came down sick. Word was sent to the Trenton for a replacement pilot to be sent over. And our friend was the one sent. The flight officer on the Trenton handled the business, and Vice-Admiral Macon didn"t know a thing about it. That was natural, because he had bigger things to worry about.
The officers under him took charge of minor details. Anyway, the sick pilot got fit for duty again, and our friend came back aboard the Trenton. In the cruiser"s motor launch, of course. I sort of half remember seeing a motor launch pull alongside us that day. But maybe it"s simply my imagination, now that I know there was one. Anyway, his name on the Trenton was Brown. Yes, Brown. A nice old American name, with never a n.a.z.i hint about it, the blighter!"
"Well, for cat"s sake!" Dawson exploded. "Why didn"t somebody tell us that one fighter pilot had been sent to a cruiser to double for a sick guy? What were we supposed to be, mind readers, or crystal ball gazers, or something? If...!"
"Easy, old thing!" Freddy Farmer said in alarm. "You"re in bad enough shape as you are without blowing your top. It was just one of those things. The press of shipboard duties made them forget about Brown"s transference, and the vice-admiral didn"t know. Perhaps the ones who could have told us didn"t take the spy scare very seriously. I"m thankful enough that he was from the Trenton and not from one of the other carriers. Otherwise he would have returned to it that day and we"d never have spotted him. But if I"m getting you all riled up, Dave, I"d better get out of here and have the surgeon pop in and give you something to put you back to sleep."
"No, don"t go, Freddy, I ..." Dave stopped short, gasped, and stared at his pal wide-eyed. "Hey! Wait a minute!" he cried. "Where am I, and how the heck did I get here?"
"You"re in the Trenton"s sick bay," Freddy Farmer said. "And a cruiser seaplane brought you back the day before yesterday. Brought us both back, as a matter of fact."
"_Both?_" Dawson echoed in amazement. "You, too? But ... Oh! You ran out of gas and dropped into the drink, huh? And a scouting sea plane found us both? Practically within spitting distance of Truk?"
"Well, it wasn"t exactly like that, Dave," Freddy Farmer said, and a faint flush seeped into his cheeks. "The truth of the matter is that when I saw you parachute down to the water and float around in your Mae West ... and you can thank it for keeping your face out of water ... I decided that it was only fair for me to share what I had with you. So I landed as close to you as I dared, got out my rubber life raft and paddled over and pulled you aboard. The next morning the carrier force planes all came over, and a cruiser seaplane was good enough to land and carry us both back here. St.u.r.dy planes those seaplanes to carry two extra pa.s.sengers. The observer and I had quite a job holding onto you, but we made it, as you can see."
"Old Freddy, the Dawson lifesaver!" Dave breathed as a warm glow stole through him. "How many times has it been, Freddy? Twenty-nine or sixty-nine times that you"ve cheated death for me?"
"Rot!" young Farmer snorted. "After all, I didn"t have the gas to get back. I had to sit down. I"d have shared my life raft with any poor devil the same as I did with you. I ... Oh, blast it! I"d feel frightfully lost without you around, old thing, you know."
"Yeah, I can guess," Dawson grinned. Then the grin faded as he said soberly, "I wonder if that n.a.z.i rat went down with his plane, or if he bailed out, too, and maybe got picked up by some j.a.ps."
"No, the j.a.ps didn"t pick him up," Freddy Farmer said evenly. "I was close enough to see that you were the only one who fell clear of that wreckage, and opened your parachute. And even if he had got clear and gone down by "chute, the j.a.ps at Truk were too busy the next day to bother picking him up."
"So I did pull my rip cord ring," Dawson breathed, as memory of those weird crazy moments between life and death came back to him. "Yanked the ring, and didn"t even realize I was doing it. It sure is funny how ...
Hey! What did you say, Freddy? The j.a.ps at Truk were too busy next day?"
"Certainly," Freddy Farmer said. "This carrier force. Remember? They hit against Truk that next day, and the next. That"s how a scouting seaplane happened to spot us and take us aboard. Why, I understand that one pilot was shot down right inside the Truk coral reef and picked up by a cruiser seaplane. Stout fellows, those cruiser seaplane pilots and observers. A lot of the dirty work, and no credit to speak of. But the Truk show was wonderful, Dave. I got in one flight there, myself, as a gunner on a torpedo plane. Think I even got me a j.a.p plane, but I"m not sure. But it was a marvelous victory. We sank nineteen of their ships, is the report. And the number of j.a.p planes shot down has been placed, at two hundred and one for the two-day show. Imagine! And all the raid cost us was seventeen planes. Not one of our ships was damaged. The Navy chaps certainly gave Hirohito and Tojo a lot to cry about this time!"
"And while all that was going on I"ve been here out cold and trussed up like a roasted pig!" Dawson groaned. "Now, I ask you! Is that crummy luck, or is that crummy luck?"
Freddy Farmer stared at him and shook his head in mock sadness.
"Yes, yes, quite true," he said with a sigh. "A beastly shame. A blasted dirty trick played on you. As I said to Vice-Admiral Macon, I said, "See here, Vice-Admiral! My friend Dawson is slightly under the weather, and you have no business sending all these ships and planes and men against the j.a.ps at Truk until Dawson is better. After all, you know, Vice-Admiral, Dawson is the ...""
"Okay, okay, don"t say it!" Dawson laughed. "I"m a selfish guy. I admit it. Just the same, I sure hate to miss things."
"No doubt," Freddy Farmer said with a grin. "But don"t forget, in the future, also to concentrate on things missing _you_! And you know what things I mean!"
"So help me, Daddy, I"ll never fly into another plane," Dawson said with a faint yawn. "But thank you for everything, kind sir, and now go away and let me sleep."
"Consider me gone, old thing," Freddy Farmer said softly, and smiled down at his pal"s closed eyes.
THE END
_A Page from_
DAVE DAWSON OVER BERLIN
The last came out of his throat in a strangled cry of grief as a point in the sky ahead suddenly was splashed with flame and white light.
German flak gunners had scored a direct hit on one of the R.A.F.
raiders. Right smack in the bomb compartment from the looks of the explosion.
"Happy landings, fellows," Dawson said softly with a catch in his voice.
"You went clean, and quick, anyway. The way I hope I go, when it comes my turn."
"Amen, chaps!" Freddy Farmer whispered, and then fell silent.
The flashes from the exploding bombers seemed to reach out to the four horizons. Then they diminished into a ball that traced a fiery path straight down to the earth. Although they had seen death strike countless times, neither Dawson nor Farmer had ever gotten used to it.
They always experienced the same feeling of horror, the same helpless rage, and the same emptiness in the stomach that they were experiencing now. Seven men had just died before their eyes. Seven brave men who but a short hour ago had lived, and laughed, and felt sure, as all airmen feel sure, that the Grim Reaper would pa.s.s them by this time, too. But the Grim Reaper had not pa.s.sed them by. He had s.n.a.t.c.hed up their lives in one blinding flash of thundering flame. They probably didn"t even know what hit them. They just died, and now their comrades were carrying on without them. Carrying on because there was a job to be done; a job that couldn"t wait. A job that had to be done tonight, and tomorrow night, and the next, and the next, and on and on until all n.a.z.is had been smashed into the dust, and there was peace again. But seven more would not see that peace, save from their seats of honor in the airmen"s Valhalla.