suddenly alive with tracer smoke, and the Lockheed Lightning acted as
though it was about to fly right out from under Dave. He was hurled back
against the headrest with a force that filled his head with winking
stars. Then the Lockheed whipped up over on its back, dropped its nose
and headed straight down like a meteor gone berserk. Thunder roared in
his ears, and before his eyes exploded and flashed all the color
combinations in the world. In his nose was the acrid stench of smoke.

"Your turn, this time, pal!" he heard his own voice shout, as he went
hurtling downward. "No! No, it isn't, darn it! _You're_ not hit.
_You're_ okay! Hit the silk, you dope! Bail out! Hit the silk! If you--"

He choked off the rest, or rather fear choked off his words, as he
suddenly heard the renewed bursts of savage aerial machine-gun fire. His
ship shot to ribbons, and falling to earth in flames, yet those two Nazi
vultures were still pumping death at him.

"But why not?" he reasoned. "They're Nazis, aren't they? What else would
you expect these killing rats to do?"

Even as the thought slipped across his brain, a new one crowded close on
its heels. Rather, it was a realization. The realization that there was
not one bit of pain in his body as he struggled to free himself from the
burning Lockheed. And also that no ribbons of tracer smoke were cutting
past him. So what were the Nazis shooting at? At each other, or--

Before he could finish the question he had managed to fight his way up
out of the pit, and dived headlong into sun-filled thin air. But it was
not his own movements that stopped his unfinished thought. On the
contrary, it was the sight of a wingless Messerschmitt 109 hurtling down
to its doom about three hundred yards from where his own body seemed to
hang in mid air.

"Hey!" he gasped. "Did I get another one? Did I get two, and I'm just
finding out? But how the--"

And he didn't finish that question either. He didn't, because at that
exact instant the gods of war, as though angered by the fact that he
still lived, tried one last time to finish him off. At any rate, at that
exact moment a piece of his riddled Lockheed Lightning flew off.
Straight and true as a ball pitcher's perfect strike it cut across the
air space toward him. He actually saw it coming out of the corner of his
eye, and he tried to duck as his body slowly tumbled end over end
downward. But he didn't succeed in ducking, or he didn't duck in time.
So