rney earthward had
been checked in the nick of time by the crooked and gnarled branches of
the scrub tree.

"Or maybe it's just a dream!" he whispered hoarsely as he fumbled at the
snaps of his parachute harness. "Maybe it's just a cockeyed dream, and
I'm going to wake up stone dead!"

The words he spoke, however, were just a means of letting off pent up
steam. He got the 'chute harness snaps undone, grabbed the straps with
both hands and slowly lowered himself until his feet touched solid
earth. However, his body had experienced so much swaying motion that his
sense of balance was all upset. And no sooner did his feet touch, and
had he let go of the harness straps, than he fell stumbling down onto
his hands and knees, and his brain started to spin furiously.

For the next few moments he was content to sit on the solid earth and
wait for his brain to stop spinning and for fresh strength to flow back
into his body. Then finally he slowly arose and peered about in the
darkness. Just where he had come to earth he hadn't the faintest idea,
but it seemed a good guess that he must be somewhere in the region of
that weird group of shrub-covered hills that marked the spot where he
had seen those Junkers 88's go down to land. That guess caused countless
little fears to start pecking at his brain. How close to that secret
base was he? How come he had been left hanging unconscious on his
parachute shroud lines for the rest of the day? Where was Freddy Farmer?
Had Freddy really been trailing those bombers, too? Had he reported the
location to Casablanca base? Or was his radio truly dead, and did
Casablanca base still not know the truth? What time was it, anyway? Had
he been unconscious for just a few hours? Or had it been for a day and a
night, and had Goering's Snoopers already roared out from their hidden
base to do their devilish dirty work?

Those and countless other soul-tantalizing questions whipped and spun
through his head as he searched about him in the gloom. Suddenly he
spotted the yellowish-orange glow once again. He judged it to be perhaps
a mile away, but he was unable to see the base of the glow because of a
rise in the ground. After one good look, though, he knew that it was
flame. Rather, a column of flame-tinted smoke that rose upward into the
night sky. Having seen that same sort of sight at night in other parts
of the world, he was pretty sure that the yellowish-orange glow was from
the burning wreckage of a