ake," Dawson laughed. Then, in a serious
tone, "And when we reach the carrier task force, sir?"

"Why, we go aboard, of course," the colonel replied. "There are two
carriers. The Hawk, and the Carson. Half of you will go to one, and half
to the other."

"And then, sir?" Dave persisted.

"For military reasons, Dawson, I'm afraid I didn't hear you," the senior
officer replied. "Count on it for something interesting, though. And not
easy by any manner of means. Fact is, all this may be simply the
beginning of a very costly waste of time, and effort."

The Chief of Combined U.S. Intelligence spoke the last while staring
flint-eyed out over the rail, and as though he were repeating his own
thoughts aloud to himself. A million questions piled up on the tip of
Dave's tongue. And it was the same with Freddy Farmer. However, neither
one of them spoke for fear it might stop the Colonel from saying more.
However, they were both out of luck. The senior officer grunted, shook
himself a little, and turned to them with a smile that showed his even
white teeth even in the gloomy light.

"Well, I wish I had time, now, to get a first-hand report from you boys
of that trip to Chungking you made," he said. "And your experiences with
the Flying Tigers. However, I only popped out for a breath of air.
There's still a lot of paper work for me to do. I'll be seeing you soon,
though; don't worry. A lot of you, probably, as I'll be aboard your
carrier, the Carson. Until then, good luck!"

Dave groaned, but not loud enough for Colonel Welsh to hear as he walked
away.

"Even him!" Dave sighed. "Good luck to you, and good luck to you--and
nuts! If anybody should suddenly say, 'Bad luck' to me just once, I
think I'd keel over in a dead faint!"

"Oh, come off it, Dave!" Freddy grated. "What do you expect folks to
say? Man, but you're getting to be a testy blighter! So we are going to a
carrier task force, eh? Well, I'll have to admit that for once you were
right. But I certainly wish he'd told us more."

"And you can repeat that!" Dave grunted. "And all this may be simply the
beginning of a very costly waste of time and effort. That, my little
friend, did not sound so nice to me. It didn't even sound close to
nice."

"Quite," Freddy said with a little sigh. "But nothing's nice about this
blasted war, you know. So we might just as well make the best of it.
And--"

The English youth choked off the rest as the alarm horn sounded aboard
the