"Cripes! You'll be up to that there Captain Hay soon if you keeps it up, sir!" Lance laughed. Hay, the almost legendary hero of the American Air Force--who had shot down, so latest rumors said, fifty Slav planes--was far above him. "I'll never reach Hay's record, Wells. I'll be doing pretty well if I bag half as many!" Then, seeing Ranth, the orderly, followed by Praed, he strode quickly away and came face to face with the latter. * * * * * For a moment the two men eyed each other, a taut silence between them. Praed's thin, sun-blackened countenance was immovable, masklike. His blue-green eyes met Lance's steadily. Finally Lance snorted and burst out: "Why the hell did you run away, Praed? Scared stiff?" Praed's low voice, devoid of all trace of emotion, asked: "What makes you think I was scared, Lance?" "You know damn well what makes me think it! That lousy crack about your motors being shot!" "Two of my motors were limping." Lance gave a sarcastic chuckle. "Ask Wells about that, why don't you? He's got a few ideas on the subject." Praed repeated: "Two of my motors were limping," and abruptly he turned away, leaving Lance fuming, and went into Colonel Douglas' office. What would Douglas say to him? Accuse him outright of his suspicions? Put him under arrest as a spy? But he couldn't do that: there was, after all, no proof. Lance swore to himself; then, feeling a wave of weariness surge over him, went to the shack he was quartered in, kicked off his battered boots, stripped away his Sam Browne, and flung his lean body out on the hard, gray-sheeted cot. Seconds later he was lost in the sleep that comes to the physically exhausted. The desperate situation America was in, the whole savage war--everything, faded from his mind. But to right and left of that cot stretched others--empty. The brave squadron Lance had led into the blue sky that morning now lay charred skeletons around the flame-throwers that had struck them down. And in a dozen other aircraft bases behind the hard pressed lines were other empty cots. Time and time again the Slav planes shot down two to the Americans' one; time and time again the treacherous disintegrating flames--the weapon which baffled America's scientists--had struck down whole squadrons that had been lured into traps, even as Lance's had been lured. And even the Slav forces pushed forward.... PART II "You're wanted by Colonel Douglas, sir." Lance felt a hand jarring his shoulder; he turned sleepily over, yawned, and stared up into the dark, full-cheeked face of Ranth, the orderly. "Huh?" "Colonel Douglas wants you," repeated Ranth. "It's five o'clock, sir." Wearily Lance pulled on his boots and adjusted the military belt. The night was hot and sticky; somewhere, miles to the rear of the base, the batteries of long-distance guns were beginning their nightly serenade. Lance followed the orderly's broad, chunky back to the colonel's office.