“Good!” Barry answered. “I’m cutting speed to one hundred fifty m.p.h. We’ll try to hold her there for the rest of the trip. How are your shell-torn heroes doing back there in the waist?” “Say, Lieutenant,” came Fred Marmon’s reply, “did you ever try to bandage a man’s seat with a roll of one-inch gauze? I might do it if Soapy would hold still, but he’s wiggling like a worm on a fishhook.... Stand still, you jitterbug!” “Aw, don’t try to be funny!” Soapy’s aggrieved voice answered. “That iodine you sloshed on me burns like fire. Just wait till I start operating on your legs, wise guy!” A chorus of chuckles bubbled over the intercommunication system. Everyone began ribbing Soapy and Fred, until the two sergeants were forced to join in the laughter at their expense. As the merriment died down, Mickey Rourke reported another B-26 bomber overtaking them. It was flying at top speed, heading for Barry’s plane as straight as a bullet. “Hold her steady, Lieutenant,” the little Irishman warned. “That crackpot pilot is intendin’ to give us a scare if he can. I wish he wuz a bloody Jap and I could let him have it—_yeow_!” The oncoming bomber had dived at the last moment under Barry’s ship. Her vertical fin had actually ticked Mickey’s tail position, sending a slight shock through the whole plane. An instant later she was nosing ahead, still perilously close to the belly of the slower flying craft. “Look out, Barry!” Chick Enders yelled. “The crazy galoot is going to zoom right under our nose ... and I’m a dodo if it isn’t _Glenn Crayle_!” Barry gritted his teeth as Crayle’s fuselage rose up just ahead of his greenhouse. “Cut the engines, Hap!” he ordered. “I’ll try to hold our nose up till that fool is clear. If only we had a trifle more airspeed....” Hap was muttering savagely under his breath. Chick Enders was gripping his gun, obviously yearning to pour bullets into Crayle’s back. Abruptly, however, the little bombardier relaxed. Crayle’s tail assembly was pulling clear—and Chick had just caught a glimpse of the rear gunner’s scared face. “Slap on the coal, Hap!” Barry cried, as his plane’s nose tilted sharply upward. “We’re going into a spin.” The twin engines bellowed. Hap “revved” them up to the limit, but the spin continued. Instantly there flashed through Barry’s mind all his instructor at Randolph had told him to do in such a situation. His hands and feet now moved automatically, applying just the right control at the right moment. Four thousand feet above sea level he pulled out and leveled off on the compass course. “Okay—take over, will you, Hap,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “I’m tired out.” His big co-pilot was gazing upward through the plastic window. Hap’s face was a deep red.