"Dive five hundred, Dave!" came Freddy's order over the inter-com. "Then level off for a second, and give her all she'll take to get altitude. Neither of us know what these fire bomb things do when they hit!" "You telling me?" Dawson muttered through clenched teeth as he slanted the Fortress downward. "I only hope that some day we can tell our grandchildren about it. Okay! Down we go, and--Hey! They're slinging up flak!" The last was because the night air off to the right had suddenly become spotted with two gobs of red and orange flame. They were way off to the right, so Dawson didn't even hear the sound of their explosion. But an instant later two more burst off to his left. They must have been set at zero; Dave heard not only their deep throated bark, but he also heard bits of shrapnel strike against the sides of the Fortress. By then, though, he had completed his five hundred foot dive, and vibration was shaking the mighty bomber from prop to tail. "Leveling off, Freddy!" he yelled into his inter-com, and eased the controls back. "Do your stuff!" It seemed that he had no sooner sucked air back into his lungs than his earphones rang with the words that are balm to all bomber pilots. "Bombs away! Let's get out of here!" Dawson replied to that order instantly. He hauled the nose of the big ship toward the sky, and hand heeled all four wide open throttles, as though in so doing he might get even more power out of the engines. And then suddenly the darkness below became lighted up like high noon. Yet so blinding was the light that he could see nothing at all. Nothing but white blinding light that seemed to cover the earth to all four horizons, and make his eyes ache as he stared down at it. Then on impulse he leveled off his climb, and banked around toward the northeast. In that position he could stare down off to his right toward the ring of hills about the secret flying field. But as his breath caught in his throat, he saw neither any ring of hills, nor any secret flying field. The brilliance of the light all around had died down some, but not where the secret flying field _had_ been. The ring of hills was just faintly visible, but from their center, that was like a seething maelstrom of liquid white fire, a great column of flashing and flickering whiteness towered high up into the sky. Not red flame, nor orange flame, or even yellow. All was a sort of silverish white that increased in seething fury and brilliance with every passing second. No hill-ringed flying field any more. Nothing but a boiling volcano of white death. "Good grief, what a way to die, even for Nazis!" Dawson choked out.