The Executive Flight Officer stopped talking again, and took time out to rake the room full of pilots with his steel grey eyes. "Keep your radios silent all the time!" he finally said. "If you are shot down, or forced down on the water, then it'll be just too bad for you. Somebody else will have to pick you up. Neither the Indian nor any of its escorting destroyers are turning back for anybody. So don't expect help if you go down. You won't get it. The chance of meeting enemy ships in these waters, particularly submarines, is too great to warrant risking any rescue work. So keep your radios silent, and--well, keep your wings up out of the wet stuff. That's all, except that Commander Brattle, here, has rearranged the sections, and made up a new flight board. He'll give you all the dope on the patrol schedules. Thumbs up, to all of you!" Half an hour later Commander Brattle had had his say and the patrol schedules were perfectly clear to all concerned. Dave and Freddy were to fly the Number Two plane in Section Eight. Their first patrol trick was due in three hours. They were to fly a patrol course due north of the steaming carrier, cover an area of several hundred square miles, and be back on the flight deck just before darkness. It was the toughest patrol trick of any, for the simple reason that it was the last one before darkness set in, and flying was washed-out until early dawn. If by any chance they got lost and were forced to spend precious time locating the Indian, they would be out of luck. They wouldn't be able to land after dark. And if by any chance they went down in the water, they would first have to survive many hours of darkness floating about on the water before they could even begin to hope for rescue. It was a tough patrol trick to fly, but the very fact that it was tough set Dave's heart thumping in eager expectation. Luck alone had placed them in that section, because the section members and patrol schedules had been arranged by drawing lots. In that way every man stood an equal chance to get a tough assignment or an easy one. And all possibility of favoritism went completely out the porthole. Luck, yes, but it made Dave and Freddy feel good just the same to be handed one of the tough patrols. As they trooped out of the Ready Room along with the others, they winked happily at each other, and for the moment forgot the real reason for their presence aboard the Indian. The Executive Flight Officer had not said much about the possibility of meeting action, but he didn't have to. Every pilot knew that the constant patrol schedule wouldn't have been set up if it weren't pretty certain that enemy sea and air forces were lurking about in the immediate vicinity of the Indian and her destroyers, if not directly in her path ahead. Come nightfall and at least some of Uncle Sam's Navy eagles would have gone into action.