“Don’t get excited, Marston,” Fernald advised him in his equable way. “You weren’t supposed to stay up all night, anyway, with the ship after the usual sightseers had left. Nobody’s hurt much. Don’t lose your shirt or go wild.” “Yes, sir,” mumbled the sergeant, and relapsed into his brooding. When we reached shore I gave the orders. “Go to town with Bailey, Marston, and get a doctor for him. Both of you go to bed at the hotel. You’re still feeling bad. My orders are that you spend the day in bed.” “Yes, sir.” They trundled off in the same Ford which I had used, and then Fernald turned to me. “What about it, Slim?” “Open and shut,” I told him. “It’s as plain as the nose on my face, and that’s no secret. In the first place, Marston, as you may know, got as high as major in the war. I was under him when I was a cadet, and he was a harsh martinet who made life miserable for every cadet. He hated me, and I returned it with interest. “Just a couple of days ago, when I found him a sergeant, I took off the old blouse and bars and licked him to a frazzle just for old time’s sake. He doesn’t figure there’s room enough in the whole world for the two of us. That cock-and-bull story about a couple of mountaineers driving in, and then bringing him coffee is transparent. He filed the wires.” “Maybe he’d file yours, and get out of riding because of pretended sickness, but he’s got nothing against me,” Les protested, his eyes resting thoughtfully on me. “Wait a minute. I don’t figure that getting rid of me was all there was to it. Marston was a major, shot back to a sergeant. That made him hate the whole Army, and the Air Service in particular. I’ve heard him call the Flying Corps a bunch of Boy Scouts, because we’re all amateur soldiers even if we are veteran flyers. “I can see the change in him. Notice how sullen and discouraged and brooding-like he is? And his life has probably been more or less ---- since he got to be a sergeant, because a lot of men who were under him at Donovan Field probably have ridden him pretty hard.” “What the ---- are you getting at?” “Suppose he hates the Service. He knows that these bombing tests are going to make or break not only the American Air Service, but every other Air Service as well, doesn’t he? If we sink battleships, we’re pretty near the first line of defense, aren’t we, and even Congress can see that we’ve got to grow into a big boy, can’t they? And in order to carry bombs big enough to even have a chance to sink ships we’ve got to have plenty of Martin Bombers, haven’t we? And if the Martin factory put out four bombers a week, which is all they can do, right up to the time of the tests we won’t have more than enough, will we?