“Righto! Climb in!” Applegate exclaimed. “You see,” he added, “we’re just giving this ship a tryout. Perhaps after we’ve done a stretch of patrol, we’ll ask the ground crew to run up a sky target and I’ll let you have a try at it with a few bursts of machine gun fire.” “Oh!” Dave caught his breath sharply. But if he had known! “We’ve always got more men than ships,” Applegate went on. “So if two men in a ship like this, by dividing the things to worry about, like dials, controls, gun-sights and all, can accomplish more than one, why then, that’s the berries. What say? Shall we be away?” Dave nodded. Then they were off and away into the blue. As on that other day, the sky was magnificent—bright blue, with clouds like huge cotton balls floating through it. Dave could not recall a moment in his life he had enjoyed so much. There was the thrill of speeding through space at three hundred and better miles an hour, and of looking down upon a world that was entirely new to him. Added to this—a real dash of red pepper—was the possibility that they might—just might bump into an enemy craft. Did he wish the last? He could not tell. Flying was strange. It was like a game, basketball or football—you went into it cold. As your blood warmed, a certain reckless daring came over you. You didn’t will it, perhaps did not, in your sober moments, so much as want it. It was there, and for the time being you could but yield to its urge. Today it was just like that. Now diving into a fleecy cloud, they were lost to the entire world. But not for long. Like a dove flying from a cloud in a picture postcard, they glided once more into the bright sunshine. Little patches and squares, forests, fields, homesteads, lovely villages all lay beneath them. Seized with a sudden impulse, Dave spoke hoarsely into his mouthpiece: “Let me take her for a minute.” Ten seconds later he was working the joystick and Applegate, like an old lady in a wheelchair, was lolling back in his place. But not for long. Suddenly Applegate straightened up, shaded his eyes, stared straight ahead, reached for his field glass, looked again, then said in a cheerful voice: “See that long white cloud over to the left?” “Ye—yes.” Dave’s heart pounded, he scarcely knew why. “Swing over into it, then stay in it, going straight down it toward the channel. It must be all of four miles long. I—I rather smell a Hun.” Dave obeyed instructions. The world was again lost to view. Their journey along that cloud could scarcely have lasted two minutes, but to Dave that seemed a long, long hour. What was beyond the other end of the cloud? Something, he was sure. Did it mean a fight? He hadn’t counted on that. This was not his war. Was he sorry? He did not know. The ways of a human mind are past finding out. Then, as if their plane had given a sudden leap, they were out of the cloud. And there, off a little to the right, was a dark spot against the blue of the sky.