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  Bill climbed into the commander's seat of the bomber-carrier with Sandy just behind him. He flicked the inter-cockpit telephone switch and checked Bailey, the bomber and machine gunner, in the forward cockpit; McCoy and Neely in the cockpits abaft the engines; Miles, who rode down under the belly of the ship in the retractable gun pit when they went into action; and old Charlie, the cook, who operated the gun in the extreme tail.

  Above and behind Bill's head was a circular platform on which was mounted a rapid-firing one-pounder that could throw over one hundred shells in a minute.

  In the midship section of the big amphibian was the hangar of the Eaglet, Sandy's fast little fighter. Suspended by its landing hook from an overhead girder, the Eaglet was locked rigidly in place on the girders, and hung with its cockpit just above the level of the deck.

  Behind the Eaglet's hangar was a retractable machine-gun turret that could be lowered below the bottom of the fuselage. Farther back were showers, lavatories, and Bill's private cabin-also a dining salon, with seats that could be converted into berths for the crew. In the tail was the galley, with an electric stove, ice box, and storage closets.

  On the bridge of the monster were dual controls, a Sperry automatic pilot under the commander's seat, wireless equipment, a new Kreusi radio compass “homing device” and every other known navigation instrument.

  From the bridge and pilot's compartment steps led downward to a machine gunner's cockpit in the nose, mounted with a .50-caliber Browning. Beneath the gunner's feet were bomb releases. In each of the wings, abaft the engines, were inclosed machine gunners' pits similar to the one in the nose. A runway connected these two cockpits with the main fuselage. The big ship was a carrier, a bomber, a flying fortress all in one.

  Bill smiled as he switched on the two-million-candle-power landing lights of the “BT-4.” An instant later the transverse bands of yellow-and-black pigment painted across the runways became visible as the huge floodlights were turned on in the traffic tower. He slipped his boots into the rudder stirrups and gunned the engines as Scotty MacCloskey went out the port gangway.

  The monster transport rolled down the runway like some huge, prehistoric animal. Two hundred yards from the electrically wired fence surrounding the field. Bill eased back on the wheel and took the ship into the air in a long, low climb.

  Far off to the right the spires and turrets of New York's lighted skyscrapers gleamed above the city as

  Shorty whipped the Lancer down a runway and into the sky, followed by

  Bev Bates in his Snorter.

  “Level off at ten thousand and take a position on each side of me,” Bill ordered over the radiophone. “I'll give you our course in a few minutes.”

  The hum of their engines changed as they adjusted them to cruising speed and Bill gave them their course. The million and one lights of New York disappeared behind them and the world ahead became a black void. Hour after hour the three ships droned on and on through the cold night air. From time to time Bill played the beam of a large spotlight on the port and starboard motor nacelles, the props, and the wing surfaces. As the spotlight snapped off, the exhaust pipes glowed deep red and the port and starboard running lights blinked to life.

  They had all set their automatic pilots to work and both Bev and Shorty were half asleep when Bill altered their course over Salt Lake City.

  “We'll get a few hours' sleep at Seattle and have 'em refuel the ships,” he said to his men. “I want to take that long hop up the coast and across the Gulf of Alaska during daylight. We've got to have our eyes open.”

  V—DUEL

  AT eleven o'clock that same morning they were back in the air again. But they had had several hours' sleep in the beds of a good hotel and a morning meal that was both large and good.

  “How in the name of your aunt Hester's pink donkey does he do it?” Shorty asked Bill as he watched Sandy stow away food. He was eating with the gusto and appreciation of a seventeen-year-old appetite. ! “He must stow some of it away in an auxiliary tank,” Bill said, grinning.

  Sandy started to answer with his mouth full but he couldn't speak. Instead, he thumbed his nose at Shorty and went on with his eating.

  He was half asleep in the co-pilot's seat of the transport when Bill roused him from his reverie.

  “I want you to take the Eaglet out, kid,” Bill said.

  “Swell, Bill!” Sandy said. He leaped to his feet and started toward the Eaglet's hangar.

  “Hey! Wait a minute. Come here!” Bill shouted at him. “Sit down a minute and I'll tell you what I want you to do.”

  “0.K., Bill,” Sandy said. But he regarded Bill suspiciously. He knew this might be a stall on Bill's. part to take him, Sandy, out of danger. He knew Bill had been jittery ever since the deaths of Mort Henderson and Cy Hawkins, and this wouldn't be the first time that Bill had sidetracked him to keep him from actual combat.

  “I want you to take the Eaglet out,” Bill said, “and when we get a little north of here, near the northern tip of Queen Charlotte Island, I want you to take a run up to Juneau and see what you can find out at the airport. Red made a landing there. Get hold of the airport manager. Tell him who you are and find out what Red had to say to him.

  “I don't want to send Shorty or Bev because we may run into some trouble a little later in the day and I'll need them. Things are going too quietly. If some one wanted to get us up here they've succeeded, and hell may pop any time.”

  “I knew it!” Sandy said, pointing his finger at Bill. “You're trying to sidetrack me! You know we may run into trouble and you're trying to get me out of the way. I can hold up my end any .old day. in the week. Bill. I——”

  “Shut up!” Bill roared at him. “I'm sending you because you can slip in there and out again in the Eaglet without being noticed. If I send a Snorter or the Lancer, the whole world will know it.” Bill's face was flushed with anger. “I want you to learn to obey orders, kid. I know you can hold up your end and I'm not trying to sidetrack you. You may run into plenty of trouble yourself. Now hop to it!”

  “O. K., Bill,” Sandy said. “I'm sorry I ——”

  “That's all right,” Bill said trying to hide a grin. “Get on it!”

  Sandy was on his feet in an instant, his face glowing with anticipation. In another minute he was in the cockpit of the little fighter that had been literally built around him and was fastening his safety belt.

  Bill throttled his engines as Sandy waved a hand at him and signaled to Miles to throw the switch that would bring the powerful suspension gear into play.

  As Miles threw the switch, the floor of the transport divided into two segments and swung downward. Then the telescoping crane supporting the tiny Eaglet slid through the opening in the fuselage.

  When the little plane was about twenty-five feet below the under-carriage of the carrier. Sandy turned a crank that operated a high-speed worm manipulating the folding wings. There was a mechanical click as the locking lugs turned; then the wings began to turn on their hinges. Another click and the gull-type wings were locked in flying position.

  Bill's forehead was covered with cold, clammy perspiration. He couldn't ever get over the idea that it would be his fault if something went wrong with the mechanism and Sandy was hurt in one of those take-offs.

  He held the ship steady while he waited for the first blast of Sandy's ^ engine. As the roar of the powerful eight hundred and thirty h.p. Twin Wasp joined the crescendo of the two supercharged Diesels of the transport, a smile flitted on his lips. His tanned face wrinkled with pride.

  “The kid has what it takes,” he said to himself as the Eaglet dropped away.

  Bill flipped the switch on his radio panel and chanted Sandy's call letters into his microphone.

  “Nice going, kid,” he said when

  Sandy checked back. “You know what I want to know. Just nose around. But keep your own mouth shut. You'd better load up your tanks again before you leave there. Keep in contact with me. I'll let you know ou
r position as soon as you, get away. You'll have about an hour's run up there. Then you'll have to give it the whip when you leave. You'll be over open water, so keep in contact.”

  “0. K., Bill,” Sandy said. He brought the Eaglet around on one wing, kicked its tail in the air like a bucking broncho and laid the nose on the capital of Alaska.

  An hour later he was talking to Martin Cassidy, the red-faced jovial manager of the airport. He remembered talking to Red Gleason the week before.

  “I knew Red in France during the War,” he told Sandy. “He's an old pal of mine. Has anything happened? He said he would stop in to see me on his way back. He just refueled and shoved off for Nome. I had a little trouble getting juice for those Diesels.”

  “No,” Sandy said when he had an opportunity to speak, “nothing is wrong. I'm supposed to join him up here and I haven't been able to make contact with him yet. I thought he might have told you something definite about his plans.”

  “He didn't,” Cassidy said. “But you better drop down at Whitehorse and

  Flat before you get to Nome. They may know something. What are you fellows doing up here?”

  “Just a survey for the government,” Sandy lied. “I'd like to load up with some gas if you can spare it.”

  “Rather,” Cassidy said. “Be sure to drop in with Red on your way back.

  He's a great lad, Gleason.”

  A few minutes later the Gastineau Channel flashed under Sandy's wings and off to the right Mount Fairweather towered sixteen thousand feet into the cold, clear air.

  “A lot he could tell me,” Sandy said aloud and flipped his radio switch to make contact with Bill. “Probably Bill will think I'm a dummy.”

  The deep growl of the Twin Wasp in the nose of his Eaglet became a thunderous roar as he opened his throttle and sped out over the Gulf of Alaska.

  A few minutes later he had become definitely aware that there was something wrong with his radio. He tuned and checked and rechecked, but not even. the rasp of static answered his efforts. He was debating what he had better do when he felt the Eaglet quiver like a mortally wounded animal. He could hear bullets drumming into its tail as a machine gun yammered above his head. For one startled instant he sat immobile, frozen to the stick.

  Then he yanked it back into his stomach and zoomed up and over on his back as a black-and-red biplane streaked beneath him. At the top of his loop he half rolled the Eaglet to a level position and gazed over the side to see the rugged little biplane pull out of its dive and come around in a wide, sweeping bank.

  “My golly,” Sandy said to himself, “where did he come from?” His face was suddenly flushed and he could feel his blood racing through his body like white-hot fire. He opened his throttle wide and zoomed upward in an abrupt climbing turn until he almost stalled. Then he brought the nose down as the black-and-red biplane came streaking up underneath him with its twin guns spewing burst after burst of fire. Lead chewed through the leading edge of his left wing. He threw the Eaglet out of the line of fire as anger half choked him.

  The pilot of the biplane had hung it on its prop to take it upstairs, then brought it around in a flashing chandelle. Sandy pulled his stick back and raced to meet the diving plane.” His finger tightened on his gun trip and his guns chattered their song of death. His bullets drew a line along the engine housing of the fast biplane before the pilot skidded it out of range.

  Sandy was talking to himself through clenched teeth. All fear had left him after that first surprise attack. He had settled down to handling the Eaglet like a veteran.

  “You snake!” he shouted at the pilot of the black-and-red ship. “You low-down, sway-backed son of a pig! You'll try to shoot a man in the back, will you, you knife-throwing rat? I'll teach you, you——” He was working himself * into a frightful rage when he remembered that that was one of the things Bill had taught him not to do.

  The two ships streaked and tumbled across the sky, filling the air with the roar of their thundering motors and the chatter of their twin guns. They fired burst after burst at one another with out telling effect.

  Sandy's fingers clamped down on his gun trip time after time as the biplane came under his sights. But before his bullets reached the other plane, it had slipped away. He made noises in his throat and almost lost control of himself again. Then his lips became a single hard, straight line across his face.

  “Concentrate!” he told himself. “Study his tactics.”

  He slipped the Eaglet out of range as the black-and-red biplane came roaring at him again with its guns yammering fire and death. He kept right on by the rugged black-and-red ship, then yanked his stick up and threw it to the left as he kicked his rudder. He came up and over in a fast turn and dived again. But when he clamped down on his firing trip, the black-and-red plane disappeared from under his sights as though some unseen hand had flicked it out of danger.

  Sandy shook his head in disgust. He realized that he was still bearing down too hard. He knew that he was doing the very thing Bill had taught him not to do. He was “freezing on his controls” like a novice. He was trying too hard.

  “But, my gosh, he's a fighting fool!” he said aloud.

  The next time the black-and-red ship flashed across his sights he kicked his rudder ever so little as his finger gripped hard on his trip. The nose of the Eaglet followed the course of the biplane for that split fraction of a second that is enough. His bullets wove a pattern from the engine housing to the tail assembly. The black riddled ship skidded off dangerously on one wing and yawed wildly. Sandy whipped the Eaglet around and went .in for the kill. His breath was coming in short gasps now and his body was saturated with perspiration. He poured round after round at the other ship as the pilot tried to take it out of danger.

  Sandy jammed the stick forward to follow the biplane in its frantic dive. Then he eased it back as the other ship came up and over in a dazzling Immelmann turn. Now he was above Sandy and diving on him with his guns flaming.

  Only two thousand feet from the ground and diving at terrific speed, Sandy pushed the stick even farther forward to come up in an outside loop. He nearly blacked out as he hung, head downward, at the bottom of the loop. T He opened his mouth and began to scream as the pressure became terrific.

  Then he was up and climbing and his stomach felt as though it had climbed up into his throat. He gulped and probed the air for the black-and-red biplane. He knew where it was a second later when its bullets came drumming up through the belly of the Eaglet. He barrel-rolled and the bi-plane zoomed past him.

  Then he was under its belly, with his guns vomiting. He could see his tracers find their marks before it side-slipped out of range again.

  Sandy's hands and arms were trembling now they were so tired. His body felt as though it had been racked with fever. He whipped around as he tried to draw air into his tortured lungs and find his enemy. His mouth dropped open, and he could not believe his eyes. He saw the black-and-red ship racing eastward at terrific speed. It had peeled off and was running away!

  For a moment Sandy deliberated on whether or not he should follow him. The plane was headed back toward Juneau. Perhaps he would be forced to land there because of damage to his ship.

  “He must have something to do with our being up here,” Sandy said to himself. “But why did he attack me?”

  He kicked the Eaglet halfway around and then changed his mind. He decided that Bill would want him to follow orders and make contact with him as fast as he could. He studied his chart for a moment, took his bearings and laid the nose of the Eaglet on the tip of the Alaska Peninsula.

  Then he went back to the task of repairing his radio.

  VI—ONE MISSING

  BILL BARNES probed the air ahead of him with anxious eyes as the afternoon wore on and no word came from Sandy. He made contact with Bev and Shorty time after time to learn if they had picked up any word from him. He thought that possibly his own radio receivers were out of order.

  “How could you pick us up
if there was anything wrong?” Shorty wanted to know, laughing. “You have the jitters, Bill. The kid is all right.”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “Probably he is. But it doesn't stay daylight forever. I'm worried about this whole layout, Shorty. Things have gone too smoothly. The only thing that has happened since that gal came to ask me to look for young Reynolds is the disappearance of Red. And he may be perfectly all right.”

  “He may be,” Shorty said. “I don't want to make you worry any more, but I think we'll find out only too soon why we're here. It didn't just happen, Bill. This whole thing has a clever brain behind it. We want to keep our eyes open and our powder dry.”

  It was nearly dusk when Bill set the BT-4 down on the landlocked harbor of the little trading town of Unalaska, that last outpost of ships passing from the Pacific into the Bering Sea. The sun was down and the night was cold, as the Lancer and Bev's Snorter left twin wakes on the still waters. Rain, driven by a stiff gale, began to pound on their overhead hatches as they put out their sea anchors to ride out the night.

  Bill Barnes had become frantic with worry. He went over and over different possibilities as to what had happened to Sandy as he spread out his charts to study them.

  McCoy and Neely blew up the rubber boat on the transport and paddled it over to the Lancer and Snorter to bring Shorty and Bev aboard the transport.

  “We'll stay aboard,” Bill said curtly to Shorty in answer to a question. “Charlie will throw together some supper. We've got to take turns standing watches at the radio. We'll go ashore in the morning and make inquiries about Bed. I can't understand our not hearing from Sandy. He wouldn't have left Juneau if his radio had been out of order.”

  “You can't tell what that kid might do. Bill,” Shorty said. “And don't forget it was right in this section that Red disappeared.”

  “I wish I could forget it,” Bill said bitterly. “I wish I'd never heard of it. This whole thing is getting to be a hell of a mess and we don't even know what it's all about.”