ding flesh in his legs, and fell again with Ranth
scrambling on top of him. Steel-ribbed hands pounced on his throat,
gouged savagely, while the man above grunted thick curses from his
slavering mouth. Lance struggled fiercely; saw a curtain of black rush
down. Desperately he hooked a booted leg up, craned it over Ranth's
back, tugged. The terrible fingers loosened. Lance shook them off,
rolled the other over and leaped once more to his feet, right hand
clenched and ready.

Ranth staggered up. The young man measured him, pivoted, and smashed
his beefy jaw with a clean swing that had every ounce of Lance's hard
young body behind it.

The orderly shot back as if struck by a locomotive. He crashed into
the radiophone, splintered the delicate instruments and slumped, eyes
glazed, to the ground.

He was out. Dead out.

But how much bad he got through on the radiophone before being
stopped?

Had he told where the rendezvous, was to be? Told the time and place,
and warned the Slavs to look for Hay?

Lance sighed, and was conscious that his left eye was rapidly closing,
that a lip was split and his whole body sore. He slung Ranth over his
shoulders and trudged wearily back to the base.

He told his story to Colonel Douglas' amazed ears. Ranth, come back to
life, was slapped in handcuffs, and for some time the colonel put him
through a stern inquisition.

But his lips were sealed. He would not divulge how much he had
succeeded in passing on to the Slavs.

"A brave man," Douglas observed grimly when Ranth was carried off to
the brig, "but it's death for him, the same as it would be death for
Hay were he caught."

"I don't think he had a chance to get much across, sir," Lance said.
"I was right on him almost as soon as he got there. You won't let this
cancel our rendezvous?"

Douglas' thin lips smiled narrowly. "No. You'll be taking a greater
chance, Lance, but we must gamble on how much the Slavs know. You're
game, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir!"

* * * * *

Wednesday night came. Thunderstorms muttered to each other on the
lowering horizons; gusts of fierce, wind-driven rain slanted down on
the dripping base; occasionally a crooked finger of lightning probed
the black sky and lit the whole sopping countryside with a searing,
flashing glare.

The night patrol had taken off. A single plane, wet and gleaming under
the sobbing heavens, stood on the tarmac, two heavily coated figures
bef