n. There was a plume of smoke
out at sea indicating an old-style coal-burner, its hull down below the
horizon. Anything that would float was being used since the war began,
though a coal-burning ship was almost a museum piece. A trim Diesel
tramp was lazing northward well inshore. A pack of gulls were squabbling
noisily over some unpleasantness floating a hundred yards from the
beach. The Diesel tramp edged closer inshore still. It was all very
peaceful and placid. There are few softer jobs on earth than being a
member of a "force in being" for the sake of civilian morale.

* * * * *

But at 2:32 P. M. the softness of that job departed, as far as Sergeant
Walpole was concerned. At that moment he heard a thin wailing sound high
aloft. It was well enough known nearer the front, but the Eastern Coast
Observation Force had had no need to become unduly familiar with it.
With incredible swiftness the wailing rose to the shrillest of shrieks,
descending as lightning might be imagined to descend. Then there was a
shattering concussion. It was monstrous. It was ear-splitting. Windows
crashed in the cottage and tinkled to the sandy earth outside. There was
a pause of seconds' duration only, during which Sergeant Walpole stared
blankly and gasped, "What the hell?" Then there was a second thin
wailing which rose to a scream....

Sergeant Walpole was in motion before the second explosion came. He was
diving off the veranda of Post Number Fourteen. He saw someone else
coming through a window. He had a photographic glimpse of one of his men
emerging through a doorway. Then he struck earth and began to run. Like
everybody else in America, he knew what the explosions and the
screamings meant.

But he had covered no more than fifty yards when the third bomb fell
from that plane so far aloft that it was not even a mote in the sky. Up
there the sky was not even blue, but a dull leaden gray because of the
thinness of the atmosphere yet above it. The men in that high-flight
bomber could see the ground only as a mass of vaguely blending colors.
They were aiming their bombs by filtered light, through telescopes which
used infra-red rays only, as aerial cameras did back in the 1920's. And
they were sighting their eggs with beautifully exact knowledge of their
velocity and height. By the time the bombs had dropped eight miles they
were traveling faster than the sound of their coming. The first two had
wiped out