Jeb growled. "He's an artilleryman. We've been in the
dill together half a dozen times." Freddy was staring below, trying to
understand the terrain from this perspective. While Joe was tripping
the lever which let the tow rope drop away from the glider, the Telly
reporter said, "Both of them used to fly lightplanes for sport. When
you started this new glider angle, they must've seen the possibilities
and took it up immediately. But you oughta be able to fly circles
around them, they just haven't had the time for experience with planes
without motors."

"Bob, eh?" Joe said softly. "He saved my life once. Five minutes
later, I saved his."

Freddy looked at him quickly. "Zen!" he complained. "It's no time to
be thinking of that. So now you're even with him. And you're both
hired mercenaries in a fracas."

"But I've got a gun and he hasn't," Joe growled.

"Good!" Freddy snapped at him.

They had cut away from the lightplane and Joe headed for the area
which Cogswell had ordered him particularly to keep scanned. Jack
Altshuler was a fox, in combat. His heavy cavalry had more than once
swung a fracas.

At the same time, he kept himself alert for the other gliders. It
seemed probable, since the enemy forces had two, that they would use
them in relays. Which meant, in turn, that it was unlikely Joe would
find them both in the air at once. In other words, if he attacked the
one, possibly shooting it down, then the other would be warned, would
mount a gun of its own, and it would no longer be a matter of shooting
a clay pigeon.

* * * * *

Joe turned to mention this over his shoulder to Freddy Soligen, just
in time to catch the shadow above and behind him.

"Holy Zen!" he snapped, kicking right rudder, thrusting his stick to
the right and forward.

"What the devil!" Freddy protested, looking up from adjusting a lens
on his camera.

Three or four thirty-caliber slugs tore holes in their left wing, the
rest of the burst missing completely.

Joe dove sharply, gained speed, winged over and reached desperately
for altitude. The other--no, the _others_ were above him. He yelled
back at the cameraman, "Put that Chaut-Chaut gun together for me. Be
ready to hand me pans of ammo. And if you want blood and gore on that
Tellylens of yours, get going!"

It still hadn't got through to the smaller man. "What in devil's going
on?"

Joe banked again, grabbing for a current rising along a hill slo