e, but there might very well have been more than one
Master involved._

BOOK TWO

THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER 4

1918

Sobbing furiously, Captain Ralph Kinnison wrenched at his stick--with
half of his control surfaces shot away the crate was hellishly logy. He
could step out, of course, the while saluting the victorious Jerries,
but he wasn't on fire--yet--and hadn't been hit--yet. He ducked and
flinched sidewise as another burst of bullets stitched another seam
along his riddled fuselage and whanged against his dead engine. Afire?
Not yet--good! Maybe he could land the heap, after all!

Slowly--oh, _so_ sluggishly--the Spad began to level off, toward the
edge of the wheatfield and that friendly, inviting ditch. If the krauts
didn't get him with their next pass....

He heard a chattering beneath him--Brownings, by God!--and the expected
burst did not come. He knew that he had been just about over the front
when they conked his engine; it was a toss-up whether he would come down
in enemy territory or not. But now, for the first time in ages, it
seemed, there were machine-guns going that were not aimed at him!

His landing-gear swished against stubble and he fought with all his
strength of body and of will to keep the Spad's tail down. He almost
succeeded; his speed was almost spent when he began to nose over. He
leaped, then, and as he struck ground he curled up and rolled--he had
been a motorcycle racer for years--feeling as he did so a wash of heat:
a tracer had found his gas-tank at last! Bullets were thudding into the
ground; one shrieked past his head as, stooping over, folded into the
smallest possible target, he galloped awkwardly toward the ditch.

The Brownings still yammered, filling the sky with cupro-nickeled lead;
and while Kinnison was flinging himself full length into the protecting
water and mud, he heard a tremendous crash. One of those Huns had been
too intent on murder; had stayed a few seconds too long; had come a few
meters too close.

The clamor of the guns stopped abruptly.

"We got one! We got one!" a yell of exultation.

"Stay down! Keep low, you boneheads!" roared a voice of authority, quite
evidently a sergeant's. "Wanna get your blocks shot off? Take down them
guns; we gotta get to hell out of here. Hey, you flyer! Are you O.K., or
wounded, or maybe dead?"

Kinnison spat out mud until he could talk. "O.K.!" he shouted, and
started to lift an eye above the low bank. He