luck. So we bear up the best we can, and make a hobby of collecting gossip. So if you two know any—"

And that's as far as the Flying Fortress commander got. At that moment there came the bank and snap of the aft turret guns. And a split second later the excited cry carried through the ship.

"Enemy aircraft off to port! A half dozen of them. Zeros!"

"My gosh, what do you know?" Captain Banks gasped, and stared wide-eyed at Dawson.

"You shouldn't have talked so loud, Skipper!" Dave laughed, and sprang to his feet. "Tojo heard you that time, and is obliging!"

CHAPTER TWO

Aces Don't Miss

Maybe Tojo wasn't obliging the Flying Fortress' commander, but six Jap Zero pilots most certainly were. As Dawson leaped to a pair of waist guns and peered to port, he saw the six Zeros prop-piling down like six bullet-spitting maniacs. Steadying himself, he trained his guns on the leading plane and fired. His tracers streaked out and seemed to be cutting the Zero's left wing in two, but the Jap craft continued to come boiling in at the big four-engined bomber. Lumps of lead began to bounce and jounce around in Dawson's stomach. The pilot of that leading Zero seemed to be bullet-proof. He also seemed to have but one thought in his head: to keep right on thundering down and ram the Flying Fortress in midair.

But cold fear was Dawson's for only a brief instant. He corrected his aim and let fly again with his guns. This time the Zero was out of luck. It took the full fury of Dawson's fire, seemed to stagger in the air for a moment before it blew up in a cloud of orange flame and smoke, and went showering down out of sight.

"One for our side!" Dawson shouted happily. "Now—!"

The chattering yammer of Freddy Farmer's guns in the slot above him cut off the rest of Dawson's words. And in practically the same instant a second Zero spouted black smoke, and then nosed over to go hurtling straight downward, tracing its path of doom straight to the surface of the Indian Ocean.

"My error!" Dawson bellowed. "I meant, two for our side. Nice going, Freddy!"

Of course the English-born air ace didn't hear him, because all of the Fortress's guns were hammering death and destruction into the four remaining Zeros. In less time than it takes to tell about it, there were only two Zeros left. Then only one. And then, as Dawson got off a perfect deflection burst, there weren't any Zeros left in that section of the sky.

"And that's that!" Dave panted as he searched the sun-tinted air. "Six for six. Not bad. It was almost fun while it lasted. It—well, strike me pink, as Freddy would say!"

He had happened to glance down at his shirt to see that his silver Air Forces pilot's wings were not pinned in place above the left pocket flap. His decoration ribbons were there, but no wings. Where they had been was a nice clean tear in the material. Pop-eyed, he stared at the tear, and then impulsively looked down at the compartment floor boards. And there they were. His wings. But not as he'd ever seen them before. In a few words, they looked as if they had been run over by an express train. Or better still, as if they'd been accidentally dropped into a meat grinder. They were twisted all out of shape, and there was a deep smooth groove right across the middle from one wingtip to the other wingtip. And as Dave stared at them, and leaned over to pick them up, a twitch of pain passed across his upper left chest.

"And I didn't even feel that Jap bullet!" he gulped, and fingered the bullet-creased wings. "But, boy, that—that was too darn close!"

"What was too close, Dave?" Freddy Farmer's voice spoke at his elbow.

Dawson held out the bullet-creased wings for Freddy to see.

"One of those birds was a sharp shooter," he said with a mirthless chuckle. "Only not quite sharp enough, thank my lucky stars. Kind of close, huh?"

Freddy Farmer's eyes widened, and for a moment all he could do was stare at the damaged wings and then at the torn space on Dave's shirt where they had been.

"Good grief, I can hardly believe it!" he finally gasped. "It's—it's a miracle, Dave. You should be dead, by rights, you know."

"Thanks, I like it better this way," Dawson replied grimly, and dropped the wings into his pocket. "If I believed in signs I'd take this to mean that it was only the beginning of something. And now that I come to think of it, I wonder if it is."

"Rubbish!" Freddy Farmer snorted. "It's a sign, all right. But it's a sign of how blasted lucky you always are!"

"Sure!" Dawson growled. "Also a sign that I've got to fork out dough for a new pair, and—No, by gosh, I won't! The pin on these is okay. So darned if I won't wear them for continued luck. I'll—"

He cut off the rest as Captain Banks came hurrying into the compartment. The worry on the bomber commander's face faded away as soon as he laid eyes on the pair.

"You two okay, eh, thank God!" he grunted. "Well, then I can bawl you out. What was the big idea, anyway? Didn't you stop to remember that there're eight other guys on this sky wagon?"

"Huh, Skipper?" Dawson echoed. "Come again?"

"Six nice juicy Zeros!" Captain Banks said with tears in his voice. "Six of them! And what happens? You birds nail four of them between you. It ain't right. There should be a law against birds like you cheating us war-starved ferry crews out of a look at the war. Kidding aside, though, fellows, thanks, and how! Those Zero rats don't waste much time giving you the works, do they? And my heart was choking me when I thought that one of them was going to ram us. Wonder I didn't put this old baby in a power spin. I—Hey! What happened to your wings, Dawson? You been teething on them?"

"They dropped off, and Farmer stepped on them before I could pick them up," Dawson grinned. "Look at his big feet, if you don't believe me. But, speaking of other things, Skipper, how long before we get in?"

The Fortress commander glanced at his wrist watch, and pursed his lips.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "Unless we run into more Zeros. And I hope we do. But hey! Those jobs were pretty far out to sea, now that I come to think of it."

"Too far," Dave told him quietly. "My guess is that they were carrier-based. This is your usual ferry course from India to Australia, isn't it?"

"Check, and I get your thought," the pilot nodded as his face became grave. "You think maybe the Japs have sent out a carrier force to cut a hole in our air supply route, huh?"

"Could be," Dawson shrugged. "I wouldn't want to bet against it, anyway. And—well, skip it."

"No," the other said. "Go on and say the rest of it."

"Well, if I were flying this job," Dawson replied with a half grin, "I think that right now I'd give those four Wright Cyclones you've got a chance to show what they can do. But, after all, I'm strictly a safety first guy, Skipper."

"That makes two of us," Banks said quickly. "Anyway, my job is to get these babies to Australia for other guys to use, so I'll just stick to my knitting, I reckon. Okay, fellows, hang onto your hats. I'm going to cut that twenty minutes to fifteen, at least. And again, thanks for that job on those Zeros."

The Flying Fortress commander not only called the turn, but made good. Just ten minutes later the west coast of Australia was sighted. And five minutes after that the big four-engined job, being ferried out to the South Pacific to play its part in the war, was tooled down to an expert