"Don't I wish we had," Moss said, "them and the Englishmen both." British reinforcements for the dominion hadn't come in any great numbers, but the ones who had come had stiffened the Canucks' will to keep fighting in spite of being outnumbered and outgunned by the USA. And, in spite of being outnumbered and outgunned, the Canadians were a long way from out for the count.
As soon as the Wilbur flew over the front, the Canucks proved that. They gave the American aeroplane all the hate anyone could want. Black puffs of smoke filled the sky all around the Wright machine. The ones that burst close sounded like big, mean dogs barking: waugh! waugh! waugh!
"Nice to know they love us," Stone said. Moss laughed. He sped up and slowed down and turned now off to the left of his course, now off to the right, all in an effort to keep the gunners down on the ground from putting a lucky shell right where the aeroplane would be. He had never been sure dodging and changing speed did that much to improve the odds, but they couldn't hurt.
"The front hasn't moved much for a while," he said sadly. He'd expected things to pick up with the coming of spring, but it hadn't happened yet. He knew, from seeing the mud back at the aerodrome, how thick and clinging it was. Trying to advance in it was anything but easy. The Canuck and British offensive south from Winnipeg had started off alarmingly well, but the enemy proved to have no easier time advancing through muddy, broken country than did the Americans.
Once he flew past the reach of American artillery, the towns and rich farmlands of southern Ontario gave him much more attractive things to view than he'd had till then. The farms glowed green with early growth: the Canucks not yet at the front were getting in what crops they could.
Even the farmlands, though, bore scars. Looking down and seeing the same thing, Percy Stone said, "They're digging in for a long fight." Digging in the Canadians and British certainly were. Trench lines drew dark brown furrows across green fields every mile or so, with zigzag communication trenches running back from one set to the next. Just as in the Niagara Peninsula, if the U.S. Army blasted them out of one position, they'd fall back to the next and keep on fighting.
"They fight hard, too," Moss said, giving the foe grudging respect. "I go to bed every night getting down on my knees and thanking God for not making me an infantryman."
"Ahh-men!" Percy Stone sang out, as if at the end of a hymn. Then, in an entirely different tone of voice, he said, "Jesus!" He amplified that: "Bandit on our tail, and diving on us!"
Moss swung the Wright's nose up till the aeroplane almost stalled, then rolled hard to the right, trying to slip away from the pursuer he hadn't seen. Fear and excitement ran through his body, a jolt stronger than 151-proof rum. The rum wouldn't kill you, even if, come the next morning, you wished it had. The enemy, though He thanked God for the speaking tube. Without it, Stone would have had the devil's own time warning him they had company in the sky. They weren't supposed to have had company; the enemy's aeroplane force was supposed to have been so beaten down, one-aeroplane missions were allowed again. Like a lot of things that were supposed to have happened, that one hadn't.
He gave the aeroplane full throttle, swinging through a quick circle in the sky to try and get on the foe's tail instead of the other way round. Acceleration and centrifugal force threw him around in the cockpit.
Halfway through the turn, he got his first glimpse of the enemy bus: an Avro, an aeroplane whose performance closely matched the Wilbur's. The Canadian pilot-or maybe, for all Moss knew, he was an Englishman-rolled through a manoeuvre like his own, so the two flying machines turned away from each other.
Behind him, Percy Stone squeezed off a burst with his machine gun. The Avro's observer fired back; Moss saw flame burst from the muzzle of the enemy machine gun. Tracers sparked across the open, empty air.
Thwump! Thwump! Thwump! Bullets punched through fuselage fabric, sounding like flung stones off a tightly stretched awning. Stone's fire abruptly ceased. "I'm hit!" sounded tinnily in Moss' ear.
He couldn't answer for a moment; he needed both hands to twist the aeroplane through a roll that had earth and sky twisting dizzily all around him. Where was the Avro? Were more enemy aeroplanes in the sky? With his observer wounded, he couldn't fight back. He wished again for the Super Hudson he wasn't flying any more. Of course, had he been in that bus, the bullets might have gone through him, not Stone.
His head swivelled wildly as he levelled off and scooted back toward the American lines. His altimeter was still unwinding; it hadn't been able to keep up with his dizzying dive. He didn't need it to tell him he'd shed several thousand feet. His ears ached dully. They'd popped several times in the descent, but, like the altimeter, hadn't caught up with the rest of him.
He didn't see any Canucks or limeys. Grabbing the speaking tube, he shouted into it: "Percy! You there? How bad are you?"
"One in the side, one ricocheted off the damn camera and nicked me in the leg," Stone answered. A moment later, another word dragged from him: "Hurts."
Moss flew straight and level, sacrificing everything for speed, till tracer bullets zipped past the Wright 17. Then he began dodging and swerving again. You couldn't outrun a bullet; your best hope was to evade one. Behind him, the observer's machine gun started chattering. He had no idea how accurately Percy Stone was firing. That he was firing at all seemed a good sign.
But tracers were coming from more than one direction, which, by un pleasant logic, meant he had more than one aeroplane on his tail. That wasn't a good sign. Anything you did to evade one was liable to bring you right under the gun of another.
And then, like angels with flaming swords, a flight of American aeroplanes dove on the Canucks or limeys, who went from pursuers to pursued in seconds. "They're breaking away," Stone said. Moss didn't like how quiet and tired he sounded. He should have been screaming for joy, leaning forward to pound his pilot on the back. Straight and level, that was the answer: get Stone to a sawbones on the double.
Enemy antiaircraft gunners sent up a storm of hate as Moss flew over the front line. He didn't waste time on evasive action, not now. Odds weren't so good as if he'd been dodging all over the landscape, but they were still on his side.
He got away with it. "Almost home, Percy," he said. Stone didn't answer. Moss looked back over his shoulder. The observer was slumped to one side, his eyes closed. Moss tried to fly even faster, but the Wilbur was already going flat out.
He landed at as high a speed as he could, using the whole airstrip and taxiing to a stop close to the barracks. He was waving for help before the aeroplane stopped rolling. As soon as it did, he scrambled back into the observer's cockpit.
Blood was everywhere back there: on the walls, on the seat, on the floor, on the camera-and on Percy Stone's flying togs. Moss yanked back the observer's sleeve and jabbed his finger down on the inside of Stone's wrist. He let out a whoop when he felt a pulse.
"Hurry up, dammit!" he shouted. "He's hurt bad!"
By then the ground crew were already at the bus. They had a stretcher with them. Lefty helped Moss unbuckle Stone and get his limp weight out of the cockpit and down to the ground. "Can't let him die," the mechanic said. "I need his money." If he was kidding, he was kidding on the square.
He and Byron rushed Stone away. Jonathan Moss looked down at him self. His friend's blood was on his flight suit, on his boots, on his hands. Wearily, he trudged in to make his report to Captain Franklin. No pictures to develop, not today; Stone had got hit before he had the chance to take any- and the camera looked to be hors de combat, too.
Somebody brought him a whiskey. He gulped it down without tasting or feeling it. After what seemed a very long time, the telephone jangled. Lefty got it before Moss could even move from his chair. "Yeah?" the mechanic said, and again: "Yeah? All right. Good. Thanks." He hung up, then turned to Moss. "Collapsed lung and he's lost a lot of blood, but they think he's gonna pull through."