He looked down. The front over which he flew was quiet now, nobody doing much of anything. The Canucks and the limeys had run out of steam after pushing the U.S. line four or five miles farther from Toronto, and the Army hadn't yet tried pushing back. It was as if the mere idea of having had to fall back so startled the brass, they hadn't figured out what to try next.
Dud Dudley waggled his wings and pointed off toward the west. Let's go home, he meant, and swung his fighting scout into a turn. Moss wasn't sorry to get away from the line, not if that meant another run where he didn't meet any Pups. A year before, the enemy had been terrified of the Martins and their deadly synchronized guns. Now, for the first time, he understood how the fliers on the other side of the line had felt.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a single aeroplane dove at his flight from the rear, machine gun spitting flame through the prop disk. He threw the joystick hard over and got the hell out of there. The flight exploded in all directions, like a flock of chickens with a fox in among them.
Tracers stitched their way across Orville Thornley's bus. It kept flying, he kept flying, and he was shooting back, too, but Jesus, Jesus, how could you keep your gun centered on the other guy's aeroplane when he was thirty miles an hour faster than you were? The short answer was, you couldn't. The longer-but only slightly longer-answer was, if you couldn't, you were dead.
Moss maneuvered now to help his flightmate, trying to put enough lead in the air to distract the limey bastard in the Pup from his chosen prey. He couldn't keep a bead on the enemy aeroplane. Everything they'd said about it looked to be true. If it wasn't doing 110, he'd eat his goggles. You couldn't make a Martin do 110 if you threw it off a cliff.
And climb-The enemy pilot came out of his dive and clawed his way up above the U.S. machines as if they'd been nailed into place. And here he came again. Yes, he still wanted Thornley. He'd probably picked him for easy meat: last man in a flight of four would be either the worst or the least experienced or both.
The kid was doing his best, but his best wasn't good enough. The Pup got on his tail and clung, chewing at him. Moss fired at the limey, but he was a few hundred yards off, unable to close farther, and he didn't think he scored any hits.
Thornley's single-decker went into a flat spin and plummeted toward the ground below, smoke trailing from the engine cowling. Moss didn't see Thornley doing anything to try, no matter how uselessly, to bring the aeroplane back under control.
No time to worry about that now anyway. The Pup was like a dragonfly, darting everywhere at once, spitting fire at the American aeroplanes from impossible angles. Bullets punched through the canvas of the fuselage. None of them punched through Moss. None of them started a fire, for which he would have got down on his knees and thanked God-but he had no time for that, either.
And then, as swiftly and unexpectedly as it had appeared, the terrible Pup was gone, darting back toward the enemy lines at a pace that would have made pursuit impossible, even had the shaken Americans dared to try. Maybe the bus had run low on fuel. That was the only thing Moss could think of that might have kept it from destroying the whole flight. What would have stopped it? It had the American aeroplanes outnumbered, one against four.
Landing was glum, as it always was after losing a flightmate. "What happened?" one of the mechanics asked.
"Pup," Moss said laconically.
The fellow in the greasy overalls bit his lip. "They really as bad as that?"
"Worse." One word at a time was hard enough. More would have been impossible.
Along with Dudley and Phil Eaker, Moss went into Shelby Pruitt's office. The squadron leader looked up at them. He grimaced. As the mechanic had, he asked, "What happened to Thornley?"
Instead of answering directly, Dudley burst out, "God damn it to hell, when the devil are we going to be able to sit our asses down in an aeroplane that'll give us half a chance to go up there and come back alive, not one of these flying cart horses that isn't fast enough to go after the Canucks and isn't fast enough to run away from 'em, either?" All of that came out in one long, impassioned breath. On the inhale, Dudley added, "Sir."
Major Pruitt looked down at his desk. The flight leader had told him what he needed to know. "Pup," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes, sir." Moss spoke this time. "One Pup against the four of us. Those aeroplanes are very bad news, sir. How many do the Canucks have? Like Dud says, how long till we get something that can stand up to them?"
"They don't have many," Pruitt said. "We know that much. They aren't manufacturing them on this side of the water, either: not yet, anyhow. What do you suggest we do, gentlemen? Only go up in squadron strength so we can mob them when we come across them?"
Moss and his flightmates looked at one another. What that meant was, they weren't going to get an aeroplane that could stand up to the Pup, not tomorrow they weren't, and not the day after, either. Slowly, Dud Dudley said, "That might help some, sir. We'd pay a bundle for every one we brought down, but we might bring some down, sure enough. Once they ran out of 'em, things'd be like they were-except we'd be missing a hell of a lot of pilots."
"I wish I could tell you you were wrong, but I don't think you are," Pruitt said, shaking his head. "And it'll all be wasted effort, too, if the limeys get another shipload of 'em over here. The Germans, now, the Germans have aeroplanes that can match these Pups and whatever the froggies are throwing at 'em. We were supposed to get plans for some of 'em, I hear, but the submersible that set out with them didn't make it across the Atlantic. These things happen."
"And how many of us are going to end up dead because they happen?" Moss burst out. The question had no exact answer. It didn't need one. The approximate answer was quite bad enough.
Eaker said, "What do we need the Germans for, anyway? Why can't we build our own aeroplanes, good as any in the world? We invented them."
"I know we did," Pruitt answered. "Up till the start of the war, ours were as good as anybody's, too. But the Germans and the French and the British, they've all been pushing each other hard as they could, ever since the guns started going off. The Rebs and the Canucks haven't done that to us, not to where we've needed to come up with a new kind of fighting scout every few months because the old ones would get shot down if we kept flying 'em. What do they call it? Survival of the fittest, that's right."
"We've got to worry about it now," Dud Dudley said.
"I know we do," Pruitt answered. "This time next year, if the war's still going, I expect we'll have aeroplanes to match anything the Kaiser's building. Once we know we need to do something, we generally manage."
"A lot of people are going to end up shot to pieces because Philadelphia was slow getting the message," Moss said. "Thornley was a good kid. He had the makings of a good pilot-if he'd had a decent bus to fly." And if the fellow in the Pup had decided to go after me instead of him…
"I don't even run this whole aerodrome, let alone the Bureau of Aeroplane Production." Hardshell Pruitt got up from his swivel chair, which squeaked. He led the three survivors of Dudley's flight to the officers' club, threw a quarter-eagle down on the bar, and carried a bottle of whiskey over to a table.
As Moss started to drink, he looked over at the photographs of fliers dead and gone. One more to put up, he thought, and then wondered whether Orville Thornley had had a photo taken since he joined the squadron. Moss didn't think so. Thornley hadn't been here very long. Moss gulped down his drink. If he tried hard enough, maybe he could stop thinking about things like that. Maybe he could stop thinking at all.