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  Brewer dropped his pen on the unfinished letter and raced out of the Dispersal Room along with the others. That madman Harry was still laughing at the top of his voice over his joke with Johnny Coe, but all the rest were silent, reserving their breath as they tore across the field. The crews of four were standing by the machines to see that everything was ready while the roar of the starting engines arose deafeningly on every hand. Brewer hauled on his parachute and flung himself into his machine. Automatically he ran through the routine of making ready for the air, turning on oxygen and radio, fastening the harness and checking the fuel gauges. Then in a flash they were off, flight following flight, the new Spitfires with their unbelievable rate of climb and incredible speed.

  England fell away below them. The familiar landscape, over which so many epic battles had been fought, fell into the accustomed pattern, changing steadily with each new increase in height. Brewer knew it so well that he could give a pretty close estimate of the height by the appearances below him. Almost right ahead, the silver line of the Channel appeared, and beyond it the grey line of the Belgian coast; on the one hand were the forty million who fought for freedom and on the other were the two hundred million who only hoped for it. Brewer’s reaction to the sight was not nearly so romantic. To see the Belgian coast from P23 meant that they must be nearly at 15,000 feet; sure enough that was what the altimeter said, and the squadron leader was levelling off. The rate of climb of these new Spitfires was unbelievable. Brewer wondered about the new Messerschmitts.

  The radio-telephone suddenly started. ‘Hullo, Cocoa Leader,’ it said. ‘Hullo, hullo, Cocoa Leader.’

  The voice was a full, rich contralto. Brewer remembered how when he had first been introduced to Section Leader Marjorie Dalziel, WAAF, something familiar about her had puzzled him. It was Harry who had identified her voice as that with which the Operations Room on the ground controlled the movements of the squadron. Harry was on the best of terms with her now; Brewer thought they were in love with each other, for that matter. This was a war in which men and women fought shoulder to shoulder as nearly as might be, but there could not be many cases where the woman said the actual words that sent the man she loved into action. If only he could tell Mother and Dad about it they would be very interested; also, it would solve for a whole fortnight the recurrent problem of what to say in his letters.

  ‘Hullo, April,’ said the squadron leader’s voice over the radio-telephone. ‘April’ was the code name of the Operations Room for today, just as the best-equipped squadron of the Royal Air Force, for today, called itself by the unheroic name of ‘Cocoa’. And even so, heroism was not dead, but more alive than ever. ‘Hullo, April. Receiving you loud and clear. Any information?’

  ‘Bandits at 15,000 feet over P25,’ said April.

  Jim Brewer’s glances, like those of every fighting man in the air, had been cast in every direction; now they were addressed more especially straight ahead to the eastward, even though - like every man who wished to live - he still continued to pay attention to either side and to the air above him, and particularly to the starboard side, where the sun lay. Then suddenly he switched the radio-telephone over to ‘send’.

  ‘Bandits at one o’clock,’ he said.

  Half a dozen voices said the same thing at almost the same instant. There they were like silver beads on a thread, heading northwards along the Belgian coast, a little to the right of straight ahead - at the one o’clock of the imaginary clock of which the squadron was the centre. Marjorie, down below, could hear her Harry announce the sighting of the enemy.

  The squadron leader swung round a trifle to intercept them. Jim Brewer’s plane was in his propeller wash for one moment, but the next he had led his section into station again on the new course. Brewer switched on his gunsight, adjusted it, and took the safety catch off the firing test. Oxygen and the sudden excitement of getting into the air had accelerated his heartbeat despite himself, despite the familiarity of all that he had just done; but with these new decisive actions he steadied down, for Brewer had the invaluable attribute of calming in the face of danger. Harry and Johnny Coe. behind him, had the odd habit of growing more hilarious - he could hear them on his radio-telephone shouting nonsense at each other until the squadron leader told them to be quiet.

  ‘Hullo, Cocoa Leader,’ came Marjorie’s voice over the telephone, ‘are you receiving me?’

  ‘Receiving you loud and clear,’ said the squadron leader.

  ‘You will continue to patrol P23,’ said Marjorie.

  They were practically over the edge of the imaginary square already, decided Brewer, looking down at the sea below him. Sure enough, the squadron leader’s reaction to the order was an abrupt alteration of course which would keep the squadron within the limits set.

  ‘What in hell?’ came the voice of the irrepressible Harry over the telephone.

  ‘Say,’ came the voice of Johnny Coe, ‘the bandits have altered course too. And it looks like they’re the new Messerschmitts.’

  The chain of silver beads in the distance had doubled upon itself and then straightened itself out, flying solemnly parallel once more to the Spitfires. Brewer, staring at them as tensely as he could, was inclined to agree with Johnny Coe. They were not 110’s, anyway.

  ‘Any further orders, April?’ asked the squadron leader. His voice had the lackadaisical ring which is noticeable when the typical Englishman tries to pretend he is not being emotionally stirred.

  ‘No,’ said Marjorie. ‘Continue to patrol P23.’

  Her voice, with the beautiful overtones, was clearly pitched in the same way, to make it as unemotional as possible. She was doing her duty; she was not supposed to be inspiring the men she spoke to. Brewer knew that she knew that the order she had just transmitted would keep the man who was dear to her out of battle for a while longer; but her voice was still unemotional.

  The squadron leader turned his command about once more, countermarching them along the very outside limits of the area to which he had been restricted. The Messerschmitts circled away from them and then returned.

  ‘Say,’ said Harry, ‘what is this, anyway. A regatta?’

  A whoop and gurgle in Brewer’s radio-telephone told him that Jerry was transmitting too; was in fact carrying on an animated conversation - occasionally he could hear scraps of real German speech. Presumably the situation was not clear to the German commander, either; it was strange for each side to be challenging battle like this and yet refusing to take the first step. Brewer’s explanation of it to himself was that the higher command on each side was laying some deep trap of which the other side was suspicious.

  The notion set him looking about him even more keenly, alert to spot the first sign of the springing of the trap. But there was no sign of anything of the sort in the blue heavens about him nor in the sea below which parted the two immensities of suffering.

  There was simply nothing happening at all, and no promise of anything for the future.

  ‘Hullo, April,’ said the squadron leader.

  ‘Hullo, Cocoa Leader.’

  ‘We’re coming in. Any objections?’

  Brewer guessed that the squadron leader did not want Jerry to get even a rough idea of the petrol endurance of the new Spitfire; if they came in now, before there was any question of fuel running short, Jerry would be kept guessing a while longer.

  ‘Wait, Cocoa Leader,’ said Marjorie. They could hear her talking to Lemons and to Soda Water - apparently the staff mind that devised code names was running strongly on drinks today - while she arranged for a force to cover the squadron from a surprise attack during the dangerous moments of approaching the ground.

  ‘All right, Cocoa Leader, come on in,’ said Marjorie.

  Down on the ground the ground crews threw themselves on the Spitfires, like the crews in the pits working on a racing motorcar. But today there was not so much to do; only the oil to check and the refuelling to be carried out. The armourer who attended to the guns, and the r
igger and the fitter who examined the plane for damage, stood by with nothing to do. The natural discipline of the RAF prevented them from expressing any disappointment that these marvellous machines had once more ascended and descended without any opportunity to prove their worth. But there was disappointment in the atmosphere, all the same, to be sensed like the effects of a distant thunderstorm. Warfare grows more and more mechanized, and the machines grow more and more marvellous, but the men who man them, and the men who service them, are still just as much human beings as those men who handled the guns at Waterloo or drew bows at Agincourt.

  And the squadron leader felt the same when he sat down to write the inevitable report on the doings of the day. He allowed a tiny trace of acidity to creep into his style - the dry official style inculcated at Cranwell - as he told about the enemy aircraft, believed to be the new Messerschmitts, which he had sighted and which had refused battle, but which he could have brought to action if he had not been restrained by the orders transmitted from the Operations Room.

  And the wing commander to whom the report was addressed felt much the same when it reached him. He read it carefully, frowned a little at the peevish note which the squadron leader had allowed to creep in, and wrote his endorsement of the facts, if not the sentiments; his knowledge of the facts was a good deal wider than was that of the squadron leader, because through the Operations Room he had been following a much wider slice of the war that day.

  When the report reached the group captain, other papers were put aside immediately so it could be studied without distraction. And after it had been read, the group captain referred back to other reports which had come in, compared them, and made his own deductions from the comparison. His deductions he embodied in a report to the Air Staff; the group captain’s view of the war was much wider than the wing commander’s; half a dozen operations rooms contributed to its breadth.

  And the Air Staff correlated the group captain’s report with those of the other group captains, and air commodores made their contribution too, all of them working-coolly and rapidly in their effort to gather together all the essentials for presentation before midnight to the air marshal. Along all the various channels, perhaps a hundred thousand facts had come in, and from these the unessentials had to be stripped and the essentials displayed in their proper proportions. But the fruitless encounter between the new Spitfires and the new Messerschmitts had had its place in the final result; the air marshal had already given orders to that effect.

  And those wing commanders and group captains and air vice-marshals were links in one chain which ended in the air marshal. The little air raid warden, stubbornly doing his duty in a London back street, was the final link in another chain which ran through the Air Raid Precaution Centre and the Regional Centre and the Ministry of Home Security and the Cabinet Secretariat and the Air Ministry and terminated with the air marshal. And the shelter marshals, the devoted people who knew best what was the condition of the people bombed and homeless, whose reports told how the unnamed millions were standing the strain which none had ever dreamed, in the years before, that they would be able to stand at all, were the final links in another chain - a shelter marshal at one end, and the air marshal at the other.

  And there were still other chains; the pitiful reports of bombings and burnings were, essentially, matters of defence, fantastic as the term may seem at first sight. There were reports of offensive matters as well. There were the opinions of the factory inspectors, with their information about present production and forecasts of the future. The Ministry of Shipping had its tale to tell about the flow of help from the United States. The Intelligence had reports to make, from facts gathered by patient decoding of German messages, from news sent in by diplomatic officials, from information - one did not dwell on the hangings and shootings which paid for it - acquired by devoted men and women of every nationality from North Cape round to Athens and sent in by routes too obscure for description. The Admiralty came with its contributions regarding the Atlantic bombers and presented its demands for the bombing of German battleships. The War Office had facts to tell and demands to make for air power to assist land forces; even the Foreign Office played its part with its warning of danger developing in new zones and requests for counter-moves.

  Along these numerous chains, the facts and the demands poured in to the air marshal; the staff and the Big Five could only sort them. And back again from the air marshal went the decisions - the order for this and the refusal of that. The staff and the Big Five could advise, but it was the air marshal who had to bear the responsibility. He bore the responsibility in the eyes of the public and before the bar of history, but that sat lightly on his shoulders compared with the responsibility of doing his job well before his own conscience.

  A million men obeyed his orders; the peace and happiness of thousands of millions unborn, through countless generations to come, depended directly on his decisions. A mistake made now might mean that miserable peasants a hundred years from now would still be slaves; unthinkably it might mean that Britain herself might lapse into slavery. On the other hand, the right plan resolutely carried through, the ingenious device hit upon by good fortune, might shortly spell freedom for millions and the ending of the grim nightmare which encompassed the world.

  And despite all this the air marshal was a human being, like the air vice-marshals and the group captains and the wing commanders and Harry Brewer, pettishly snatching off his helmet. The air marshal was a man of flesh and blood - five feet ten of it - only a little bulkier than in his lean youth. There was some grey in the black hair, and wrinkles round the corners of the prominent grey eyes; the wrinkles told only the same story as the rows of bright ribbon on his chest. The healthy pink of his cheeks made him look younger than he was, and for a man of his age he was remarkably agile and lithe, but he was a human being, for all that. He had his good days, and, sometimes, he had his bad; and as his wife called him Sam, which was not his name, one could guess that somewhere in the past there was a human story in that connexion.

  Today he looked at the report of the fighter command and narrowed his eyes as he followed up its implications in his mind. Those were the new Messerschmitts, without a doubt, that the 143rd Squadron had seen. The air marshal had a slight personal acquaintance with the squadron leader (although the squadron leader would be amazed to hear that the air marshal remembered it) and knew just how much reliance to place in his judgement; he knew more about the group captains who confirmed what the squadron leader suggested. And there was a message from a Belgian peasant, too, who had seen the new planes on their field, and weeks back there had come a message from a discontented German who worked in a factory, which had given him a good idea of what to expect. The new Messerschmitts were beginning to come off the assembly lines, just as were the new Spitfires which would contend with them.

  The air marshal yearned for more knowledge of those Messerschmitts. He wanted to know all about them: their speed and their rate of climb and their fuel endurance and their manoeuvrability; how they behaved in battle and what were their weak spots; especially he wanted to know how they compared with the new Spitfires. Even though the assembly lines were in full swing, even though the machines were coming off them at the rate of over a hundred a week, and some of the arrangements for production, for the manufacture of dyes and the supply of special metals, dated back over a year, there was still the chance that any defect might be made good immediately; and if not, the sooner the business was taken in hand the better. He wanted one of those new Messerschmitts to be gone over carefully by his experts. He would give a good deal of his private fortune - all of it - for the chance to fly one himself.

  And he knew, too, that in Germany at that very moment there was someone who was thinking just the same about the new Spitfires. Those Messerschmitts had been displayed over the Belgian coast for the express purpose of challenging battle with the new Spitfires - battle over German territory, where any Messerschmitt that might be brought down w
ould be safe from prying English eyes, and any Spitfire that suffered the same fate could be examined (what was left of it) with painstaking German thoroughness.

  No more painstaking than English thoroughness, mused the air marshal. His orders had sent up the new Spitfires to challenge battle over English soil in just the same way, and his orders had kept them from accepting the German challenge. Marjorie Dalziel was one of the people fighting for England whom he did not know at all, but it was through her lips that he had spoken, as if she were some ancient sibyl, the mouthpiece of an Olympic god. It was time the mouthpiece spoke again. The air marshal walked twice up and down his room before he pressed a button on his dictograph and spoke to the air vice-marshal who was his deputy.

  ‘You’ve seen the report from the 143rd?’ asked the air marshal.

  ‘Yes.’ The air vice-marshal was a man of few words.

  ‘Tell ‘em to try again. You know the conditions?’

  ‘Of course.’ The air vice-marshal was really a little hurt at that, until he suddenly guessed that his impish superior was teasing him, in the hope, this time realized, that he would induce him to use two words where one would have done.

  ‘Right. See you later,’ said the air marshal, still chuckling as he switched off.

  The brain had started an impulse down one of the nerves that radiated from it; at that impulse the mouth would speak and the limb would strike. From the air vice-marshal the impulse travelled to the Air Staff, and from the Air Staff through the group captain, down, down, to the Operations Room and then to the squadron leader, who had the duty of explaining to his pilots what was expected of them.

  ‘You all understand?’ said the squadron leader, looking round at his subordinates. ‘We want a Messerschmitt, one of those new ones. Dead or alive, but the more alive the better. We’ve got to bring it down over England. And on no account are we to lose one of our planes over Jerry’s country. Anyone can see why.’