Free Attack Alarm by Hammond Innes

fighter station, was no longer to be heard. All was still. Faintly came the strains of a waltz from the officers’ mess.
    It was quiet. Too quiet. To me it seemed like the lull before the storm. To-morrow was Thursday. And Friday was the fateful day. If the proposed raid was to prepare the way for an air landing on the ’drome, any time after Friday might be zero hour. I was in a wretched position. Technically I had done all I could. Yet how could I leave the matter where it stood? Vayle had been a lecturer at a Berlin university. Winton might know him to be sound and my suspicions might be entirely unfounded. Yet the fact that he had been in Berlin at the time the Nazis came into power only served to increase my suspicions. British he might be, but there were Britons who believedin National Socialism. And there was certainly nothing about him to suggest the Jew.
    As I approached our site I knew that somehow I had to go through with it. I had to find out whether or not I was right. But how—how? Easy to make the decision, but what was there I could do, confined to my gun site with all my communications with the outside world censored? And anyhow, wasn’t it far more likely that Winton was right? The headquarters’ staff, as he had said, was far better able to judge the reliability of the pilot’s story than I was. And as regards Vayle, Winton had known him intimately for several years, whereas I knew no more of the man than I had been told. It seemed absurd to proceed, when there was so, little cause.
    When I went into the hut, I found most of the other members of our detachment had already returned and were making their beds. It was nearly nine. I felt nervous. I thought every one must know what had happened and would be watching me to see how I took it. I went straight over to my bed and began to make it. Kan looked across at me. “Well, what did the Little Man want?” he asked.
    “Oh, nothing,” I said.
    He didn’t pursue the matter. At nine we went out to the pit and relieved the others. Fuller hadn’t yet turned up. There were only Kan, Chetwood, Micky and myself. “Where’s Langdon?” I asked. It was unlike him to be late for stand-to.
    “He had to go down to the orderly room,” Kan told me.
    I was silent, gazing out across the ’drome. The sky was very beautiful in the west—and very clear. Soon the nightly procession would start.
    “Got any fags to sell?” Micky demanded of the gun pit at large.
    There was a shout of laughter. “Not again,” saidChetwood despairingly. “Why don’t you buy some once in a while?”
    “Once in a while! I like that. I bought ten only this morning.”
    “Then you’re smoking too much.”
    “You’re right there, mate. Do you know how many I smoke a day? Twenty!”
    “Good God!” said Kan. “That means we’re supplying you with seventy a week. Why don’t you buy yourself twenty at a time instead of only ten?”
    “I smoke ’em too quick, that’s why.”
    “You mean, you don’t smoke enough of ours.”
    “Well, as long as you’re mugs enough.” He grinned in his sudden mood of frankness. “I tell you, I wouldn’t starve—not as long as there was a sap left in the world.”
    “All right, we’re saps, are we? We’ll remember that, Micky.”
    “Well, give us a fag anyway. I ain’t got one—straight I ain’t—an’ I’m just dying for a smoke.”
    His request was met by silence. “That wasn’t very well received, was it, Micky?” Chetwood laughed.
    “All right, mate.” He produced an old fag end. “Give us a light, someone.”
    “Oh, my God, no matches either!”
    “Would you like me to smoke it for you?” This from Fuller, who had just arrived in the pit. He tossed Micky a box of matches.
    At that moment the sirens began to wail. Micky paused on the point of lighting his cigarette and glanced up at the sky. “The bastards!” he said.
    “You want to mind that light.” It was John Langdon, who had just come up on his