“You fly, of course?” demanded Governor Drake.

Smithy nodded. “Unlimited license all levels.”

They had spent the night in the executive mansion, and now the Governor had burst precipitately into the room where Smithy and his father had just finished dressing. The two had been deep in an earnest conversation which the Governor’s entrance had interrupted.

“I am drafting you for service,” said the Governor. “I want you to go out to Field Number Three. A fast scout plane National Guard equipment will be ready for you ”

He broke off and stared doubtfully at a paper in his hand, a radiophone message, Smithy judged. “I’m in a devil of a fix,” the Governor exclaimed, after a pause. Then:

“I don’t doubt your sincerity,” he told Smithy. “Never saw you till yesterday, but your father’s ‘O.K.’ goes a hundred per cent with me. Old ‘J. G.’ and I have been through a lot of scraps together.” His frowning eyes relaxed for a moment to exchange twinkling glances with the older man.

“No, it isn’t that,” he added, “but....” Again he stared at the flimsy piece of paper.

“What’s on your mind, Bill?” asked Smith senior. “That stuff the boy told us was pretty wild” he laid one hand affectionately upon Smithy’s shoulder “but he’s a poor liar, Gordon is, and, knowing his weakness, he usually sticks to the truth. And there’s no record of insanity in the family, you know. If there’s something sticking in your crop, Bill, cough it up.”

And the Honorable William B. Drake obeyed. “Listen to this,” he commanded, and read from the paper in his hand:

“’Replying to your inquiry about the doings at Seven Palms. Some Indians did that job. No help needed. I can handle this. Posse organized and we are leaving right now. Signed, Jack Downer, Sheriff, Cocos County.’”

“That sounds authentic,” said Smithy drily. “I’ve met the sheriff.”

“Now, if it was Indians that got tanked up and came down off the reservation, burned Seven Palms and cleaned up your camp ” began Governor Drake.

“It wasn’t!” Smithy interrupted hotly. “I told you ” He felt his father’s hand gripping firmly at his shoulder.

“Steady,” said Smith, senior. “Let him talk, son.”

“There’s an election three months from now, J. G.,” said the Governor, “and you know they’re riding me hard. Let me make one false move just one anything that the opposition can use for a campaign of ridicule, and my goose is cooked to a turn.”

Gordon Smith shook off his father’s restraining hand and took one quick forward step. His face, even through the tan of the desert sun, was unnaturally pale.

“Election be dammed!” he exploded. “Dean Rawson has been captured by those red devils he’s down there, the whitest white man I ever met! I’ve been to the sheriff; now I’ve come to you! Do you mean to tell me there isn’t any power in this state to back me up when ”

He stopped. There was a tremble in his voice he could not control.

“Good boy,” said Governor Drake softly. “Now I know it’s the truth. Yes, you’ll be backed up, plenty, but for the present it will be strictly unofficial. Now pull in your horns and listen.

“You know the lay of the land. I want your help. Go out to Field Three; there’ll be a man there waiting for you. Don’t call him ’Colonel’ he’s also strictly unofficial to-day. The sheriff and his posse will be there at Seven Palms inside an hour; I want you to be there, too, about five thousand feet up.

“Tell Colonel Culver I mean Mr. Culver your story; tell him everything you know. He’ll be in charge of operations if we have to send in troops; he’ll give you that private and unofficial backing I spoke of if we don’t.

“Now get down there; keep your eye on the sheriff’s crowd and see everything that happens!”

But Smithy’s parting remark was to his father; it was a continuation of the subject they had been discussing before.

“You can buy at your own price,” he said. “They’ve got rights to the whole basin. But they’ve quit; I’m not treating them to a double-cross.”

And he added as he went out of the room: “Buy it for me if you don’t want it yourself.”

It was a two-place, open-cockpit plane that Smithy found had been set aside for him. Dual control the stick in the forward cockpit carried the firing grip that controlled the slim blue machine guns firing through the propeller. Behind the rear cockpit a strange, unwieldy, double-ended weapon was recessed and streamlined into the fuselage. The scout seemed quite able to protect itself in an emergency.

Beside the plane a tall, slender man in civilian attire was waiting. He stuck out his hand, while the gray eyes in his lean, tanned face scanned Smithy swiftly.

“I’m Culver. Understand I’m to be your passenger to-day. How about it can you fly the ship? Seven hundred and fifty DeGrosse motor retractable landing gear, of course. She hits four-fifty at top speed snappy quick on the trigger.”

Smithy shook his head dubiously. “Four-fifty I’m not accustomed to that. But you can take the stick, Mr. Culver, if I get in a hurry and jump out and run on ahead. You see I’m used to my own ship, an Assegai special job does five hundred when I’m pressed for time.”

The lean face of Mr. Culver creased into a smile. “You qualify,” he said. “But keep your hands off the dead mule.”

At an inquiring glance he pointed to the heavy, half-hidden weapon that Smithy had noticed. “Can’t kick,” he explained, “ hence ’dead mule.’ It’s the new Rickert recoilless; throws little shells the size of your thumb but they raise hell when they hit.”

“Sounds interesting.” Smithy climbed into the rear cockpit and strapped himself in. “Show me how it works, then I won’t do it.”

A pistol grip moved under Culver’s reaching hand and the strange weapon sprang from concealment like something alive. The pistol grip moved sideways, and the gun swung out and down, its muzzle almost touching the ground. Smithy was suddenly aware that a crystal above his instrument board was reflecting that same bit of sun-baked earth. A dot of black hung stationary at the crystal’s center.

“That’s your target.” Culver’s voice held all the pride of a child with a new toy, but he released the grip, and the ungainly gun swung smoothly back to its hiding place.

He settled himself in the forward cockpit. “You will find a helmet there,” he said. “It’s phone-equipped; you can tell me all about that wild nightmare of yours while we jog along.”

The white beam from the despatcher’s tower had been on them while they talked. Other planes were waiting on the field. Smithy smiled as he settled the helmet over his head. “For a strictly unofficial flight,” he thought, “we’re getting darned good service.”

He taxied past a hangar where uniformed men pointedly paid them no attention. He swung the ship to the line as Airboard regulations required.

“N-73” was painted on the monoplane’s low wings that seemed scraping the ground. “N-73 Clear!” the despatcher’s voice radioed into Smithy’s ears. Then the seven-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower DeGrosse let loose its voice as Smithy gunned her down the field.

Whatever doubts Colonel Culver may have had of Smithy’s ability were dissipated as they made their way cautiously through the free-flying area under five thousand. Everywhere were mail planes, express and passenger ships taking off for the transcontinental day run, and private planes scattering to the smaller landing areas among the flashing lights of the flat-topped business blocks. Among them Smithy threaded his way toward the green-lighted transfer zone, where he spiraled upward.

At ten thousand he was on his course. He set the gyro-control which would fly the ship more surely than any human hands, and the air-speed indicator crept up to the four hundred and fifty miles an hour that Culver had promised. Not till then did he give the man in the forward cockpit the details of his “nightmare.”

He had not finished answering the other’s incredulous questions when he throttled down to slow cruising speed and nosed the ship toward a distant expanse of sage-blurred sand.

Outside the restricted metropolitan area he had already dropped out of the chill wind that struck them at ten thousand. Behind them and off to the right was the gray rampart of the Sierra. Ahead a rough circle of darker hills enclosed the great bowl he had learned to know as Tonah Basin.

Some feeling of unreality in his own experiences must have crept into his mind; unconsciously he had been questioning his own sanity. Now, at sight of the sandy waste where he and Rawson had labored, with the dark slopes of desolate craters looming ahead and a blot of burned wreckage directly below to mark the site of their camp, the horrible reality of it gripped him again.

He could not speak at first. The air of the five-thousand level was not uncomfortably warm, but Smithy was feeling again the baking heat of that desert land; again he was with Rawson in the volcanic crater; Dean was calling to him, warning him....

A sharp question from Culver was repeated twice before Smithy could reply.

He side-slipped in above the crater’s ragged rim, heedless of down-drafts the power of the DeGrosse motor would pull them out of anything in a ten-thousand-foot vertical climb if need arose. Smithy was pointing toward a confusion of shining black rock.

“Over there,” he told Culver. Then he was shouting into the telephone transmitter. “It’s open,” he said. “That’s where Dean went down and there they are! Look, man, there there!”