Attack Alarm Read Online Free PDF Page A

shape of it now, the wide spread of its wings all silver in the dazzling beams.
    “All right, layers on,” said Langdon. “Fuse nine—load!” I handed the shell to Micky. He lowered the breech and rammed it home with his gloved hand. The breech rose with a clang. “Set to semi-automatic.”
    Fuller came running back into the pit. The ’plane was at about 5,000 feet now and still heading straight for us. The layers reported, “On, on!” Langdon waited. The throb of the engines beat upon the air.
    Suddenly came his order: “Fire!”
    A flash of flame and the pit shook with the noise of the explosion. I found I had another round in my hands. I held it for Micky to ram home. The gun crashed. Fuller came up with another round. I have a vague impression of that bright spot in the midst of the searchlights; the flash of our own shells and those of the other three-inch exploding just to the right of it. And then it seemed to fall apart in mid-air. I stood stupefied, with the next shell ready in my hands. The port wing crumpled and the nose dropped, so that we could see the big double fin of a Dornier. And then it began to fall, the wing bending back and separating itself from the rest of the ’plane.
    “My God!” Kan cried. “It’s coming down. Oh, my God! This is too exciting.”
    It fell very quickly. And as it fell it grew muchlarger, so that I suddenly realised that it was coming down right on the edge of the ’drome. I had a momentary glimpse of the big black cross on its one remaining wing. Then it hit the ground. One searchlight had followed it right down so that we actually saw the nose strike into the ground among some bushes to the north of the ’drome. The tail snapped off as it struck, and the whole plane appeared to crumple. An instant later came the sound of the impact. It was a dull thud splintered by the noise of rending metal. I remember being surprised that the sound of the crash should come after the ’plane had hit the ground. There was something almost supernatural about it, as though it had spoken after it was dead. I noticed this apparent phenomenon many times afterwards and, though I knew it to be quite natural since sound travels slower than sight, it always surprised me. There was something rather horrible about it. It was one of the things that always made me feel sick inside.
    Immediately the ’plane had crashed, the searchlight swung upwards. For a moment I could see no sign of the ’plane, though the light of the searchlights showed up the edge of the ’drome quite clearly. Then suddenly I saw a pin-point of light. It grew. And then flung outwards in a flash of orange. A great umbrella of flame leaped upwards to a height of several hundred feet. And when it was gone, the light from the blazing wreckage showed a perfect ring of smoke drifting slowly skyward.
    “God! It’s horrible!” Kan was standing up and his thin aesthetic face was working as though he himself were in the blazing wreck.
    “What d’you mean—horrible?” demanded Micky.
    “They’re human beings just the same as us,” replied Kan, his hands pressed tight together as though in prayer and his eyes fixed on the blaze, fascinated.
    “Bloody murderers—that’s what they are, mate, Itell you. You don’t want to waste no sympathy on them bastards.”
    “Look!” cried Fuller, pointing up into the beams of the searchlights. “It’s a parachute. Two of ’em.”
    Our gaze swung from the wreckage up into the point in the searchlights where two white umbrellas of silk swung lazily earthwards. It was possible to see the men dangling from the parachutes as though held there by magic.
    “Who got it—us or the other site?” It was Bombardier Hood.
    He was still only half dressed. The rest of his detachment, in various stages of undress, were streaming out behind him.
    “We did,” Micky replied promptly. “An’ a bloody good shot it was, I tell you.”
    “It was impossible to say;” Langdon said.