Bagnall studied the gauges. “Everything appears-normal,” he said, surprised at how surprised he sounded. He rallied gamely: “We might have been a bit more embarrassed had Jerry chosen to shoot us up before we disposed of our cargo.”

“Indeed,” the pilot said. “Having disposed of it, I see no urgent reason to tarry over the scene any longer. Mr. Whyte, will you give us a course for home?”

“With pleasure, sir,” AIf Whyte answered from behind the black curtain that protected his night vision. “I thought for a moment there you were trying to fling me over the side. Fly course two-eight-three. I say again two-eight-three. That should put us on the ground back at Swinderby in about four and a half hours.”

“Or somewhere in England, at any rate,” Embry remarked; long-range navigation at night was anything but an exact science. When Whyte let out an indignant sniff, the pilot added, “Maybe I should have flung you over the side; we’d likely do just as well following a trail of bread crumbs back from Hansel and Gretel Land.”

Despite his ragging, Embry swung the bomber onto the course the navigator had given him. Bagnall kept a close eye on the instrument panel, still worried lest a line had been broken. But all the pointers stayed where they should have; the four Merlins steadily drove the Lancaster through the air at above two hundred miles an hour. The Lanc was a tough bird, especially compared to the Blenheims in which he’d started the war. And-they’d been lucky.

He peered through the windscreen. Other Lancasters, Stirlings, and Manchesters showed up as blacker shapes against the dark sky; engine exhausts glowed red. As burning Cologne receded behind him, he felt the first easing of fear. The worst was over, and he was likely to live to fly another mission-and be terrified again.

The crew’s chatter, full of the same relief he knew himself, rang in his earphones.