It was for them the crews were fighting, and for the whole decent way of life. Decent? What could that really mean? Sacred? Right absolutely? Or just the done thing, just a groundless habit?

Dark land now loomed beyond the moonlit sea. Soon they would be up against the enemy's defences, and then there must be no more dreaming. Thank God, though he was clumsy with a girl, he was quick and sure with a gun; and though on the way to the target his belly melted and his legs might sometimes quiver, he was cool enough when the show began. How the seven of them would act as one living thing, keying their functions perfectly together! But oh, he wanted to live on. Of course those buggers must be stopped from smashing everything. And the island fortress must be defended, and the Empire, and all that. Yes, and though one longed like hell for Civvy Street, it was good to know that one was in on the greatest show, and doing it with style, like the 'few', the superb 'few', in the Battle of Britain. But oh, he wanted to live.

Well, if he did live through to the peace, he wouldn't bother about politics. He'd have the hell of a good time to make up for all this. Suddenly he had a vision of himself with his medals and his wing on a shabby civilian coat, selling tooth-brushes from door to door. That sort of thing happened after the last war, but it shouldn't happen to him! If they didn't give him something better than that, he and his kind would smash everything. The country certainly needed cleaning up. It was all the fault of those dirty Jews, no doubt. Well, if life meant living as an 'ex-serviceman', far better die tonight, and have done. But pain! Like when he burned his hand, but all over. And death? One never spoke about these things. He didn't even whisper about them to his secret self, not if he could help it. Tonight, somehow, he didn't care. He must face the facts. It was so much easier for the Germans and the Japs, who believed they were going to Valhalla or something. But for us, it was different. Of course the Padre was sure we were all bound for some kind of heaven or other. At least he said he was, but that was what he was paid for. Risky to bet on it, anyhow. But if death was just a snuffing out, a switching off the current, what sense in all this, this mess of heaven and hell down here?

Once more the rear-gunner brooded on the wide pin-pricked dome. Those stars, those suns, were all looking at him with a cold objective stare; or blinking, the better to see him; the better to eat you up, my dear. At last he knew them for what they really were, the devils. So at least he half-persuaded himself.

Actually, of course, they ignored him as completely as he ignored any little phagocyte in his own blood-stream. The stars flowed in their thousands, their myriads, squadron upon squadron, phagocytes in the blood-stream of our galaxy.