"You don't seem to understand," the interrogating officer smiled. "We do not do any of the brain-washing tortures your Generals are always talking about. We just ask you quite politely to tell us how many jets you have moved into the town and how many men are there now. As you have been unfortunate enough to get shot down you may as well do what all your other comrades have done and simply be friendly. Of course, we have to play the game of leading you through the streets of our city for the crowd to jeer - but afterwards you live like a lord in a sumptuous hotel with everything you require - food, drink, even women! "

"I bet!" I snapped. This man was no fool. He talked my language pretty near as good - or maybe even better - than me. How could he think I'd fall for this crummy line?

"Then you stick only to name, number and rank as per the old conventions?" rat face smiled.

"You've got it," I nodded. Maybe now the rough stuff came. I wondered how I'd hold out, I've been a fighter in most low dives at home and I've even beat up a few other lousy places where they tried to take my money and I usually won. Big guys who keep in trim and use all the training and sport provided can stay tough. Besides, this lot looked in bad shape to me. In fact I wouldn't be sitting in this stinking shed so meek if it wasn't that those two bastards by the door had what looked like portable Gatlings stuck under their arms and aimed in my specific direction.

What a bum deal. Brought down, ejected and have to come down only yards from the only village in a hundred miles of forest hills! Out they come and I'm taken like a lamb, not even having the satisfaction of a shoot-out with the bastards, swinging as I was like a doll from the 'chute in a big tree while they just came out of the greenery in a circle bristling with small arms.

Now, two days and a bumpy ride and not one fight later, I'm listening while this smooth well dressed creep tells me I've got it all wrong, how he won't have the drugs or the truncheons or even the bright lights and the six day rapid fire questioning. Does he think I'm some sort of nut?

"Well, Flight Captain Stewart Green," he smiled, "if you won't help us without some coercion, I suppose we must tempt you a little."

His hand went into his slim jacket. I expected a gun or a cosh. I stiffened up, weighing the odds of using him as a bullet guard against the overgrown machine guns at the door. He took out an envelope and slid it over the desk to me. I opened it up. It was photographs, the crude sort, but it shook me all the same. There was Bill Haverforde, shot down two months ago. He had his hands doing things to parts of a very smooth dish who wasn't hiding much. She was giving him a drink in a lavish kind of room, like nothing I'd seen in this country.

There was another guy too, I knew his face but not his name, one of the young kids sent out here to die. He was playing pool, of all things, dressed in a swinging sort of day gown like some film star and his cue was being chalked by a cutie in very brief briefs. Smalley, a toughie I'd seen around, grinning at the camera like he was proud of being nude with three stripped birds, one head down between his legs, the other two guiding his hands to very exposed valleys.