Vag put down his newspaper and started thinking about this suicide business. According to some reporter the Jap pilots were diving their airplanes onto the deck of our boats like human bombs. Just as they had used those human dynamite charges at Shanghai to break up Chinese barbed wire. Vag shuddered. He tried to imagine himself as the pilot of a bomber, poised high above a sleek, tall ship of war carrying the white banner with the orange sun. He could imagine himself trying to force his muscles to shove the stick forward and aim himself in the fatal dive. Somehow, he couldn't quite work up the nerve. His muscles seemed paralyzed. Life, even in war, is good fun. He didn't worship the State as an entity more precious than himself. He admired the President, but he had no illusions about his divine ancestry. Vag wasn't even sure that he believed in a God, and if he did he knew it was a God who had some idea of the value of each individual life. Vag's religion didn't account him a nobody, a worthless being only fit for sacrifice. . . .

No, Vag decided, still circling high above the enemy, that end wasn't for him. He knew bombing was dangerous and he didn't mind; he even enjoyed a special sort of thrill he'd never known before the war when one of the gray puffs of the anti-aircraft shells came particularly close. But this way he had a chance. It wasn't suicide. He didn't mind taking big risks; even 99 to 1 like those torpedo flyers. That one possibility of life out of a hundred was something to work for, something to fight for. He didn't think he'd mind dying like that.

He could see his squadrons' bombs falling, some near the ship, some a good distance away. One loaded plane hitting its deck would have infinitely more effect. Might sink the thing; certainly would make for a bit of confusion down there. He saw one bomb hit the foredeck; he couldn't tell, but it seemed to have caused a good deal of wreckage. Now if a whole plane-load hit. . . .

Through Vag's mind flashed a million little things. It came to him that all this hogwash he'd read about your mind's acting like a movie before you kick off was straight stuff. It wasn't the state or the President or God or anything as tangible as that he was thinking of. It was just something about that ship down there. It had to be sunk. It and a hundred more like it. If it, and they, weren't destroyed, and if their men could sacrifice themselves to sink our boats, we were through. If we lost the war, life wouldn't be worth much. Not for anyone. Eating and sleeping and Mozart and necking and studying would be of any use if someone were telling you exactly what you had to do. Maybe it was that you had to be utilitarian. In war you have to consider what would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of your people. "You damn fool," he said, and he gave the stick a push. "You silly ass," and the hull far below came into view just over the cowling. . . .

Vag picked up the paper again, "Yeah," he said out loud to nobody in particular, "I guess we can beat 'em."