David was quickly ordered to shore duty to see if he had the makings of an aeronaut.

He had indeed! He not only had the mental and physical qualities but also was highly motivated-as his new work was done sitting down, whether in classroom or in the air, and he stood no night watches and received pay-and-a-half for sitting down and sleeping at home; flying was classed as "hazardous duty" and extra pay was awarded.

I had best say something about these aeroplanes since they resemble not at all the aerodynes you are used to. In a way they were hazardous. So is breathing. They were not as hazardous as the automotive ground vehicles then in use, and not nearly as hazardous as being a pedestrian. Accidents, fatal and otherwise, usually could be traced to a mistake on the part of the aeronaut-David never let that sort of accident happen to him. He had no wish to be the hottest pilot in the sky; he merely wanted to be the oldest.

Aeroplanes were weird monstrosities looking like nothing in the sky today, save possibly a child's kite-they were often called "kites." They had two wings, one above the other, and the aeronaut sat between them. A small baffle helped to deflect wind from his face. Don't look surprised; these flimsy structures flew very slowly, pulled through the air by a powered screw.

Wings were made of varnished cloth held rigid by struts- you can see from this alone that their speeds could never be any large fraction of the speed of sound-except on sad occasions when an overly eager pilot would dive straight down, then pull the wings off through trying too abruptly to recover a normal attitude.

Which David never did. Some people are natural fliers. The first time David examined an aeroplane he understood its strengths and weaknesses as thoroughly as he understood the milking stool he had left behind him.

He learned-to fly almost as quickly as he had learned to swim.

His instructor said, "Dave, you're a natural. I'm going to recommend you for fighter training."

Fighter pilots were the royalty of aeroplane fliers; they went up, and engaged enemy pilots in single combat. A fighter who did this successfully five times-killed the opposing pilot instead of being killed-was called an "Ace," which was a high honor, for, as you can see, the average chance of doing this is the fifth power of one-half, or one in thirty-two. Whereas the chance of getting killed instead is the complement, close to certainty.

Dave thanked his mentor while his skin crawled and his brain went whir-click as it considered ways to avoid this honor without giving up pay-and-a-half and the comfort of sitting down.

There were other disadvantages to being a fighter pilot besides the prime hazard of getting your ass shot off by some stranger. Fighter pilots flew in one-man kites and did their own navigation-without computers, homing devices, or anything that would be taken for granted today-or even later that century. The method used was called "dead reckoning," because, if you didn't reckon it correctly, you were dead-since Navy flying was done over water, from a small floating aerodrome, with a margin of safety in fuel for a fighter plane of only minutes. Add to this the fact that a fighter pilot in combat had to choose between doing navigation or giving single-minded attention to attempting to kill a stranger before that stranger killed him. If he' wanted to be an "Ace"-or even eat dinner that night-he must put first things first and worry about navigation later.

In addition to the chance of being lost at sea and drowned in a kite that was out of gas-did I say how these things were powered? The airscrew was driven by an engine powered by a chemical exothermic reaction-oxidation of a hydrocarbon fluid called "gas," which it was not. If you think this unlikely, I assure you that it was unlikely even then. The method was woefully inefficient. A flier was not only likely to run out of gas with nothing around him but ocean, but also this temperamental engine often coughed and quit. Embarrassing. Sometimes fatal.

The lesser drawbacks to being a fighter pilot were not all physical danger; they simply did not fit David's master plan. Fighter pilots were assigned to floating aerodromes, or carriers. In peacetime, which this nominally was, a flier did not work too hard nor stand many watches and spent much of his time ashore at a land aerodrome even though he was carried on the muster rolls of a carrier ship-thereby credited with sea duty, necessary for promotion and pay.

But for several weeks each year a flier assigned to a carrier ship would actually be at sea, practicing mock warfare- which involved getting up an hour before dawn to warm those cantankerous engines and stand by ready to fly at the first hint of real or simulated danger.

David hated this-he would not willingly attend Judgment Day if it was held before noon.

There was another drawback: landing on these floating aerodromes. On land, David could land on a dime and give back change. But that depended on his own skill, highly developed because his own skin was at stake. But landing on a carrier depended on another pilot's skill-and David held a dark opinion of entrusting his skin to the skill, good intentions, and alertness of someone else.

Ira, this is so unlike anything you are likely to have seen in your life that I am at loss. Consider your skyport here at New Rome: In landing, a ship is controlled from the ground- right? So it was with aeroplanes landing on carriers-but the analogy breaks down because a landing on a carrier in those days used no instruments. None. I'm not fooling.

It was done by eye alone, just as a boy in a game of catch snatches a ball out of the air-but David was the ball, and the skill used to catch him was not his own but that of a pilot standing on the carrier. David had to suppress his own skill, his own opinions, and place utter faith in the pilot on the carrier-anything less brought disaster.

David had always followed his own opinion-against the whole world if necessary. To place that much faith in another man ran counter to his deepest emotions. A carrier landing was like baring his belly to a surgeon and saying, "Go ahead and cut"-when he was not sure that surgeon was competent to slice ham. Carrier landing came closer to causing David to give up pay-and-a-half and easy hours than any other aspect of flying, so torn was he by the necessity of accepting another pilot's decision-and one not even sharing his danger, at that!

It took all his willpower to do it the first time, and it never became easy. But he learned one lesson that he never expected to learn-that is, that there were circumstances in which another man's opinion was not only better than his own, but incomparably better.

You see-no, perhaps you don't; I have not explained the circumstances. An aeroplane landed on a carrier in a controlled crash, through a hook in its tail catching a wire rope stretched across the top deck. But if the flier follows his own judgment based on experience in landing on a flying field, he is certain to crash into the stern of the ship-or, if he knows this and tries to allow for it, he will fly too high and miss the rope.

Instead of a big flat field and plenty of room for minor mistakes, he has only a tiny "window" which he must hit precisely, neither right nor left, nor up nor down, nor too fast nor too slow. But he can't see what he is doing well enough to judge these variables correctly.

(Later on, the process was made semiautomatic, then automatic, but when it was finally perfected, carriers for aeroplanes were obsolete-a capsule description of most human "progress": By the time you learn how, it's too late.)

(But it often turns out that what you have learned applies to some new problem. Or we would still be swinging from trees.)

So the flier in the aeroplane must trust a pilot on deck who can see what is going on. He was called "the landing signal officer" and used wigwag flags to signal orders to the aeroplane's pilot.