"Colonel Wood! Telephone!"

Jesse reflected that an extension phone on the ground floor would be handy, as he ran up the rickety stairs of the tower. He stepped inside and noted Woody standing at attention.

"At ease. Who is it?"

"The operator at Government House, sir," the young officer replied. "A message from the President, he said."

Jesse picked up the phone. "This is Colonel Wood."

"Colonel Wood, this is Capitol," came the immediate response. "Be advised that President Stearns requires immediate transportation to Magdeburg."

"Understood, Capitol. Transportation to Magdeburg. Anything else?"

"No, that's it. He's on his way now."

Jesse nodded at the duty officer and burst out the door. Hans was standing below looking up at the tower.

"Lieutenant Richter!" he bellowed. "The Belle II should be fully fueled. Go preflight her. The President is going flying."

Fifteen minutes later, Jesse had told Kathy where he was going, grabbed his homemade aeronautical chart, and reached the Belle II. He noted gratefully that Hans had already started the engine, as concerned as his commander that the cold engine might balk with the President looking on. Jesse returned the thumbs-up Hans threw him and saw the President's pickup pull into the yard.

Mike Stearns was obviously in a hurry. He ran up to the aircraft.

"Hello, Jesse," he said, shaking the pilot's hand. "Are we ready to go? Simpson swears he's got the landing strip shipshape and ready for us."

Jesse nodded. He and Hans had both made the Magdeburg trip twice-once together, once each solo. He didn't doubt that Simpson had the landing strip "shipshape." From what Jesse could tell, Simpson had a fetish about always having everything shipshape, and at all times.

The man probably has an exact routine for how he folds toilet paper. But Jesse let the thought drop, almost as quickly as it formed. Partly because a considerable part of him-certainly the part which was going to have to land a plane in Magdeburg before too long-actually approved of Simpson's precision. Mostly, though, because Jesse didn't like to think about toilet paper. Or, more precisely, its absence.

"Let me get in and then you take the right seat," he told Mike. "Mind the prop, okay?"

A minute later, Jesse began to taxi as the President struggled to strap himself in. The radio was already on Tower frequency.

"Grantville Tower, this is Belle II. Check that, Tower, this is Air Force One taxiing for takeoff."

"Roger, uh, Air Force One. Cleared for immediate takeoff. Wind is three-four-oh at twelve knots."

After takeoff, Jesse turned right and began to climb. Magnetic heading of 025 for now, he thought to himself.

Leveling off above scattered clouds at six thousand feet, he checked his chart. Yeah, 028 degrees to Halle, no wind. But not today. He peered at the scudding clouds and noted his cowling string inclined to the right. At least seven or eight degrees right drift.

He settled the aircraft heading on approximately 020 degrees by his whiskey compass and set 75-percent power for high cruise. The airspeed settled on a steady 95 knots. He noted they were abeam Weimar and hacked the clock. Only then did he look over at his passenger. He was puzzled to see Mike Stearns chuckling.

"Damn, this is a real aircraft, isn't it?" Mike said.

"Well, yeah. And I'm a real pilot and everything." Jesse was suddenly irritated. "What did you think it was?"

"No offense, Jesse. It's just that I haven't given much thought to the reality of what you and Hal have done. Sure, I get the reports, but there's nothing like the real thing. And Simpson doesn't think much of the Air Force. I can see he's mistaken."

Jesse couldn't help himself. "With all due respect to the admiral, Mr. President, he's a friggin' squid. His brain can't keep up with anything that travels faster than ten knots."

Stearns was laughing now. "Maybe it's a good thing you've missed what few meetings we've had of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Simpson would probably have challenged you to a duel by now."

Slightly chagrined, Jesse tried to calm down. "I guess Simpson knows what he's doing, most of the time. Sorry about the meetings, but I have one, repeat, one instructor pilot-me. That'll change soon, but I saw it as my primary duty that the Air Force has trained pilots. Given that Simpson insists he can't leave Magdeburg and it takes too long to get there from here unless I fly-and I had better things to do with our one and only airplane until last week when the Belle II here got finished…" He twitched his shoulders. "I get the written summaries, anyhow."

Changing the subject, he handed Stearns the chart. "Hold this for a minute, would you, sir?"

Digging out his 'whiz wheel,' the circular aeronautical slide rule he'd had since pilot training, Jesse stared hard at the clouds darting past. He marked the wind side of the computer, moved the outer ring, and pursed his lips at the result.

"Good thing we took off when we did," he explained to his passenger. "We've got a front moving in from the north. Looks to me like about a fifteen-knot headwind component into Halle. After that, probably thirty knots into Magdeburg. We won't have much daylight left."

Checking the clock, he made a quick calculation. "Seventy-five nautical miles to Halle. About eighty-five miles to Magdeburg after that. We'll get there around 1615 or so. Uh, that's 4:15 P.M. I hope you know we might not be able to fly back tomorrow, if that front closes in. What's the rush, anyway?"

"I've got to meet with the admiral about helping Gustav Adolf," Mike replied. "There could be some work in it for you, so I'll want you at it as well as Simpson." He took a breath and looked around. "Kinda bumpy today, isn't it?

Jesse shrugged. "Maybe a little."

He settled back to concentrate on his heading, though that was becoming a tad difficult. They were traveling through what he called light chop and the whiskey compass was bouncing around quite a bit.

He'd missed lunch, but Kathy had fixed him up. He pulled a sausage out of his flight jacket pocket and took a bite out of it. Remembering his manners, he looked over at Stearns. And realized he wouldn't have to share his meal.

Mike stepped down from the plane, delighted to feel his stomach settling down, turned, and froze as a stentorian voice bellowed a command. Two dozen men, most of them armed with up-time shotguns, but six of them armed with the new-model muzzleloading rifles being turned out by the Struve-Reardon Gunworks, snapped to attention and presented arms. Their clothing could scarcely be called a "uniform," but every one of them wore a brassard with the fouled anchor-and-muskets design Simpson had adopted for his "Marine Corps " insignia, and one of those brassards carried the three embroidered chevrons of a sergeant.

Eddie Cantrell stood beside the sergeant, clearly torn between embarrassment and enjoyment. He snapped to attention and saluted far more sharply than anyone who had known him before the Ring of Fire would ever have believed he could.

Mike was still staring at the youngster, wondering where the changeling had come from, when John Simpson stepped forward and saluted even more sharply than Eddie had.

Somewhere, Simpson had managed to have a very credible duplicate of a 21 st -century officer's cap produced. The cap cover was a spotless white, and genuine gold leaf glittered on its polished black brim with eye-watering intensity in the bright afternoon sunlight. A single golden star flashed equally brightly on either side of his collar, and he carried a holstered 9mm automatic on a brilliantly polished Sam Browne belt he'd probably had made by whoever had made the cap for him.

He ought, Mike reflected later, to have looked absolutely ridiculous. But that thought came considerably later. What happened at the moment was that Mike Stearns, former president of a union local and now President of the United States, felt his own shoulders square themselves automatically, without any conscious thought at all, in acknowledgment of the formal courtesy.