"Not sick, Enos?" asked the twin 40mm's loader, a hulking kraut named Fritz Gustafson.

"Nah." George shook his head. "I was a Boston fisherman since before I had to shave. My stomach takes orders."

"Ah." Gustafson grunted. "So you're a sailor even if you're not a Navy man." He let out another grunt. "Well, it's something."

"Sure as hell is." The gun chief was a petty officer called Fremont Blaine Dalby-he described himself as a Republican out of a Republican family. With most of the USA either Socialist or Democrat, that made him a strange bird, but he knew what he was doing at the gun mount. Now he went on, "There's guys who've been in since the Great War who still lose their breakfast when it gets like this. North Atlantic this time of year ain't no joke."

"That's the truth. I've been on a few Nantucket sleigh rides myself." George had been on more than a few, riding out swells as high as a three-story building. He didn't want to brag in front of men senior to him, though. They were liable to make him pay for it later. That turned out to be smart, as he found out when he asked, "You know where we're headed?"

Dalby and Gustafson both stared at him. "They didn't tell you?" Dalby asked.

"Nope. Just to report aboard."

Fritz Gustafson grunted again. "Sounds like the Navy, all right. We're heading for the Sandwich Islands. We get to go around the Horn. You think the waves up here are bad? The ones down there make this look like a dead calm."

Now it was George's turn to grunt. He'd heard stories about going around the Horn-who hadn't? "Have to see what that's like," he said. "I've been east a ways, but I haven't been south."

"So you're a polliwog, are you?" Gustafson asked with a cynical laugh. Enough fishermen came out of the Navy and had crossed the Equator to let George know what that meant. He nodded. Gustafson laughed again. "Well, you'll get yours."

"Rounding the Horn shouldn't be too bad," Dalby said. "It'll be summer down there, or what passes for it. Going through in winter is worse. Then it's just mountains of water kicking you in the teeth, one after another after another."

"People have been talking about a canal through Central America damn near forever," Gustafson said. "I wish they'd finally get around to building the fucker."

"Yeah, but who'd run it?" George said.

Gustafson and Dalby looked at each other. "He's no dope," Dalby said. No doubt it was possible to build a canal through Colombia's upper neck or through Nicaragua. The USA and the CSA had both examined the project. Each had threatened war if the other went ahead with it. It might have happened after the Great War, when the Confederate States were weak, but the United States had been putting themselves back together then, too. And after the bottom fell out of the economy, nobody'd had the money or the energy for a project like that.

The Townsend joined three more destroyers and a heavy cruiser that came out of New York harbor. The flotilla also picked up a pair of oilers from Philadelphia. The ships would have to refuel before they swung around the southern tip of South America. The Empire of Brazil was technically neutral, but wasn't friendly, not when it was getting rich off fees from Argentine, British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese freighters hauling beef and wheat through its territorial waters for the dash across the Atlantic to Dakar in French West Africa. There were no guarantees that U.S. ships would be able to top off there.

My father went this way, George thought. He didn't go around the Horn-I don't think he did, anyhow-but he was here before me. He nodded to himself. I'll pay 'em back for you, Pa.

"Gonna be a little interesting, sliding past Bermuda and the Bahamas," Dalby said. "Yeah, just a little. How many ships and patrol airplanes do the limeys and the Confederates have?"

George's father hadn't had to worry about airplanes, or not very much. Warships were terribly vulnerable from the air. The loss of the Remembrance drove that home, in case anyone had forgotten. "What do we do if they spot us?" George asked.

Fremont Blaine Dalby let his hand rest on the right barrel of the twin 40mm. "Why, then, we give 'em a big, friendly hello and we hope for the best," he said. "That's why we're here, Enos-to make sure they get that big hello."

"Right," George said, as nonchalantly as he could. The rest of the men in the gun crew laughed at him. He kept his mouth shut. He knew they'd go right on laughing till he showed what he was worth. He'd had the same thing happen the first time he went out on a fishing run-and, in the days since, he'd jeered at other first-timers till they showed they were worth something.

As the flotilla went down past Maryland and Delaware toward Virginia and the CSA, it swung ever farther from shore, both to avoid Confederate patrol aircraft and to take a course halfway between the Bahamas and Bermuda. The men on the hydrophones worked around the clock. Sailors stayed on deck whenever they could, too, watching for death lurking in the ocean.

They ran between the enemy's Atlantic outposts on a dark, cloudy midnight. No bombs or bullets came out of the sky. No torpedoes slid through the sea. The farther south they went, the calmer that sea got, too. That mattered less to George than to some afflicted with seasickness, but he didn't enjoy swinging in his hammock like a pendulum weight when the rolling got bad.

Not that he was in his hammock when the Townsend ran the gauntlet. He stayed at his battle station through the long night. When the east began to lighten, Fritz Gustafson let out a long sigh and said, "Well, the worst is over."

"May be over," Fremont Dalby amended.

"Yeah. May be over." Gustafson pointed up to the gray sky. "Long as the ceiling stays low like this, nothing upstairs can find us."

Having been shot up aboard the Sweet Sue, George wouldn't have been sorry never to see another airplane carrying guns. He said, "Which means all we've got to worry about is submarines. Oh, boy."

"We can shoot subs, or drop ashcans on 'em, or even run away from 'em if we have to," Dalby said. "Can't run from a goddamn airplane-looks like that's the number one lesson in this war so far."

Gustafson shook his head. "Number one lesson in this war so far is, we should've been ready for it five years before it started. And we weren't. And we're paying for it. We ever make that mistake again…" He spat over the rail.

"But Featherston's a nut," George said. It wasn't quite a protest. He answered himself before the others could: "Yeah, I know. It's not like he didn't advertise." Dalby and Gustafson both nodded. George sighed. The Townsend steamed south.

The wind that roared down on Provo, Utah, felt as if it had started somewhere in Siberia. Snow blew almost sideways. Armstrong Grimes huddled behind a wall that blocked the worst of it. Most of the house of which the wall had been a part had fallen in on itself. Armstrong turned to Sergeant Stowe and said, "Merry Christmas."

Rex Stowe needed a shave. So did Armstrong, but he couldn't see himself. Snowflakes in the other man's whiskers gave him a grizzled look, old beyond his years. Armstrong sure as hell felt old beyond his. Stowe said, "The fuck of it is, it is a merry Christmas. Goddamn Mormons aren't shooting at us. Far as I'm concerned, that makes it the best day since we got to this shitass place."

"Yeah." Armstrong cupped his hands and lit a cigarette. Arctic wind or not, he got it going first try. He hardly even noticed the blasphemy and obscenity with which Stowe had decked the day of Jesus' birth. He would have done it himself had the other noncom given him a Merry Christmas before he spoke. He said, "Nice to have a smoke without worrying some sniper'll spot the coal and blow my head off."