Spruance's thin, haunted face grew even darker while Kolhammer delivered his speech. When he had finished, the hero of Midway stared at him intently. Indeed, Kolhammer had the distinctly unpleasant feeling that Spruance was staring into him, decoding him, reading his deepest, pass-protected files and weighing up whether to hold or fold. His jawline flexed as he glowered fixedly and angrily at the invaders who freely admitted to having brought so much ruin with them.

And then, as if a switch had been thrown, much of the tension ran out of his posture. His whole frame, which had been so taut the whole time, sagged fractionally.

"Right," he grunted. "Commander Black, you and the ensign will return to the… uh, Hillary Clinton. Report back with all dispatch if you think we can gain anything from the assistance offered by these people. But before you go, Commander, a word in private if you please?"

Black and Spruance walked away from Kolhammer's group until they were far enough removed that they could no longer be heard. Spruance turned his back on the two men and their odd female companion. He and Black were both facing out over the bow of the Enterprise, which methodically rose and sank on the long ocean swell. It was cold, and they were dressed lightly. They shivered as hundreds of pairs of eyes bored into their backs.

"You'll need a signal. In case you're coerced," Spruance said. "Something simple that they won't notice."

"Well, my sainted mother raised me never to cuss at an admiral, sir. Not even a lousy rear admiral from the Cruiser Division. I could slip in a fucking profanity, begging your pardon, sir. That's not like me at all. Then you'd know we were in trouble."

"Fine," Spruance said, smiling weakly despite himself. "That youngster you're taking with you. Keep a close eye on him. His mother would probably like to see him again, too."

"I'll do my best, sir. It was his idea by the way. It's more like Ensign Curtis is taking me. If this comes off, that should be acknowledged. Otherwise, well, I'll take responsibility."

"Duly noted."

"Sir?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Do you believe any of this malarkey?"

Stillness came over Ray Spruance. But this time his pause was short.

"I don't know. I really don't. It's just so crazy. But I'll tell you this. I hope they're not lying. Because otherwise the Japs are going to roll right over us, maybe even win this war. They'll certainly take Hawaii, and probably Australia and New Zealand if they really feel like stretching themselves. They could even drive through Burma and into India. The Germans could push through Persia to link up with them. That'd be an ungodly mess. But maybe with some of the rockets these bastards turned on us tonight, we might stand a chance."

"What about the Negro and the half-breed dame? You think they're for real?"

Spruance turned back.

"The wonders never cease," he said.

Despite his appearance, it didn't pay to underestimate Ensign Wally Curtis. He was no rube. He had grown up in Chicago. Since enlisting he'd met sailors from pissant little backwoods burgs in places like Kentucky and Georgia who could count on one hand the number of times they'd seen a motor vehicle. Assuming they could count, of course. And assuming they had the regulation five fingers per hand. There were times he had his doubts.

Right now, however, Curtis felt like just about the dumbest, most unsophisticated backwoods cracker on God's green earth. Not that he cared. A bright ribbon of joy blew through him. The older men had often teased him about the promise he'd made to his strict Presbyterian parents, that he wouldn't lie with a woman until she wore his wedding ring. But he knew as a moral certainty that the thrill of riding in this helicopter surpassed anything any of them had ever known while riding some low-rent floozie.

It was all beyond him, gloriously, unreachably beyond his experience and understanding. He'd been right when he told Lieutenant Commander Black that the truth of the night would prove to be something they couldn't even imagine. He was young and unscarred, and the raw shock of the future folding back in on itself was enough to set his spirits soaring.

Braced across the cabin from him, Colonel Jones smiled at Curtis's obvious delight. Beside him, Lieutenant Commander Black was doing a fair job of concealing his discomfort, but his white-knuckle grip on the grab bars gave him away. By way of contrast, Jones had to keep pushing the ensign back in his seat as he leaned forward, craning this way and that to take in as much detail as possible.

The lights and displays of the flight controls kept drawing his attention. He seemed even more fascinated by them than he had been by shaking hands with his first black man-and a full-bird colonel of the marines at that-and only his second lady pilot. His daddy had taken him to see Amelia Earhart once. If it was possible, Flight Lieutenant Hayes seemed even more exotic and beautiful.

"What part of Chicago did you say you were from, Ensign?" asked Jones.

Both Curtis and Black wore astonishingly small headsets, allowing them to communicate over the noise of the Seahawk. But no one else seemed to need them. Jones had tried to explain the devices-he'd called them "chips"-that enabled each of the other passengers to communicate without the help of an external rig, but he'd been reduced to saying it was like having a radio inside your head. It sounded like something a drunk or a madman might say, and Lieutenant Commander Black regarded him in just such a fashion. Curtis, on other hand, simply marveled at the crystal-clear sound of Jones's soft conversational tones purring in his ear. The man wasn't speaking any louder than you might in your maiden aunt's drawing room, yet they heard every word he said, even over the thundering rotors.

"I'm from Oak Brooke, sir," said Curtis. "My father has a hardware store over in North Lake."

"I know that part of town well," said Jones.

"Colonel Jones, sir?"

Curtis had no trouble recognizing and respecting Jones's authority, something that earned him respect in return; a hard task, as many junior officers of the Eighty-second could testify. "I don't mean any offense, sir, but where you come from, are there are a lot of Negroes in the service?"

Airman La Salle smiled to himself as Jones replied.

"No offense taken, Ensign. But we don't use the word Negro anymore. Most folks consider it offensive. You'll want to bear that in mind when you get aboard the Clinton. Both of you," he added for the benefit of Black. "I believe the correct term nowadays is American of color." Jones snorted to show how little regard he had for such things before continuing. "But the corps is color-blind, Ensign. All of the armed forces are, and have been for a long time. When Admiral Kolhammer here was fresh out of college he served under a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a sort of supreme commander of all the services, whose family came out of Jamaica. He'd have been called a Negro, or worse, in your day."

"That man went on to become the secretary of state," Kolhammer added. "Could have been president, too, if it hadn't been for Ms. Clinton."

"The lady your ship is named after?" asked Curtis.

"The president my ship is named after. Best president the navy had, since Ronald Reagan."

"The cowboy actor!"

"The one and only," smiled Jones.

"Excuse me," Black interjected. "No offense, Colonel. But a colored president? A lady president? A B-grade cowboy in the White House? What are you, using the funny pages for your history books? You gotta be yanking my chain. I'm looking around your whirligig here and I'll admit I can see a lot of change, a lot of advances. But some things, they just don't change."