No, that had to have been the moment when an ashen-faced navy commander had appeared to tell him what had happened at Midway. Roosevelt shook his head at the memory as he spotted flashing red-and-white lights descending from the northwest.

"Hell's bells, Turtletaub," he'd yelled out at the unfortunate officer just a week earlier. "What madness is this? Next you'll be telling me space lizards have landed."

Well, he'd had to apologize to the young man later, hadn't he? It turned out the world had flipped completely off-balance, and now here he was, stuck out in the California desert, waiting to meet men from the future.

Damn it all but he needed a cigarette.

"Interesting," said Einstein as twin spikes of blue-white flame speared from the tail of the dartlike craft as it roared down out of the night sky and past the hut at a seemingly breakneck speed. "Those are the jets they told us of, Mr. President."

The aircraft seemed like death incarnate to Roosevelt. Every line seemed to threaten violence. More than a few of the onlookers gasped like children at a fireworks display, awed by the screaming passage of the sleek, lethal craft.

As the president wondered whether they'd built a long enough runway, parachutes unfurled behind the monster.

Another plane just like the first descended from the night sky. Its very appearance suggested something deadly, like a flashing blade or a bullet. Blinking lights gave away the position of yet another two aircraft banked up behind them. A familiar drone gradually emerged from beneath the monstrous thunder of the rocket planes.

"Prop-driven," said Admiral King. "I guess they don't-"

He never finished the sentence, stunned as he was by the appearance of the third aircraft. It looked a lot more conventional than the first two, a bit like a Grumman Goose, or even a Catalina, at a stretch. But in contrast with the windswept lines of the rocket planes, this lumbering barge sat underneath something that looked like a giant cigar welded to a couple of struts sticking out of the fuselage. It droned past without deploying chutes, and then the last plane touched down. It was the least prepossessing of the three.

"Looks like a transporter," said someone behind Roosevelt. He didn't recognize the voice.

One of the civilians huddled in the small group out in front of the hut turned around with his hands jammed deep in his duffel coat.

"That'd be their tanker, I bet. They can refuel while they're in the air. You'd have to figure those rocket planes burn gas like a bastard… Uhm, sorry, Mr. President."

Roosevelt waved away the apology.

For the first time since he'd been told of the disaster at Midway he didn't feel as if he was falling helplessly down a bottomless well. No, now he was intrigued.

Kolhammer hit a switch to crack the seal on the Raptor's bubble canopy. It opened with a slight hiss as he stripped off his mask and flipped up the helmet visor. He lost night vision, but his eyes soon adjusted from the artificial jade green of low-light amplification to the soft silver tones of moon and starlight. Any initial pleasure he'd felt at the chance to fly a fast-mover again had been lost in the sickening whirl of emotions stirred up at crossing the West Coast. They'd come in well to the north of Los Angeles, not wanting to start a panic. He'd still seen the heat dome of the city on infrared, however. It seemed impossibly small and feeble, but of course LA was nearly twelve times bigger in his day.

It was a jarring episode. He was used to looking down on that coastline, whether in daylight or darkness, and searching for his own home; not the exact house of course, but the general area, in the center of the bay, at the edge of the city's apparently unbounded sprawl. It was one of the few safe mooring points of his life, the knowledge that Marie was down there, waiting for him. Except that she hadn't even been born yet, and if he couldn't get back to her, he'd most likely die before she was. Then their son, Jed, would never be, which seemed even more upsetting than having lost him off Taiwan. The sorrows and consequence of this fucking insanity twisted in on themselves like a snake devouring its tail.

"Admiral Kolhammer? Sir? They're coming."

Kolhammer shook his head and consciously pulled out of the dark well of self-absorption. He reminded himself that the woman in the rear seat had left behind two daughters, aged three and five. The Raptor was named for her firstborn, Condi.

"Sorry, Lieutenant," he said. "I think I'm getting too old for this."

"We all are, sir. Little kids and make-believe, that's what this reminds me of."

The drumming of boots across the tarmac wasn't make-believe. A six-man squad was double-timing in their direction with rifles at the ready. They pounded to a halt about twenty meters away. A sergeant called out, "Which one of you is Kolhammer?"

"Over here," he yelled back, waving a small torch.

The sergeant spoke to a couple of his men, who trotted away into the darkness at the edge of the tarmac. Kolhammer heard the sound of an iron door swinging open and being dropped with a clang. He peered into the gloom and saw the soldiers haul a stepladder out of a pit in the ground beneath the trapdoor.

"Five-star service," he muttered to Lieutenant Torres.

The noncom waved the men with the wooden ladder over to a spot just below the fighter's cockpit. It bumped against the fuselage with a dull thud. For some reason the noise sealed the deal for Kolhammer. They were lost forever-of that he was certain.

"Age before beauty, sir," said Flight Lieutenant Anna Torres with a tired smile in her voice.

Kolhammer swung himself out and over the side. He could see men and women dropping to the ground from the AWAC bird and the refueler.

He took the ladder in three steps, and landed back on the U.S. of A.

It didn't feel like home.

Nevertheless, Kolhammer was surprised to feel his heart beating faster as they approached the hut. A small cluster of men in dark coats and hats stood in the malarial glow of a yellow lamp at the foot of a set of steps leading up to…

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

His heart gave a real lurch.

And there, standing behind Roosevelt, was the unmistakable figure of Albert Einstein. The unruly explosion of gray-white hair was as recognizable as Elvis in a jumpsuit or Marilyn Monroe standing over a grate with hot air blowing up her dress. Kolhammer stiffened his back, an impulse that seemed to run through the other fliers at the exact same moment. They finished the last few yards in lockstep and snapped out a salute in perfect unison to the thirty-second president of the United States of America.

Roosevelt found himself in an electric moment. He could feel the charge running through the men around him. Even Einstein seemed to flinch, or shiver. He sensed powerful currents of antipathy and fear from some of the military officers gathered around his chair. Admiral Ernest J. King, in particular, appeared to be struggling with his volcanic temperament. The man's knuckles were white, he'd clenched his fists so tightly. Even Eisenhower seemed incredibly tense.

Roosevelt returned the salute, fumbling with his cigarette holder as he did so.

He saw their commander, Kolhammer, hesitate momentarily as he took in the sight of Eisenhower. He saluted uncertainly. The brigadier returned the gesture after a very obvious pause.

A few seconds of uncomfortable silence enveloped the small tableau, during which the only sound was the faint moan of the desert winds.

Roosevelt realized that he was absorbed by the sight of these men and women, generations removed from his own. They all wore flight suits of some kind and carried rocketeer helmets, probably because they flew so high. About half of them looked to be cut from the same cloth as his own officers, educated, middle-class white men. But there was no avoiding or denying the stone-cold fact that the rest were a lucky dip of sorts. Men and women. Some white. Some black. Some Mexican and even Asiatic. And some? He honestly had no idea. The awe and amazement he'd felt at the sight of their arrival remained. But he was a politician, and in his gut, political instincts were also engaged.