Technical details fascinated Sam. He knew he would never be able to repair, let alone improve, a Y-range set or a hydrophone. That didn’t bother him. The better he understood how the gadgets worked, what they could and couldn’t do, the better he’d be able to use them and the more he could count on what they told him.

“Keep listening,” was all he said now.

“Who, me?” Bevacqua answered. Sam laughed. He knew how hard the petty officer concentrated with the earphones on his head.

Pat Cooley waved at the thick clouds overhead. “We’ve got a nice low ceiling this morning,” he remarked. “We probably don’t have to worry about the maritime bombers too much. Only thing that has any real chance of running across us is a flying boat out snooping.”

“Yeah, those bastards fly low all the time,” Sam agreed. “One of these days before too long, they’ll have Y-range gear, too, and then everything’ll be out to lunch. Makes you wonder what the Navy’s coming to, doesn’t it?” He wasn’t worried, not as far as his own career went. A kid like Cooley would see a lot more change, though.

The exec didn’t seem unduly worried. “If we’re vulnerable to air power, we’ll just have to bring our own air power with us, that’s all. If our airplanes shoot down their airplanes before they can get at us, we win. That was the real lesson of the Pacific War.”

Sam had been in the Pacific War. Cooley hadn’t even been at Annapolis yet. That didn’t mean he was wrong. “Carriers have a hard time operating against land-based air, though,” he said. “Too many attackers can swamp you. We found that out at Charleston.” He’d been there, too, when this war was new.

“Put enough carriers together and you’ll swamp the land-based air.” Cooley might have been right about that. Neither the United States nor Britain, the two major carrier powers in the Atlantic, had been able to prove it yet. Japan was trying its hardest to do so over and around the Sandwich Islands.

Since Sam couldn’t prove anything one way or the other, he said, “Bring us around to course 090, Pat.”

“Changing course to 090-aye aye, sir.” Cooley swung the Josephus Daniels to port till she was steady on her new easterly course. “Steady on 090, sir.”

“Thank you. Now we’ve got a clear track to Providence-except for subs and mines and raiders and those flying boats and other little details like that.”

“Providence?” By the way the exec said it, he might have been talking about the Black Hole of Calcutta. He sighed noisily. “Well, it’s better than staying stuck in Philadelphia would be… I suppose. What are we going to do there, deliver the Daniels so she can take over as a training ship for the swabbies there?”

Seamen learning their trade went out on the Lamson, a destroyer of Great War vintage. They learned to fire weapons aboard her. They formed the black gang that served her wheezy engines. They worked in the galleys. They cleaned heads. They learned what it was like to sleep in a hammock with another sailor’s bad breath and backside only inches from their face.

“We’re not quite spavined enough for that,” Sam said. Cooley raised an eyebrow at an evidently unfamiliar word, but he figured out what it had to mean. Sam felt his years showing again. Back when people talked about horses all the time, you heard spavined every week if not every day. But the exec had grown up in an automotive age. If you talked about a spavined motorcar, you were making a joke, not describing anything real. Sam went on, “We’re going to escort a convoy down the coast to New York City and then back to Philly.”

“Should be exciting.” The exec mimed an enormous yawn.

Sam laughed. “If you’re on convoy-escort duty, you hope to Jesus it isn’t exciting. Everything that could make it exciting is bad.”

“I suppose so.” Cooley grudged him a nod, then winked. “One thing, Skipper-all that zigzagging will do wonders for you at the wheel.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam answered seriously, which spoiled Cooley’s joke, but the same thought had already occurred to him. And he wanted his shiphandling to get better. He wanted everything he did to get better. He’d got such a late start at being an officer, and still had so much catching up to do…

Fremont Blaine Dalby stared at the ships coming into Pearl Harbor. The CPO shook his head. “If those aren’t two of the ugliest sons of bitches I ever set eyes on, then you two guys are.” He nodded to Fritz Gustafson and George Enos, Jr.

George said, “I dunno, Chief. They look pretty damn good to me.”

“Yeah.” Gustafson added a nod.

“Bullshit,” Dalby said. The boss of the twin-40mm crew was a man of strong opinions. His being a Republican proved that. Some of his opinions were crackpot, too; as far as George was concerned, his being a Republican also proved that. He went on, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we don’t need ’em, on account of we do. But they’re still as ugly as the guy sitting next to you on the head.”

George grunted at that. Like any new sailor, he’d had to get used to doing his business in a facility without stalls. He hadn’t thought about it for a while now, and wondered if he’d be stricken with constipation because he did. He admitted to himself-if not to Fremont Dalby-that the senior rating had a point of sorts. The Trenton and the Chapultepec didn’t have the raked grace of a heavy cruiser. But the escort carriers brought something vital to the Sandwich Islands: hope.

They looked like what they were-freighters that had had their superstructures torn off and replaced with a flight deck. A tiny starboard island didn’t begin to make up for what had been amputated. But they carried thirty airplanes apiece. They had dive bombers and torpedo-carriers, and fighters to protect the strike aircraft and the ships themselves. The two of them put together were worth about as much as one fleet carrier.

“What I want to know is, are there more of them out in the Pacific?” George said. “That’s what really counts. If they can watch the gap where airplanes from the Sandwich Islands can’t stay and the ones from the West Coast can’t, either, then we really might hang on to this place.”

“They didn’t come by themselves, you know,” Dalby reminded him. “Most of the freighters and tankers that came with ’em are unloading in Honolulu, not here. But everybody’ll have enough beans and gasoline for a while longer.”

“Sure, Chief.” Disagreeing with a CPO when you were only an able seaman took diplomacy. Picking his words with care, George went on, “But it’s not waddayacallit-not economical, that’s what I want to say-to send these ugly ducklings back and forth to Frisco or wherever for each new convoy.”

“He’s right,” Gustafson said-another good-sized speech for him. He was a petty officer himself, though not an exalted chief. He could speak somewhat more freely to Dalby, but only somewhat. George was more than halfway convinced that CPOs really ran the Navy. They let officers think they did, but so many officers’ orders were based on what they heard from CPOs. A lieutenant, J.G., who tried to buck one of the senior ratings didn’t have a prayer. Even his own superiors wouldn’t back him, and it wouldn’t have helped if they did.

“Well, yeah,” Fremont Dalby said, “but these babies ought to be good for more than defense. They ought to be able to play sixty minutes. How many of ’em d’you figure we’d need to take Midway back from the Buddhaheads?”

Gustafson eyed the Chapultepec, which was closer. “Damn thing can’t do more’n eighteen knots if you chuck her off a cliff,” he opined-a veritable oration. He didn’t bother to say what he already knew: that Japanese fleet carriers, like most self-respecting warships, could make better than thirty.

Dalby only shrugged. “Doesn’t matter all that much. Airplanes are a hell of a lot faster than ships any which way.”