For all Slothrop knows, it was a kazoo. By the time he’s awake, the racket has faded in the morning. Whatever it was, it woke him up. What it was, or is, is Pirate Prentice, in a more or less hijacked P-47, on route to Berlin. His orders are terse and clear, like those of the others, agents of the Pope, Pope got religion, go out ’n’ find that minnesinger, he’s a good guy after all… .

Well, it’s an older Jug, one with a greenhouse canopy. The barred field of sight gives Pirate twinges of memory in his neck muscles. The plane seems permanently out of trim to him, though he still fiddles now and then with different tabs. Right now he’s trying the War Emergency Power to see how it works, even though there seems to be no War, no Emergency, keeping an eye on the panel, where RPMs, manifold pressure, and cylinder-head temperature are all nudging their red lines. He eases it down and flies on, and presently is trying a slow roll over Celle, then a loop over Brunswick, then, what the hell, an Immelmann over Magdeburg. On his back, molars aching in a grin, he starts his roll a hair too slow, just this side of one-thirty, and nearly stalls it, jolts over a set of surprise points—finish it as an ordinary loop or go for the Immelmann?—already reaching for ailerons, forget the damn rudder, a spin isn’t worth worrying about… but at the last second does give the pedal just a touch anyway, a minor compromise (I’m nearly forty, good God, is it happening to me too?) and rolls himself upright again. It had to be the Immelmann.

Oh I’m the Eagle of Tooting,

Bombing and shooting,

And nobodee can bring me down!

Old Kaiser Bill, you’re over the hill,

Cause I’m comin’ into your home town!

Tell all the fräuleins and mademoiselles

To keep a light in the window for me…

Cause I’m the Eagle of Tooting, just rooty-toot-tooting.

And flyin’ on to victo-ree!

By now, Osbie Feel ought to be in Marseilles, already trying to contact Blodgett Waxwing. Webley Silvernail is on route to Zürich. Katje will be going to Nordhausen… Katje… .

No, no, she hasn’t told him everything she’s been up to. It’s none of his business. However much she told him, there’d always be the bit of mystery to her. Because of what he is, because of directions he can’t move in. But how is it both of them kept from vanishing from each other, into the paper cities and afternoons of this strange peace, and the coming Austerity? Could it be there’s something about ad hoc arrangements, like the present mission, that must bring you in touch with the people you need to be with? that more formal adventures tend, by their nature, to separation, to loneliness? Ah, Prentice… . What’s this, a runaway prop? no, no, check the fuel-pressure—here’s the gauge needle wobbling, rather low, tank’s run dry—