Still. When the crowd surged forward to encompass the Centauri, almost before it had come to a stop on the runway at Sydney Airport, Irene stared out the window in a state of shock. Nothing could prepare you for that, nobody could explain what it was like to sit in the focus of so much concentrated attention. In those days, when things like syndicated newspapers and radio and moving pictures were only just beginning to exert their power over the mass imagination, fame wasn’t yet something to be afraid of, something that could take over your life and habits and change your psychological composition. Only one man in the world really knew what celebrity meant, and that was Lindbergh. As Irene witnessed this evidence of fame, as she was made to understand what a crowd of fifty thousand people actually looked like, she didn’t feel any sense of elation or triumph. She felt the opposite. She felt dread. Her life was about to change; her daily existence, her sense of herself—Irene—had just been obliterated and replaced with something she didn’t recognize. There was nothing ahead but fog and darkness.

The first man through the hatch was George Morrow. Boy, was he beaming! Irene couldn’t understand a word he said, but she had the unsettling impression that he was a Broadway manager, and she was an actress who had performed her part perfectly, though she hadn’t even seen the script. First he kissed her hand and then he shook Sam’s hand. Then he noticed the cat, crouched behind Sam’s ankles.

“What the hell?” he said.

Sam picked up Sandy. “Stowaway.”

“I’ll be damned. That’s brilliant!” Morrow exclaimed. “Press’ll love it.”

A car was already waiting, motor rumbling, to whisk them into town, to George Morrow’s suite at the Harbour Rocks Hotel. There, a doctor examined them both thoroughly and pronounced them in excellent health, except for some lingering exhaustion and dehydration, in addition to the temporary loss of hearing, which the doctor expected to subside soon. Morrow and the doctor then bustled outside to announce this happy news to the waiting press, and Sam and Irene were left alone with Sandy, who curled up in an armchair and went warily to sleep.

There was no point in talking yet, because of the deafness, and of course they expected Morrow back any second. Sam got up and walked to one of the giant windows that looked out over Sydney Harbor, and Irene joined him. They didn’t touch. Nor did they hear George Morrow when he bustled back inside and came up behind them. They both started when he took each of them by the arm and informed them, loudly, that he was going to escort them by the back stairs to their suites, where the hotel chambermaids were waiting to draw their baths and ready them for an afternoon nap.