Irene checked her box of notepaper and pens. She checked her charts and equipment, her compasses and sextant and smoke bombs that measured wind drift, her celestial maps, her Mercator projections of the North Pacific and South Pacific, ocean currents indicated, prevailing winds noted. She had recalibrated all three of her magnetic compasses an hour ago, but she checked them again now, because a mistake of a sliver of a degree would mean missing those volcanic specks known as Hawai’i by hundreds of miles. She turned on both radios and settled her headset over her ears, tuned the agreed-upon frequency and announced herself into the transmitter. A crackle came back from the transmitter in the airfield’s control tower, then Mr. Rofrano’s baritone, eternally calm. Rofrano tower. Centauri, acknowledge. Another voice joined them from the United States naval station at Long Beach. Everyone in place, everyone at his designated mark. A whole legion of supporting actors in this drama, the choreography of which had been arranged by George Morrow.

In the cockpit, Sam started the right engine, then the left. The propellers thudded, measured at first, then faster and faster until the thuds all merged into a noise like a colossal insect. The ship faced north, so there was no glare from the sun to disturb their preparations. Not a word passed between them, by air or by paper. Sam knew exactly what she was up to, and Irene knew what Sam was up to, almost as if her own hands performed his tasks and her own eyes looked through that cockpit window and surveyed the airfield, the sky, the landscape, the wind sock that drooped atop the control tower.

As they pulled away from the hangar area and onto the landing strip, Irene couldn’t help looking out the window at the crowd that followed them, forming and re-forming in a swarm, like ants. Already Irene felt detached from them. They belonged to the earthbound world. The slim tube of the Centauri contained Irene’s world. Everything that was real and important.

Eleven minutes later, the Centauri lifted off from Rofrano’s Airfield in Burbank, California, on an east-southeast bearing, banked south, and crossed directly over the city of Los Angeles before reaching the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the sky above Long Beach. Irene saw Catalina Island crawl past on the left, surrounded by a hundred tiny white scratches, the wakes of motorboats. She informed the Long Beach naval station of their position, altitude, and heading.

Once they reached eight thousand feet, Sam leveled off and turned his head to wink at Irene, as if they’d just gotten away with something mischievous. The radio crackled. Irene turned her attention to the receiver, while Sam turned his attention to the controls. It was the Long Beach naval station, acknowledging her transmission and wishing them Godspeed.