Here at twelve thousand feet in the air, the temperature was cold, about twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Both Irene and Sam had already put on their scarves and their fingerless gloves, and still Irene’s fingers were almost too stiff to hold the pencil and scratch out a reply.

First she wrote, Nice to meet your wife at last. She crumpled that up and threw it in the wastebasket.

Next, she wrote, Improvement expected. Clear skies currently in Hawai’i. She crumpled that up too.

Finally: Your daughter takes after you.

Sam pulled this note from the clothesline and held it between his finger and thumb for some time. Irene looked over his shoulder. There was a photograph stuck into the instrument panel, a snapshot of a small, towheaded girl wearing a large bow in her hair. Irene couldn’t tell if Sam was looking at her note or the photograph, or both at once.

After a minute or so, Sam picked up his pencil and wrote on the back of Irene’s note.

Better she turns out like you.

In a well-built airplane like the Rofrano Centauri, ably piloted in decent weather with adequate navigational guidance, fatigue was the chief danger. Every pilot had his own method of dealing with this condition. Most favored coffee. Others appreciated the stimulant effect of chewing gum. Singing was popular, or (among the pious, anyway) the recitation of Bible verses, or (for the mathematically minded) the solution of complex equations. In the account of his famous Atlantic crossing, Lindbergh claimed to resort to propping up his own eyelids.

Now, Sam and Irene were fortunate to share this burden of staying awake during their audacious voyage across the Pacific. They had filled several Thermoses of coffee and packed some sandwiches, though not many because nothing sent you to sleep so quickly as a full stomach. Since Sam flew the airplane, it was Irene’s job to supply cup after cup of java, and also to look the other way when this gluttony reached its inevitable conclusion. (A pair of milk cans, if you have to ask.) She was also supposed to pass notes every ten minutes, to which Sam was supposed to answer back. After six hours of steady and uneventful flying, however, Irene had run out of both technical observations and small talk.

She wrote, Good idea to tell press this was test flight.