Sam replied, Live and learn and handed back his empty coffee cup. Irene filled it and passed it on, then poured herself a cup of coffee and wrapped her frozen hands around the mug. Sam had told her about the start of the Dole Derby, about Lindbergh’s flight and the chaos of departure. The throngs of press and spectators that nearly caused disaster. He’d insisted on this misdirection, and he’d been right. Why, the excitement over the supposed test flight was nutty enough; imagine if all those reporters had known they were leaving for Australia that very day! It was unnerving, the idea of all that mass attention directed on the two of them.

Irene set down the cup and leaned down to retrieve one of her maps from its case on the floor. But her hand didn’t encounter the metal edge of the map case. Instead, it sank into a nest of warm, soft fluff.

The fluff moved, jumped into Irene’s lap, and started to purr.

By now, Sandy was maybe seven or eight months old and had grown into a large cat, a diligent mouser, who considered Hangar C her personal dominion and Sam Mallory her personal servant. She looked up at Irene and stretched one lazy paw over the side of her lap. She had a narrow, pointed face and a pair of tawny eyes, which conveyed both affection for her human subjects and an insuperable right to occupy whatever space she pleased.

Irene reached for the notepaper and wrote: Stowaway. She clipped the note to the clothesline and ran it forward. Sam glanced left in surprise; the next note wasn’t due for several minutes yet. He read it, frowned, and looked back. His mouth made a round, panicked hole.

Sandy, on the other hand—Irene could have sworn the cat grinned back at him. It was a love affair between the two of them—unequal, naturally, in the face of Sandy’s obvious superiority of status—but a love affair nonetheless. From Irene’s lap, Sandy jumped to her accustomed place on Sam’s shoulders and started to lick his leather cap. Then she draped herself comfortably and went back to sleep.

As dawn approached, the clouds thinned and then disappeared altogether. The black ocean spread beneath them, split apart by a cold white moon. Irene’s head was now intolerably heavy. She thought about Lindbergh propping open his eyelids. She took her pencil and dug it into the back of her hand, just to create some sensation, any kind of stimulation to her nerves. The airplane began to dive. Irene looked at Sam and saw that Sandy was gone and Sam’s head was bent to his chest. She lunged forward and grabbed the stick.