“In the first place, I didn’t bring you up here, you brought me. I didn’t ask you to. You wangled it. In the second place, there’s been no act of mating that I’m aware of.”

“You’d be aware.”

“And in the third place, big girl or little girl, if my grandfathers—Grampa Czar, anyway—were to hear you talking like that he’d call the Territorial Police.”

“You’re up a few thousand feet, you can’t walk out on me and slam the door.”

“Yes I can. Right back to Grampa and Bridie.”

“Those three old people are going to tear you to pieces.”

“I’ll be going to Seattle next month. Don’t spoil this last trip for me.”

She stood up now. He shifted into the pilot’s seat. “This time next year you’ll probably be raving about Mount Rainier and all those high buildings, and the dances at the Olympic Hotel, and Bayard Husack.”

She was standing behind him as he sat in his proper place.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a son? It seems so strange you never told me you had a son.”

“I was afraid I’d lose you.”

“You can’t lose what you—–” She caught herself. Stopped.

“—what you haven’t got,” he finished for her.

“Ross, how old was he when your wife died?”

“He was two. Not quite two.”

The cockpit door opened. The stewardess, a cup in her hand. “Everybody says they’d love to see the Diomedes. Mrs. Ballantyne said, was it safe, she said she didn’t mind being shot, her time of life, but she didn’t want to be shot by a Russian. Here’s your coffee, Captain Guildenstern.”

Idiotically she heard herself saying, “You drink a lot of coffee, don’t you? Sort of every hour on the hour.”

“They say pilots have no blood. Just coffee in their veins.”

“What did my Grandfather say?” Chris asked the stewardess.

“Let’s see—what was that he said? Oh, yes, he said nothing is safe from destruction except the spirit of man, I think it was. And he said that even that—–”

“Oh dear,” Christine said. “You don’t think Grampa is getting to be one of those pontifical dramatizers, do you?”

“Call Ackerman, will you, Miss Larson?”

Almost as if he had taken her by the shoulders, pushed her firmly through the cockpit door and had closed the door after her, she felt that he had shut her out of his consciousness for the time, at least. He was looking straight ahead, he was hunched a little over the instrument panel.

“I think you’d better take your seat, Miss Storm,” the stewardess said. “And fasten your seat belt. Sometimes it gets a little bumpy around here.”

Ackerman, the co-pilot, passed her at the doorway. “Why don’t you stay and see the Diomedes from here, Miss Storm?”

“I’ve been fired.”

Bridie surveyed her with a searching ice-blue eye. “You want to sit here with me? Or with your Grandpa?”

“I’ll sit back here alone.”

“Mhm.” Bridie’s inflection was a comment.