“Oh, on the button,” young Husack said in a fatigued Harvard drawl of utter resentment.

Distelhorst plodded on, feeling freshly encouraged. “Now I know that Czar Kennedy’s your grampa—isn’t that it, Miss Storm? That probably answers any question I’d want to ask about you. One of the great pioneers of our day, Czar is. One of the greatest of our country.”

“I’ve got another grandfather who’s still greater,” Chris said.

“Where’s he?”

“Right here.”

Distelhorst glanced hurriedly around as though expecting to find a concealed seventh passenger. “Oh, you mean here in Alaska. May I ask what he does that makes him so great? No offense. And what’s his name?”

“His name is Storm like mine—rather, mine like his. Thor Storm. He publishes the weekly paper, Northern Light. And he writes books about Alaska. The real Alaska. And he fishes.”

“Fishes?” Distelhorst repeated, dazedly. “You mean he owns a cannery? Or—uh—–”

An involuntary shout of laughter came simultaneously from Ott, from Chris, from Guildenstern. Contritely Chris said, “Sorry. It’s just a local joke, we didn’t mean—uh—my Grandfather Storm sometimes goes out in the big tenders for the salmon catch in the season. He’s done it for years. That’s all part of his books. And the canneries. I think you’ll find the book he’s doing now very interesting. You, and Mr. Kleet and General Baldwin and Dave Husack and perhaps even Miss Drake and Bay Husack. Just as local color, of course.”

As though they were alone in the car Bay Husack said, “You haven’t changed a bit, Chris.”

Her sparkling face looked over her shoulder toward him a moment. “Not even for the worse?”

“Well,” grudgingly, “perhaps just a little.”

The two, one front seat one back seat, laughed together then, spontaneously, as at some old private joke. An almost indiscernible stir of resentment seemed momentarily to move Dina Drake and Ott Decker.

Wilbur Distelhorst was not a man to waste time in silence. He glanced right glanced left out of the car windows, he released a barrage of interrogation. Population … Industry … Legislature … Local Government … Baranof College enrollment … Fish gold timber oil food clothing daylight temperatures.

“… one thing, I understood it would be dark all day, this time of year, why it’s real bright, just how much daylight do you …”

Ott Decker, at the wheel, tossed the answers over his shoulder, he had answered them all a thousand times before.

“We have plenty of daylight, of course December and January are kind of dark, but the sun doesn’t set until about—well, it’s about noon now—it’ll set about two o’clock.”

Wilbur Distelhorst looked fixedly out of the window, as though considering using his influence to change all this. “Two?” he said, disapprovingly.

“Of course,” Ott went on, blithely, “you know up here in the winter the sun rises in the south and sets in the south, and in the summer of course it rises in the north and sets in the north, that’s when we have twenty-four hours of daylight, you’d like it then, most people from Outside—–”