Ripley was looking at him expectantly, and Lee smiled, and Ripley smiled in relief, as if they both understood something powerful about what one would like to be enveloped by while battling through complex skies.

“Oh,” Lee said, for there was one photograph over the magneto of a fully dressed woman with black bangs, looking straight at the camera with no discernible expression. She looked as if she were empty, as if the picture were out of focus, even though she was shown in crisp detail. She also looked familiar, more than familiar, eyes piercing those bangs with a challenging gaze much like those of the woman who had given Lee the finger puppets. The hairstyle was popular in Paris, so the coincidence was—

“What do you think, Duncan?”

“I like it, sir,” he said, looking at Ripley again.

“Shall we get those souvenirs?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lee stepped out of the pilot’s cab, where Ripley had pasted the photograph of his wife right over the controls to his Marlins. When he shot at the enemy he was staring directly into her matchless eyes.

It wasn’t as simple as jumping into the plane; the Liberty engine required three normal men to swing the prop. Starting it today was a relaxed affair, since the flight was looked upon as a practice run. Lee was asked if he would settle a bet and start the prop by himself, and he shook his head—it was widely believed, and equally disbelieved, that he was tall and strong enough to do it.

“There’s ten bucks in it for you,” said the sergeant, who had thirty riding by now.

Lee declined, for perhaps the hundredth time, in this case remembering a legitimate reason: he had not entirely loaded the plane with its necessary ordnance. So he trotted in his teddy bear back to the officers’ quarters as the field filled with men attempting to start up Lenore.

A sergeant sat in the pilot’s cockpit, priming the engine, and with the throttle a quarter open, gave the signal to the first man, who turned the propeller with one rough hand, and extended his other hand, which the second man grabbed firmly, and then the third man took the second man’s other hand in his own, so they made a human daisy chain, ready to pull in a tug of war.

“Contact!” yelled the first man.

“Contact!” yelled the sergeant, and then all three men began to sway together. To the left, and then to the right, with vigor. It was a piston motion and a Russian dance, and when they were almost carried off their heels with the rocking, the first man pulled the prop with all his might, and then, with the weight of the others coming to his aid, the propeller swung upward, the men sprawled onto the field, laughing, and the engine caught on the very first try.

While the engine warmed, Ripley and Lee were engaged in conversation.