Turbulence tossed the DH 4 around like a god’s cocktail shaker. To go straight on takeoff or landing was to be called a sissy; the point was to show a little style, and so there were banks and spirals and loops, normally. But not today. Ripley seemed to be set on going straight up, full pressure on the stick, drawn into his stomach.

Lee could not get his attention, though he banged twice; still, they simply climbed vertically, dangerously, taking the plane to its limits. Lee looked behind him, at the ground. Below was the three-fingered lake at Lachausse, the V cut through Le Bois de Mort-Mare, and flanking it, the miles of ground pockmarked by shell holes, the lengths of wrecked railroads, overturned carriages, and then, spreading around them, the trenches that zigzagged crazily, as if interlaced by drunken spiders, tinier and tinier. The engine was groaning, it was beginning to make the sounds of pinging and popping that meant the carbs weren’t adjusting to the great shift in height.

They were climbing too quickly. The wings twirled in the breeze, spiraling, the propeller pointing straight in the air; they pierced the clouds, vanished into the sheets of crystal and ice, and then, on the other side, were into the blue, where it was colder, and still no change in velocity; it was as if Ripley were going to take them to the edge of space, where the stars would always shine without twinkling.

Then the plane was horizontal again.

Lee could breathe again. Wrapped around him on the walls of his cockpit were mosaics of bones and skeletons, memento mori, thanatopian lithographs, and, as in the pilot’s cab, there was a single image in the dead center. But this one was not of an alluring woman. It was a wedding photograph. The groom wore an observer’s uniform, and a Statue of Liberty badge. The bride wore white. But both of their faces had been replaced by skulls. Which was disturbing enough, but Lee knew with a certainty that made him ill that he had seen this photograph before. Except as a painting. As egg tempera.

They flew on toward the horizon line, which from this great height showed the curvature of the earth. The war was below them, the arcs of occasional shells lofting and falling to earth: black puffs of smoke were the Huns, white bursts were Allied. The wind was brutal here, the air thin, and as Ripley throttled back, the radial popped, a burst of blue flame whipping from the exhaust stack past the cockpit. He and Lee were miles and miles away from anyone else who might harm them.