The rear bounced, the wheels caught, Lenore roared forward as if launched from a slingshot. Lee tripped through the mud, his ankle twisting again under him so he stumbled, breaking his fall with his wrists. Then he was up and running again, the plane just within reach.

As he ran, rain pelted him and broke against his face. His uniform was ruined, wet, torn, and blistered and charred. His legs pumped forward, his arms furiously reaching forward. And he was crying from fear of missing the two puppies that were slowly, by the second, jolting and bouncing out of his reach.

Then his hand was on the fuselage, the plane was leaping, and he threw himself against it with a final embrace. The rattling was violent and awful, they were five feet, ten feet, twenty into the air, but he could not so easily fall into his seat—he had to ease down carefully, avoiding the teddy-bear suit, and as Ripley pulled the stick toward his stomach, there was a lurch, Lenore jumped up abruptly, and then there was a sound like playing cards riffling as the treetops scraped against their wheels. They were airborne.

At fifteen hundred feet, they burst through the low clouds and into the cold blue autumn sky. Lee had settled on his bench with his teddy bear in a bunch, the fleece pressed against his skin. It rested in his lap as if he had skinned an animal and were bringing its pelt home. His teeth began to chatter. He was soaking wet, and now it was freezing, and the wind rushed past the scrapes on his skin like the serrated blade of a knife.

Ripley knew the general way home, given the position of the sun, and how the clouds below were opening up. There was something that looked like where the Blackbird Forest had once been, and then a cluster of buildings that was the remains of the village of Corny, most likely. If Lee was right, they would next pass a railroad yard with a small lake beside it, the site of the Dépôt Roi Blanc, and, yes, there it was. They would be home in fifteen minutes, perhaps less.

Lee craned his neck, the wind freezing him into shivers, as if icicles would form on his skin. He looked for enemy fighters. It seemed unlikely to him that fate would allow them simply to find their way to the barracks without a squadron of Fokkers on their tail, now that they were unarmed.

He knew little about dogs. He had wanted one, but his mother had told him about the keeper family that had tried to bring their dog to the Reef in their boat, and how it had been slung overboard, and had drowned, and how she couldn’t risk such a terrible thing, and could Leland wish such a fate upon a helpless creature?