The landing on HMS Invincible was different from the COD's arrival on the Kennedy.  The ride became rocky as Parker descended through the clouds, and it occurred to Ryan that they were on the leading edge of the same storm he'd endured the night before.  The canopy was coated with rain, and he heard the impact of thousands of raindrops on the airframe—or was it hail?  Watching the instruments, he saw that Parker leveled out at a thousand feet, while they were still in clouds, then descended more slowly, breaking into the clear at a hundred feet.  The Invincible was scarcely a half the Kennedy's size.  He watched her bobbing actively on the fifteen-foot seas.  Parker used the same technique as before.  He hovered briefly on the carrier's port side, then slid to the right, dropping the fighter twenty feet onto a painted circle.  The landing was hard, but Ryan was able to see it coming.  The canopy came up at once.

"You can get out here," Parker said.  "I have to taxi to the elevator."

A ladder was already in place.  He unbuckled and got out.  A crewman had already retrieved his bag.  Ryan followed him to the island and was met by an ensign—a sublieutenant, the British call the rank.

"Welcome aboard, sir."  The youngster couldn't be more than twenty, Ryan thought.  "Let me help you out of the flight suit."

The sublieutenant stood by as Ryan unzipped and took off his helmet, Mae West, and coverall.  He retrieved his cap from the bag.  In the process he bounced off the bulkhead a few times.  The Invincible seemed to be corkscrewing in a following sea.  A bow wind and a following sea?  In the North Atlantic in winter, nothing was too crazy.  The officer took his bag, and Ryan held onto the briefing material.

"Lead on, leftenant," Ryan gestured.  The youngster shot up a series of three ladders, leaving Jack panting behind, thinking about the jogging he wasn't getting in.  The combination of the ship's motion and an inner ear badly scrambled from the day's flying made him dizzy, and he found himself bumping into things.  How did professional pilots do it?

"Here's the flag bridge, sir."  The sublieutenant held the door open.

"Hello, Jack!" boomed the voice of Vice Admiral John White, eighth earl of Weston.  He was a tall, well-built man of fifty with a florid complexion set off by a white scarf at his neck.  Jack had first met him earlier in the year, and since then his wife Cathy and the countess, Antonia, had become close friends, members of the same circle of amateur musicians.  Cathy Ryan played classical piano.  Toni White, an attractive woman of forty-four, owned a Guarnieri del Jesu violin.  Her husband was a man whose peerage was treated as the convenient afterthought.  His career in the Royal Navy had been built entirely on merit.  Jack walked over to take his hand.

"Good day, Admiral."

"How was your flight?"