“’Bye,” Jerry said with some polite near-indifference of his own. He walked out of the room with the phone connected to the mainland and nodded at Steve. “Your turn. If you live near where you work, you won’t have a long trip home from the airport, either.”

“I’m not real far away, no.” Steve went into the telephone room, shutting the door behind him.

After that, there was lunch, and after that there was dinner. Both were Navy chow: plain vittles cooked even more plainly. After two months eating high on the hog on the Glomar Explorer, that kind of eating seemed like a war crime.

No TV after dinner. There hadn’t been any before dinner, either. The Quonset hut didn’t hold a set. A shortwave radio sat on a shelf near one end of the prefab building. That seemed to be Midway’s main connection to the outside world. Jerry wasn’t desperate enough for noise to want to listen to the BBC or Voice of America or even Radio Moscow. Neither was anyone else.

Everybody hit the sack early. If the flight took off at 0600, people would need to be up before sunrise for coffee and, with luck, breakfast. Jerry’s mattress was thin and lumpy. He fell asleep as if coshed anyway.

The coffee was hot and fresh. Breakfast … biscuits and Danishes left over from the day before. It wasn’t a taste treat, but it plastered over the empty places inside. Jerry wished he could have slept for another couple of hours, but he figured he’d make it through the long day ahead.

Along with the other A crew men, he lugged his gear out to the waiting plane. It was, he learned, a Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star, a machine more suited to carrying radar than passengers. With four enormous props, it looked like a leftover from World War II. It also looked as if it had a lot of miles on it.

Jerry figured it had made a ton of flights like this. It ought to be able to manage one more. He stowed his suitcase and hydrophone and plunked his behind down in a low, uncomfortable seat. The engines thundered to life. Soundproofing inside the fuselage? It was to laugh. The Warning Star made the helicopter quiet by comparison.

Four- or five-hour flight, too, Jerry reminded himself as the plane lumbered down the runway and, seemingly to its own surprise, hopped into the air. Next to him, Steve said something. Jerry cupped a hand to his ear to show he hadn’t got it.

This time, Steve shouted: “Takes off like a gooney bird!”

“It does!” Jerry nodded to make sure the older man knew he’d heard.