“No photography on Midway,” Porter said as they taxied to a stop. “On the ship, you can do as you please—that’s been agreed. But not here. Everybody understand?” Nikolai Kalyakin translated for his less fluent colleagues. They all nodded.

Sailors with flashlights guided the new arrivals straight to the mess hall. They parked their suitcases by a table and lined up for trays of Navy breakfast chow. Jerry remembered how disappointed he’d been with the food here after eating high on the hog on the Glomar Explorer. It didn’t seem too bad now.

Most of the Russians went back for seconds, and a couple for thirds. “So much!” one of them said to another.

“So good!” his friend added. Jerry wouldn’t have gone that far. Again, he suspected the Soviet scientists had different standards of comparison.

“We may rest now?” Kalyakin asked Jack Porter. How weary and jet-lagged were he and his fellows? If they’d left from Moscow, they’d come more than halfway around the world.

But the security chief shook his head. “First helicopter leaves at sunrise, second one forty-five minutes later. Once you get aboard the Glomar Explorer, you people can take all the downtime you need. Till then, I’m sorry, but no.”

If Jerry had been Nikolai Kalyakin, he would have raised hell. The astronomer just sighed, nodded, and turned Porter’s words into Russian. None of the other scientists fussed, either, though they must have been dead on their feet. They were bound to be used to having security personnel tell them what to do.

One of Porter’s subordinates read the names of who’d go out on the first flight and who on the second. Jerry was on the first. So was Kalyakin. He gave low-voiced instructions to an engineer named Vitaly Yushchenko, who’d fly to the Glomar Explorer on the second chopper. Keep your half of the guys in line till we get back together, was Jerry’s guess.

Along with half a dozen Russians and a couple of CIA men, Jerry boarded the Navy helicopter and strapped down. The sun was just coming up. Away from the base, the gooney birds began to stir. Kalyakin pointed at them. “Al’batrosov!” he said, which probably meant Russian had borrowed the name from English.

The whirlybird’s engine roared to life. Jerry’d thought he remembered how horribly noisy it was in the cabin, but he turned out to be wrong. He gritted his teeth so hard, he hoped he didn’t break one. The helicopter hopped off the ground and flew across the Pacific.