Another plane just like the first descended from the night sky. Its very appearance suggested something deadly, like a flashing blade or a bullet. Blinking lights gave away the position of yet another two aircraft banked up behind them. A familiar drone gradually emerged from beneath the monstrous thunder of the rocket planes.

“Prop-driven,” said Admiral King. “I guess they don’t—”

He never finished the sentence, stunned as he was by the appearance of the third aircraft. It looked a lot more conventional than the first two, a bit like a Grumman Goose, or even a Catalina, at a stretch. But in contrast with the windswept lines of the rocket planes, this lumbering barge sat underneath something that looked like a giant cigar welded to a couple of struts sticking out of the fuselage. It droned past without deploying chutes, and then the last plane touched down. It was the least prepossessing of the three.

“Looks like a transporter,” said someone behind Roosevelt. He didn’t recognize the voice.

One of the civilians huddled in the small group out in front of the hut turned around with his hands jammed deep in his duffel coat.

“That’d be their tanker, I bet. They can refuel while they’re in the air. You’d have to figure those rocket planes burn gas like a bastard . . . Uhm, sorry, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt waved away the apology.

For the first time since he’d been told of the disaster at Midway he didn’t feel as if he was falling helplessly down a bottomless well. No, now he was intrigued.

Kolhammer hit a switch to crack the seal on the Raptor’s bubble canopy. It opened with a slight hiss as he stripped off his mask and flipped up the helmet visor. He lost night vision, but his eyes soon adjusted from the artificial jade green of low-light amplification to the soft silver tones of moon and starlight. Any initial pleasure he’d felt at the chance to fly a fast-mover again had been lost in the sickening whirl of emotions stirred up at crossing the West Coast. They’d come in well to the north of Los Angeles, not wanting to start a panic. He’d still seen the heat dome of the city on infrared, however. It seemed impossibly small and feeble, but of course LA was nearly twelve times bigger in his day.