At least he didn’t have to drink the admiral’s terrible coffee.

Admittedly, it wasn’t much fun stamping back and forth along the empty flight deck at night, either. For the first days of June, this was miserable weather in the northwest Pacific. With the fog so cold and dense and rain sleeting in sideways, it was enough to make Lieutenant Commander Daniel Black long for the South Pacific, where temperatures belowdecks could climb to well over a hundred and touching the exposed metal topside raised painful burn blisters. But Black could take a little exposure, as long as it meant he didn’t have to stomach another cup of that goddamn poison green java Admiral Raymond Spruance insisted on grinding for himself every morning.

Black, a big rawboned copper miner in his former life, was Spruance’s assistant ops chief in this one. He jammed his hands deep into the pockets of his old leather flying coat and turned out of the wind as they reached the safety lights surrounding the first aircraft elevator. There had been a freak accident there just a few days ago, when Ensign Willie P. West and Lieutenant “Dusty” Kleiss were strolling the same path. Neither had heard the elevator warning signal, and West had stepped abruptly off into empty space. Kleiss found himself teetering on the edge of a gaping hole, and it took him a moment to regain his balance. Having done so, he peered over, expecting to find his friend lying in a crumpled heap.

Instead he found West smiling and waving from thirty feet below. He had landed on the elevator just as it started its descent, and said the sensation was like “landing on a feather bed.”

Commander Black didn’t feel like repeating the stunt and gave himself plenty of time to turn around. Admiral Spruance veered away, too, his black leather shoes squeaking on the wet deck. It was a small thing in a way, a pair of black shoes, not really worth noting. Except that they shouldn’t have been here on a flattop. William “Bull” Halsey, the man who would have been in charge of the Enterprise, if he wasn’t trapped in his sickbed back at Pearl, would have worn brown shoes, because he was a flier, not a cruiser jockey. And Halsey wouldn’t have needed to constantly pound the flight deck with his officers, picking their brains about flight operations and the basics of naval air power just days before they went into battle. Because Bull Halsey had been flying planes and driving carriers for years.