“And then we see where they assign us,” Sharp said. “Did you put down VC on all three lines on your preference questionnaire way back when?”

“Carrier duty? You bet your… You bet I did.” Around his roomie, Joe didn’t swear very much, either.

“You?”

“Oh, sure,” Sharp answered. “If they don’t give me that, I don’t care what I get. Everything else is a booby prize.”

“I’m with you.” Joe didn’t give a damn about patrol planes or flying boats (no, that wasn’t true-he hated Jap flying boats, because one had dropped a bomb on the house where his uncle and aunts and cousins lived, but he didn’t give a damn about piloting an American flying boat) or anything but carrier-based air, preferably fighters.

“I hope we do end up together,” Orson Sharp said seriously. “We’ve made a pretty good team so far.”

“Uh-huh.” Joe nodded. “I better get some more of that navigation under my belt, too, or else I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled his own book out of the metal footlocker by his bed and sat down in a chair. He knew his roomie would give him a hand where he had trouble. He’d helped Sharp through some of the mysteries of engine maintenance. They did make a pretty good team. Look out, Hirohito, Joe thought, and dove into the book.

LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO RARELY GOT EXCITED about anything. Some people said the Navy pilot was a cold fish. He didn’t see it like that. To his way of thinking, most people got excited over nothing.

He stood on the Akagi’s flight deck and looked around Pearl Harbor. The view here wasn’t what it had been before Japan and the United States went to war. Then the American ships in the harbor were tied up alongside piers or rested easily at anchor. Now they were nothing but twisted, blackened, rusting metal. Some of them still leaked oil into the water. Shindo could see several of those rainbow patches. The mineral stink of the fuel oil fouled the tropical breeze.