It was the moment for which he waited out on the water, a chance to stare up into the great expanse above him without the irritation of light and city noise. The mighty North Star, the constellations, as familiar to him as the breathing of his wife as she slept. He picked them out, comforting in their constancy. Orion and Cassiopeia, Aries and Diana, the hunter.

Hercules, the hero, and Pegasus, the winged horse. The two dippers, the easiest of all, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the first he'd learned as a child more than seventy years earlier.

He took a deep breath of steamy air, then he spoke out loud, adopting a deep, drawling southern accent that wasn't his own but had belonged once, years before, to someone he knew not for long, but knew well and said:

"Find us the way home. Tommy, willya?"

There was a lilt to the words, almost a singsong quality.

After more than fifty years, they still rang in his ear with the same easygoing grinning tones, just as they had once, coming across the tinny intercom of the bomber, the drawl defeating even the most deafening noise from the engines and the bursts of flak exploding outside.

And he answered out loud, just as he had back then dozens of times "Nobody worry about a damn thing. I could find the base blindfolded."

He shook his head. Except for the last time. Then all his skills, reading radio beacons, dead reckoning, and marking the stars with an octant, none had done them any good.

He heard the voice again: "Find us the way home. Tommy, willya?"