The navigator made his way back to his little desk, strapped himself in, and put on his earphones, in time to hear:
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the First Officer again. I have just been advised by our navigator-this is all subject to official confirmation, of course-that it appears that a very, very favorable tailwind in the last few hours is proba-bly going to permit us to again set a world's record for the fastest regularly scheduled commercial flight time from San Francisco to Tokyo, with intermediate stops at Hon-olulu and Wake Island.
"The current speed record is held by a TGA Constella-tion flown by Captain M. S. Pickering, who is our captain today. If our computations are correct, and are confirmed by the appropriate authorities, TGA will be delighted to send each of you a certificate attesting to your presence aboard today. Keep your fingers crossed."
Captain M. S. Pickering turned and looked at the man in the jump seat.
"You'd better get in the back, Dad."
Fleming Pickering-a tall, large, well-tailored, silver-haired, rather handsome man who was, as he privately thought of it, One Year Past The Big Five Zero-nodded his acceptance of the order and moved to comply with it, al-though he had really hoped he would be permitted to keep the jump seat through the landing.
He wasn't wearing earphones and had not heard a word of either of the copilots' announcements.
He left the cockpit, musing that they were now starting to call it the "flight deck," and then, when he saw his seat and seatmate, musing that while there was a good deal to be said about the benefits of crossing the Pacific Ocean at 325 knots, there were certain drawbacks, high among them that if you found yourself seated beside a horse's ass when you first boarded the aircraft, you were stuck with the sonofabitch for the rest of the flight.
It was different on a ship; you could avoid people on a ship.
Had been different on a ship, he corrected himself. Pas-senger ships, ocean liners, were as obsolete as buggy whips. There once had been fourteen passenger ships in the Pacific and Far East fleet. Now there was one.
Pickering nodded politely at the horse's ass in the win-dow seat, sat down beside him, and fastened his seat belt.
"Up front, were you?" the horse's ass inquired. "I didn't know they let passengers go in the cockpit."
"My son is the pilot," Pickering said.
"And I guess if you're the pilot, you can break the rules for your old man, right?"
"And I work for the airline," Pickering said.
"No kidding? What do you do?"
"I'm in administration," Pickering said.
That was not the whole truth. Trans-Global Airways was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation. When the Wall Street Journal, in a story about Trans-Global, mentioned PandFE, it used the phrase "pri-vately held." The Pickering family owned PandFE, and Flem-ing Pickering, pater familias, was chairman of the board.
"So you're on a business trip?" the horse's ass asked.
"That's right," Pickering said, smiling with an effort.
That wasn't exactly true, either.
While it was true that he was going to Tokyo to participate in a conference between a dozen shipping companies-both air and what now had become "surface"-serving the Far East, it was also true that he was going to spend as little time as possible actually conferring with anyone. He was instead going to spend some time with a young couple-a Marine captain and his wife-who were stationed in Tokyo. He had never told either of them, but he regarded both of them as his children, although there was no blood connection.
When Pickering had been a young man, being groomed to take over PandFE from his father, Captain Richard Picker-ing, his father had told him over and over the basic rule of success as a mariner or a businessman: Find capable sub-ordinates, give them a clear mission, and then get out of their way and let them do their jobs.
Fleming Pickering had capable subordinates who knew what he expected of them. And-very likely, he thought, because he did not get in their way and let them do then-jobs-they did their jobs very well; in his opinion, far bet-ter than their peers elsewhere in the shipping business.
They would do the conferring in Tokyo, and he would not get in their way.
What had happened was, the previous Wednesday, Chairman of the Board Pickering had, as was his custom, arrived at his San Francisco office at precisely 9 a.m.
It was an impressive office, occupying the southwest quarter of the upper (tenth) story of the PandFE Building. In some ways, it was museumlike:
There were four glass cases. Two of the four held pre-cisely crafted models of each of the ninety-one vessels of the PandFE fleet, all built to the same scale, and each about two feet in length. There were tankers, bulk-carriers, freighters, and one passenger liner.
The other two glass cases held far larger models. In one was a six-foot-long, exquisitely detailed model of the clip-per ship Pacific Princess (Richard Pickering, Master), which had set-and still held-the San Francisco-Shanghai speed record for sailing vessels. The other glass case held a thirteen-foot-long model of the 51,000-ton SS Pacific Princess (Fleming Pickering, Master), a sleek passenger ship that had set-and still held-the San Francisco-Shang-hai speed record on her maiden voyage in 1941.
Hanging on nearly invisible wires above the clipper's glass case was a model of a Chance Vought Corsair F4U fighter aircraft. It had been built by the same firm of crafts-men who had built the ship models, and, like them, was correct in every detail. The legend "MARINES" was painted in large letters on the fuselage. Below it was let-tered VMF-229, and below the cockpit window was the legend "M.S. Pickering, Major, USMCR" and nine small representations of the Japanese battle flag, each signifying an enemy aircraft downed by Major Pickering.
Suspended above the glass case holding the model of the SS Pacific Princess, there was a model of the Trans-Global Airways Lockheed Model L049 Constellation San Francisco, a four-engined triple-tailed airliner, in which TGA Chief Pilot Captain Malcolm S. Pickering had set two world's records, one for fastest commercial aviation flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, and the other for fastest commercial aviation flight time between Hon-olulu and Shanghai. The latter record was probably going to be on the books for some time, because the Chinese Communists were now in Shanghai, and American air-lines were no longer welcome to land.
Behind the chairman's huge, antique mahogany desk, the huge wheel of the clipper ship Pacific Princess and her quarterdeck compass stood guarding an eight-by-twelve-foot map of the world
Every morning, at 6 a.m., just before the night opera-tions manager went off duty, he came up from the third floor, laid a copy of the more important overnight commu-nications-"the overnights"-on the chairman's desk, and then went to the map and moved ninety-one small ship models, on magnetic mounts, from one position to another on the map to correspond with their last reported position.
The previous Wednesday morning, at 9:01 a.m., Chair-man of the Board Pickering had taken a look at the map, read the overnights, poured himself a cup of coffee, and with that out of the way was, at 9:09 a.m., where he had been the day before at 9:09 a.m., and would almost cer-tainly be tomorrow at 9:09 a.m.
That is to say, bored stiff and without a goddamned thing to do for the rest of the day.
Unless one counted the Second Wednesday Luncheon of the Quarterback Club of the Greater San Francisco United Charities, Inc., and he hadn't even wanted to think about that.