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fallen. They have fallen. I gave him a letter. He was distracted. They fell. She can hear them falling. The whistle through the struts of the plane.
    She puts her fingers against the cold of the windowpane. She doesn’t like herself at moments like this, her strange bearing, her shrill self-consciousness, her youth. She wishes she could walk outside of herself, out the window, into the air, and down. Ah, then, but that’s it,maybe? That, then, is the point of it all, surely? Yes. A salute to you Mr. Brown, Mr. Alcock, wherever you might be. She wishes she could take a photograph of the moment. Eureka. The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
    DOWN BELOW, IN the lobby, the other reporters crowd around the telegraph machine. One by one they link back to their editors. Nothing to report. Fifteen hours gone. Either Alcock and Brown are approaching Ireland now, or they are dead and gone, casualties of desire. The reporters begin the first paragraphs, writing in both styles, the elegiac, the celebratory—
Today, a great joining of worlds—Today, a great mourning of heroes
—keen to be the first to finger the pulse, keener still to be the first to get a hold of the telegraph when any real news comes through.
    IT IS CLOSE to sunrise—not far from Ireland—when they hit a cloud they can’t escape. No line of sight. No horizon. A fierce gray. Almost four thousand feet above the Atlantic. Darkness still, no moon, no sight of sea. They descend. The snow has relented but they enter a huge bank of white. Look at this one, Jackie. Look at her coming. Immense. Unavoidable. Above and below.
    They are swallowed.
    Alcock taps the glass of the airspeed meter. It doesn’t budge. He adjusts the throttle and the front end of the plane lifts. Still the airspeed meter remains the same. He throttles again. Too sudden, that. Darn it.
    Good God, Jackie, put her in a spin. We’ll take our chances now.
    The cloud grows tighter around them. They both know full well that if they don’t break it now they will spiral-dive. The plane willgain speed and shatter in an immensity of pieces. The only way out is to maintain speed in a spin. To have control and lose it, too.
    Do it, Jackie.
    The engines throw out a taunt of red flame and then the Vimy hangs motionless a second, grows heavy, keels over as if it has taken a punch. The slowest form of falling at first. A certain amount of sigh in it. Take this weary effort at flight, let me drop.
    One wing stalled, the other still lifting.
    Three thousand feet above the sea. In the cloud their balance is shot to hell. No sense of up. No down. Two thousand five hundred. Two thousand. The slap of rain and wind in their faces. The machine shudders. The compass needle jumps. The Vimy swings. Their bodies are thrown back against the seats. What they need is a line of sky or sea. A visual. But there is nothing but thick gray cloud. Brown jerks his head in every direction. No horizon, no center, no edge. Good God. Somewhere. Anywhere. Keep her steady, Jackie boy.
    One thousand feet still falling nine hundred eight hundred seven fifty. The pressure of their shoulder blades against the seats. The whirl of blood to the head. The heaviness of the neck. Are we up? Are we down? Still spinning. They might not see the water before they smash. Undo the belts. This is it. This is it, Teddy. Their bodies are still pinned to their seats. Brown reaches downwards. He tucks the log journal inside his flight jacket. Alcock catches him out of the corner of his eye. Such glorious idiocy. A pilot’s last gesture. Save all the details. The sweet release of knowing how it happened.
    The dial turns steadily still. Six hundred, five hundred, four. No whimpering. No moaning. The scream of cloud. The loss of body. Alcock maintains the spin in the endless white and gray.
    A glimpse of new light. A different wall of color. It takes a split second for it to register. A slap of blue. A hundred feet. Strange