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one—five-hundred-foot ceiling and one-mile visibility—within twenty minutes.
    Cassada was flying with Dumfries. They were at altitude about thirty miles out, the ground only occasionally visible through the solid, white clouds. They were in spread formation and Dumfries, who was leading, did not turn homeward but seemed to ignore the call.
    â€œGreen Lead, did you hear that?” Cassada said.
    â€œUh, negative. I couldn’t read it. My radio is cutting in and out.”
    â€œThey’ve ordered us to return to base. The weather’s closing in.”
    â€œRoger,” Dumfries said.
    â€œThey say it’s going to five hundred and one within twenty minutes. Snow showers.”
    â€œClose it up, Two,” Dumfries instructed.
    Dumfries was completely without imagination, mechanical in his processes. Twenty minutes was to him an exact figure, a time when the ceiling would come down like the curtain in a theater. His nickname was Dum-dum, which he complained made no sense. “That’s a kind of bullet,” he said.
    When Cassada joined up on his wing, Dumfries said, “Go Channel Eight, Green.”
    His own head went down as he looked to check that he had gone to the right channel, and almost at the same time he heard Cassada say, “Green Two.”
    â€œRoger.”
    They were at twenty-five thousand feet and began to let down. As they descended they could hear ships from the other squadrons entering traffic, calling on the break. From time to time the tower would block them out: “Attention, all 5th Group aircraft. Snow showers are reported north and west of the field, closing in. You are advised to return and land as soon as possible.”
    Cassada, hearing it—the calls, the other formations inbound—still new to it, felt a kind of electric happiness, a surge of excitement. Their speed was building. The air was heavier and more dense as they came down, nearing the cloud tops, then skimming them. He was confident they would get back to the field and at the same time felt a nervousness; it was in his arms and legs. The radio was alive with voices. From all directions planes were coming home.
    As if following an actual path, Dumfries banked this way and that between the clouds and soon they were in the shadowy zone beneath, the brightness gone.
    â€œGreen has two at ten o’clock,” Cassada called.
    â€œI’ve got ’em.”
    Ahead the field appeared and like this, part of the instreaming pairs and flights of four, they entered traffic aware they were being observed like all the others, broke hard—some damp days it was possible to pull streamers, long, snake streaks of vapor pouring from the wingtips—came around and landed.
    Though they had done nothing more remarkable than return without delay to the field, the repeated ominous warnings from the tower, the solid advancing wall of snow already visible, the many planes, some of them close behind, others breaking at the last minute overhead—all of it made for a feeling of achievement. It was as if they were returning from an actual mission, Cassada thought, a combat mission. He had missed all that, the thing that gave the major, the flight commanders, Isbell, even some of the pilots a greater authenticity. To return and land smoothly, in triumph.
    Canopies open they taxied back towards the squadron at the other end of the field. There was a wood and wire fence to the side most of the way and beyond it the wide fields broken into clods and dark with manure. The smell in the air was the cold though. The first flakes of snow were already falling. The wind was from behind and warm waves of exhaust were blown forward together with the thin whistle of engines idling. Halfway along the fence, two drably dressed boys were standing motionless, hands in their pockets, their white faces plain to see, even the blotched red of their cheeks. Great as limousines the planes passed by them, bumping