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main deck, the flight deck, the 03 level, the bridge wing. Leighty paused at the microphone, running an eye along them, before he announced, spacing the words dramatically, “USS Barrett —come alive!”
    And together, all the train warning bells began to ring, the horn droned out a deep note, the radars began to rotate. Missile mounts elevated, signal flags leapt up their halyards, and every light came on from the stern to the man overboard and task lights high on the pole mast. The audience broke into applause.
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    THAT was the high point. After the benediction, the stands emptied; the limousines swung in again, embarking the guests for the reception. Dan wiped out his hatband with a glove. “Okay, that’s it,” he told the enlisted. “You guys want to go over to the tent, punch and cake yourselves, make your bird. You can knock off from there, unless you’re in the duty section. See you tomorrow.”
    â€œNot coming, sir?”
    â€œThink I’ll stay aboard, get some reading in on the combat systems doctrine.”
    A kid who looked about eighteen lingered shyly. He said, “Guess we got us a ship now, Lieutenant, huh?”
    â€œYeah, Sanderling. A brand-new one.”
    He watched the technician look around proudly. Being part of a ship’s first crew, a “plank owner,” was a title a sailor carried all his life—like the old men who’d put the first Barrett in commission when the skies were dark with war. Funny how he kept thinking of them. Had they ever been as young as Sanderling, as trusting, as thrilled, as dumb?

    He grinned to himself, amused but also bitter. He’d been like that once himself.
    The buzz of the A-phone brought him back. “Bridge, Lieutenant Lenson,” he said into it.
    â€œDan, this is the XO. I’ve been looking over this inventory, what you came up with versus what Sipple signed off for before his accident. Are you sure these figures are right?”
    â€œThe chief warrant and I counted everything twice, sir.”
    â€œWell, I got some questions. Can you come down to my stateroom?”
    â€œYes, sir,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

2
    Cooperative Cane Production Facility Number 176, Camagüey Province, Cuba
    T HE land sprawled like a sleeping child under the blanket of night, a vast plain unbroken by hill or mountain or city—only the land, naked to the wind. Across its black expanse, no cars, no vehicles moved in the last hour before dawn. Only at a huddle of concrete and tin buildings, at an intersection of the roads that led through the great plain, were a few lights coming on.
    The woman woke drenched with sweat, a distant whistle still sounding in her ears. She lay unmoving on her pallet, looking up into the darkness as if listening to a voice only she could hear. Then she swung her bare feet out and set them gingerly on the floor.
    The bed was pushed against the wall of a one-room house of unpainted palm boards, uninsulated and with one shuttered glassless window on the south. A colored picture of the Virgin, the kind that had been for sale everywhere before the revolution, was pinned up beside it. The floor was bare, swept concrete. Faint rustlings and scratchings came from the peaked darkness. Thatch from the palma real made a tight, waterproof roof, but it hosted mice and scorpions. For this reason, she slipped her feet into a pair of rubber-soled sandals, then got up. Moving quietly about the room, she lighted a small charcoal fire, poured water from a jar in the corner, and put a pan of it on to heat.
    The woman was very thin. Her dark legs were scarred with a pale map of old cuts. She had wide shoulders and a short muscular neck. The arm she stretched up to screw in a dangling bulb was long and sinewy, the hand calloused. As harsh light stabbed into the corners of the hut, it cut the planes of her face from darkness. Her angular cheekbones and long eyes she owed to