Now something had happened to the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone, so the governor had retained the services of the airplane indefinitely.  Fortunately, the governor was not some damn fool from the East Coast, so when he informed the governor that there was to be no night flying, because it was simply too dangerous, the governor agreed.  The State Police car coming across the tarmac with sirens blaring and lights flashing had to be his passengers. To his great surprise, they were even early. The sun was above the horizon, but the air was still chill, and he had topped off his fuel tank.  The car stopped and let out its two passengers.

“One of you is Major Grigsby,” Cornelius said, carefully facing the man with erect bearing and short-cut black hair. “And the other is supposed to be Andrew Stewart, lead photographer for the Phoenix Rising Sun.”

“You picked us right out,” Grigsby said. “I’m Charles Grigsby, Major, Air Observation Corps, happily retired since the end of the Great War. And this is Mister Stewart, the photographer.”

The three men shook hands.

“I see you brought along serious jackets for when we get up to high altitude,” Cornelius said. “Though your editor, Andrew, said you’d actually done aerial photography before.   I’m supposed to give you a safety briefing before we take off, though I expect the Charles can do a better job of it than I can. We have one advance over the Great War. You’ll find next to your seats are headphones and microphones, so the three of us can talk. It’s not as great as a long-distance phone call, but if you speak up we really can hear each other, and it’s a great improvement over trying to shout over the engine. Also, Andrew, if you take the front of the two seats we have a slot so we can fly right over something while you take photographs. It’s big enough that you can even see what is coming before you need to hit the camera. That’s a nice piece of photographic equipment you have there.  Leica? German?”

“Modified to take American film,” Andrew answered.  “Bought it when I was in Germany, before we got into the war. Only almost sailed to Britain on the Lusitania. But I saw the newspaper ads, and decided I would travel on a slow, clean, safe, Swedish ocean liner. The food was fantastic, and I reached Stockholm safely.  Getting back from Berlin, as close as they let me near either front, as we were about to get into the war, was a bit more interesting.”

“We’d best be going,” Cornelius said. “No parachutes.  Almost always, it’s safer to ride the plane down if the engine zonks out.  And I don’t push close to flight envelopes, so we never get into any other trouble. So the first lap is here to Prescott, which has a gravelled runway, and then you to decide what we want to do next. Oh, if you look in front of your seat, you’ll notice the shelf in which we supply sandwiches, hot coffee, and fresh apples.  Sandwiches are roast beef, lettuce, butter, all grain bread, and the cow was killed yesterday. So let’s get in, get our seat belts fastened, and we will be on our way.”