“Are you serious?” She had thought he was kidding at first. She had just come in from a run to Las Vegas. It was hotter than hell. But when she got on the phone, Jackie Cochran said she wanted to meet with her if possible. She said she'd always admired her, and she asked her to come to New York to see her, if she could spare the time. “Sure,” Cassie agreed, jotting down the pertinent details. She had agreed to fly there two days later. She had nothing else to do, since it was her day off. And maybe she could even do a little shopping, since she had her money from the tour in the bank, and had never spent a penny. The funny thing was she had wanted to meet Jackie Cochran for ages, but once she got settled at home again, she got lazy and never did anything about it.

She was thinking about inviting her mother to come to New York with her, but then she decided to go alone. She had no idea what Jackie Cochran would want, but she thought it might be something her mother would disapprove of.

And as it turned out, it was something that fascinated Cassie. She had admitted readily that she was bored at home, and eager for some more exciting flying. Eight months after she had been rescued in the Pacific, she was ready to spread her wings again and do something a little more exciting. And what Jackie Cochran had in mind was right up her alley.

Jackie wanted Cassie to take charge of forming a small group of experienced women pilots under the Army Air Force Flying Training Command, to ferry planes to wherever they were needed in the war, for the moment. The women involved would fly as civilian pilots but have uniforms and honorary rank. Cassie was to start as a captain. There was another women's air corps too, the WAFS, Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron, if she preferred it, being organized for domestic ferrying by Nancy Harkness Love, another extraordinary female pilot. But Cassie liked the idea of ferrying planes into England right past the Germans. She knew her parents were going to be upset if she left home again, but this was something she believed in. It served a purpose, it wasn't frivolous or self-serving, like her Pacific tour, which just made money for a lot of greedy people. This was something she could do for her country, and if she died… she was prepared to accept that. So had Chris… so had Billy… sadly, so had Bobby Strong by then. He had been killed six weeks after he enlisted. Peggy was a widow again, with four children now. Life was never simple.

The WAFS would begin training in September, for eight weeks in New Jersey, but she could hardly wait. It was time for her to be challenged again and for the first time, she would be flying with other women. She had never had the opportunity to do that.

Jackie Cochran took her to dinner that night at ‘21’ and they talked about their plans. Cassie couldn't remember anything she had wanted to do more, not even the world tour when Desmond had first asked her. This was so different.

It was exactly what she wanted and what she'd been waiting for. For Cassie it was time to move on now. She was still smiling when she flew home the next day, thinking about it.

Her father was at the airport when she got in; he was singing to himself, and filing some papers in his office. She hated to ruin his mood, and she decided to wait and tell him after dinner.

“How was New York?”

“Great,” she beamed at him.

“Oh oh. Do I smell romance in the air?” He smelled happiness, but not romance. Airplanes, but not boys. She was right hack to where she'd been in the beginning. In love with flying.

“Nope. No romance,” she smiled mysteriously. She was twenty-three years old and divorced, and she felt free and independent. And she was about to do exactly what she wanted.

She could hardly contain herself until that night after dinner, and when she told her parents, they stared at her in disbelief.

“Here we go again,” fat looked angry even before she explained it. “You want to do what now?” She had been swimming upstream all her life. It was nothing new for them, or to Cassie.

“I want to join… I did join the Army's Flying Training Command,” she said happily, and then she explained it to them.

“Wait a minute. You're going to be flying bombers to England? Do you know how heavy and hard to manage those are?”

“I know, Dad.” She smiled. She'd flown just about every difficult plane in the sky, when she'd worked for Williams Aircraft. “I'd have a co-pilot.” She knew that would make him feel better.

“Probably another woman.”

“Sometimes.”

“You're crazy,” he said tersely, “patriotic, but crazy.”

She looked at him hard then. He had to understand. She was grown-up and she had a right to do this. But she had also put them through a lot, especially in the last year and she didn't want to hurt them. She would have preferred to do it with their approval, but her mother was already crying.

“You and your damn flying,” Oona said unhappily to her husband, and he patted her hand apologetically.

“Now, Oonie… it's always made us a nice living,” And it had made Cassie a small fortune, but at what price glory.

She explained the Flying Command to them again, and they told her they'd think about it. But she had already signed the papers, she reminded them. Pit and Oona looked at each other. There was nothing left to do but support Cassie again. She was always doing this to them. Always putting herself out on a limb, and stretching to the limit.

“When do they want you, Cass?” her father asked, looking somewhat deflated. He hated losing her too. She was such a big help to him at the airport.

“I start in two weeks, on September first. In New Jersey,” and then she added gratuitously, “If I were a man, I'd be drafted anyway.”

“But you're not, thank God. And you won't be. It's bad enough to have our sons-in-law over there. And Nick,” who was like a son to them.

“You'd be there if you could,” she pointed out to her father, and he looked at her very strangely. She was right. He would. And Nick had volunteered long before, and he would never have had to go this time.

“Why can't I? Why can't I do something for my country, for a change? Flying is all I know how to do, and I do it well. Why can't I offer that to this country? You would. Why should I be prevented from that because I'm a woman?”

“Oh God,” her father rolled his eyes, “it's the Suffragettes again. Where do you get this from? Your mother and your sisters never talk about this nonsense. They stay home where they belong.”

“I don't belong there. I'm a flier. Like you. That's the difference.” It was hard to argue with her. She was smart, and she was right. And she was gutsy. He loved that about her. She had taught him a lot over the years, and he loved her more for it.

“It's dangerous, Cass. And you'd be flying Lockheed Hudson bombers. They're heavy planes. What if you go down again?”

“What if you go down tomorrow over Cleveland? What's the difference between the two?”

“Maybe nothing. I'll think about it.” He knew she was bored flying mail runs for him, after all the fancy flying she'd done. But at least she was safe here.

He thought about it for days, but in the end, as before, he didn't feel he had the right to stop her. And in September she left for New Jersey. Oona was proud of her too, and her parents flew to New Jersey with her.

‘Take it easy, Dad,” she said when he left her. She kissed both of them good-bye, and her father stood smiling at her.

‘Try not to embarrass yourself,” he said mock somberly and she laughed at him.

“Keep your tail up.”

“Mind your own!” He saluted her and was gone, and the next time he saw her he almost burst with pride. She was wearing her uniform, with a gleaming pair of silver wings, and she looked older and more mature than she ever had before. She had her long red hair tied into a neat bun, and the uniform looked sensational on her long, lean figure.

Her parents had come to New York because she was shipping out for England that weekend, though they'd only be there briefly. She would be going back and forth with planes, whenever they were needed somewhere else. But her first assignment was to report to Hornchurch with a bomber.

She had dinner with her parents the night before she left, and she took them to a little Italian restaurant she went to whenever she was in New York with the other pilots. She introduced some of them to her parents, and they could see that she had never been happier than she was now. Despite the hardships of the training she'd gone through, to Cassie, more often than not, it seemed like summer camp for female fliers. She liked the women she flew with, and the challenge of ferrying bombers through dangerous airspace suited her completely. She was used to difficult flying, and she liked the fact that she'd have to pay close attention. For this first trip, she had been assigned a male co-pilot, and they were going through Greenland.

“Keep an eye out for Nick,” her father had said when he left her at the barracks, and she had promised to write to them from England. She didn't think she'd be there long, but she didn't know yet. She would be doing some flying there, and she would have to wait for a return assignment. She might be there for as little as a week or two, or as long as three months. There was no way of knowing. But one thing she did know and that was that all through her training, she had thought of nothing but Nick Calvin.

She had done a lot of thinking, and she had made some decisions.

All her life she had had to wait for other people to make up their minds about her life, and she wasn't willing to let that happen anymore. She had had to pay her own brother to lie for her and take her up in the plane, so she could learn to fly it. She had had to wait for Nick to notice how badly she wanted to learn, and agree to give her lessons, hidden from her father. She had had to wait for her father to come to his senses years before, and let her fly from his airport.