25
In the fighter cockpit, time passed slowly. Distant voices spoke on the radio, barely audible in Shilin’s headset. Shilin was not listening closely, anyway. He preferred to save his energy for flying. Across heaven and earth it was still dark. The pilot glanced at his dimly-lit watch: it was now 5 a.m.
Oddly, while Shilin sat there in the fighter cockpit, Command showed no sign of life. In spite of his being assigned Readiness Level One, no one contacted him. It was as if they had forgotten all about him. He started to think that nothing would happen, that there would be no sudden order to take off.
This sometimes happened: the alarm would be sounded and a pilot assigned to wait for take-off at a moment’s notice, but then the alarm would be called off, only for it to sound again, and
