Through the thin skin of the fuselage, I could hear the Merlin's twin engines straining. We still seemed to be climbing—at least, my inner ears were convinced we still had a slight nose-up pitch—but the engines didn't seem to like it in the slightest. Why? I wondered grimly. Headwinds? There'd been clouds building up to the southeast when I'd last looked out the window at New Foster Tower, hadn't there? And according to Kono's map, that was the direction we were heading. Into the teeth of a storm? I closed my eyes and tried to hear if there was rain hitting the airframe, but the tortured howling of the engines made it impossible.