rection, at
any elevation. There were none of the helicopters of even five years
ago, now. A molecular power suit was far more convenient, cost nothing
to operate, and but $50 to buy. Perfectly safe, requiring no skill,
everyone owned them. To the watcher in space, they were mere moving,
snaky lines of barely distinguishable dots that shivered and seemed to
writhe in the refractions of the air. Passing over them, seeming to pass
almost through them in this strange perspectiveless view, were the
shadowy forms of giant space liners, titanic streamlined hulls. They
were streamlined for no good reason, save that they looked faster and
more graceful than the more efficient spherical freighters, just as
passenger liners of two centuries earlier, with their steam engines, had
carried four funnels and used two. A space liner spent so minute a
portion of its journey in the atmosphere that it was really inefficient
to streamline them.

"Won't be long!" muttered Russ, grinning cheerily at the familiar,
sunlit city. His eyes darted to the chronometer beside him. The view
seemed to be taken from a ship that was suddenly scudding across the
heavens like a frightened thing, as it ran across from Manhattan Island,
followed the Hudson for a short way, then cut across into New Jersey,
swinging over the great woodland area of Kittatiny Park, resting finally
on the New Jersey suburb of New York nestled in the Kittatinies,
Blairtown. Low apartment buildings, ten or twelve stories high, nestled
in the waving green of trees in the old roadways. When ground traffic
ceased, the streets had been torn up, and parkways substituted.

Quickly the view singled out a single apartment, and the great smooth
roof was enlarged on the screen to the absolute maximum clarity, till
further magnification simply resulted in worse stratospheric distortion.
On the broad roof were white strips of some material, making a huge V
followed by two I's. Russ watched, his hand on the control steadying the
view under the Earth's complicated orbital motion, and rotation, further
corrections for the ship's orbital motion making the job one requiring
great skill. The view held the center with amazing clarity. Something
seemed to be happening to the last of the I's. It crumpled suddenly,
rolled in on itself and disappeared.

"She's there, and on time," grinned Russ happily.

He tried more magnification. Could he--

He was tired, terribly, suddenly tired. He took his hand