hy and ironclad contract, such as for some reason
other papers seemed unwilling to offer me. In accord with this innate
loyalty of mine--I take no credit for it, I was born that way--I did not
balk at the assignments given me though they ranged from the hazardous
to the absurd.

One of the more pleasant of these excursions thought up by Mr Le
ffacase was to fly over the grass and to Catalina, embark on a chartered
boat there and survey the parts of the coast now overrun. A fresh point
of observation. Accompanying me was the moviecameraman, Rafe Slafe, as
uncommunicative and earnest in his medications as before.

It was a sad sight to see neat rectangular patterns of roads and
highways, cultivated fields and orangegroves, checkered towns and
sprawling suburbs come to an abrupt stop where they were blotted out by
the regimented uniformity of the onrushing grass. For miles we flew
above its dazzling green until our eyes ached from the sameness and our
minds were dulled from the lack of variety below. On the sea far ahead a
frothing whitecap broke the monotony of color, a flyingfish jumped out
of the water to glisten for a moment in the sun, loose seaweed floated
on the surface, to change in some degree the intense blue. But here
below no alien touch lightened the unnatural homogeneity. No solitary
tree broke this endless pasture, now healed of the wounds inflicted by
the incendiary bombing, no saltlick, wandering stream or struggling bush
enlivened this prairie. There was not even an odd conformation, a higher
clump here or there, a dead patch to relieve the unimaginative symmetry.
I have read of men going mad in solitary confinement from looking at the
same unchanging walls; well, here was a solitary cell hundreds of miles
in area and its power to destroy the mind was that much magnified.

I got little consolation from the presence of the others, for the pilot
was engaged in navigation while Slafe was, as ever, singlemindedly
recording mile after mile of the verdant mat beneath, never pausing nor
speaking, though how he justified the use of so much film when one foot
was identical with what went before and the next, I could not
understand.

At last we cleared the awful cancer and flew over the sea. A thousand
variations I had never noticed before offered themselves to my suddenly
refreshed eyes. Not for one split second was the water the same.
Leaping, tossing, spiraling, foaming back upon itself, making its own
shado