A mile and more away, in a great shaft of green light from which all
other craft kept clear, a tremendous shape was dropping. Her hull of
silver was striped with a broad red band; her multiple helicopters
were dazzling flashes in the sunlight. The countless dots that were
portholes and the larger observation ports must have held numberless
eager faces, for the Oriental Express served a cosmopolitan passenger
list.

But Walter Harkness, standing at the window, stared out from troubled,
frowning eyes that saw nothing of the kaleidoscopic scene. His back
was turned to the group of people in the room, and he had no thought
of wonders that were prosaic, nor of passengers, eager or blase; his
thoughts were only of freight and of the acres of flat roofs far in
the distance where alternate flashes of color marked the descending
area for fast freighters of the air. And in his mind he could see what
his eyes could not discern--the markings on those roofs that were
enormous landing fields: Harkness Terminals, New York.

* * * * *

Only twenty-four, Walt Harkness--owner now of Harkness, Incorporated.
Dark hair that curled slightly as it left his forehead; eyes that were
taking on the intent, straightforward look that had been his father's
and that went straight to the heart of a business proposal with
disconcerting directness. But the lips were not set in the hard lines
that had marked Harkness Senior; they could still curve into boyish
pleasure to mark the enthusiasm that was his.

He was not typically the man of business in his dress. His broad
shoulders seemed slender in the loose blouse of blue silk; a narrow
scarf of brilliant color was loosely tied; the close, full-length
cream-colored trousers were supported by a belt of woven metal, while
his shoes were of the coarse-mesh fabric that the latest mode
demanded.

He turned now at the sound of Warrington's voice. E. B. Warrington,
Counsellor at Law, was the name that glowed softly on the door of
this spacious office, and Warrington's gray head was nodding as he
dated and indexed a document.

"June twentieth, nineteen seventy-three," he repeated; "a lucky day
for you, Walter. Inside of ten years this land will be worth double
the fifty million you are paying--and it is worth more than that to
you."

He turned and handed a document to a heavy-bodied man across from him.
"Here is your copy, Herr Schwartzmann," he said. The man pocketed the