ch
once more.

But it wasn't Ostreich. It was a square-faced man with beetling brows
and a chin like the biting end of a steam shovel. It took Tom a while to
recognize the face of Stinson, commissioner of police.

"Mr. Blacker?"

"Yes, sir?" Tom gulped.

"Mr. Ostreich referred me to you. You responsible for that--" the
commissioner's voice was choked. "--that menace?"

"Menace, sir?"

"You know what I'm talking about. We've got half a dozen CAA complaints
already. That thing's a menace to public safety, a hazard to air
travel--"

"Look, Mr. Stinson. It's only a harmless publicity stunt."

"Harmless? You got funny ideas, Mr. Blacker. Don't get the wrong idea
about our city ordinances. We got statutes that cover this kind of
thing. If you don't want to be a victim of one of them, turn that damned
monstrosity off!"

The commissioner's angry visage left a reverse shadow burned on the
visiphone screen. It remained glowing there long after the contact was
broken.

Tom Blacker walked the carpeted floor of his office, chewing on his
lower lip, and cursing the feeble imaginations of Ostreich and the rest
of them. When his temper had cooled, he got sober thoughts of
indictments, and law suits, and unemployment. With a sigh, he contacted
the engineer on the roof of the Cannon Building. Then he went to the
window, and watched Monica's thousand-foot face fade gradually out of
sight.

* * * * *

At four o'clock that afternoon, a long white envelope crossed Tom's
blotter. There was a check to the amount of a month's salary enclosed,
and a briefly-worded message from the office of the president.

When he left the office, Ostreich's rolling phrases buzzed in his head
like swarming gnats. "... a mockery of a great profession ... lowering
of dignity ... incompatible with the highest ideals of ..."

At ten o'clock that night, Tom was telling his troubles to a red-coated
man behind a chromium bar on Forty-ninth Street. The man listened with
all the gravity of a physician, and lined up the appropriate medicine in
front of his patient.

By midnight, Tom was singing Christmas carols, in advance of the season,
with a tableful of Texans.

At one o'clock, he swung a right cross at a mounted policeman, missed,
and fell beneath the horse's legs.

At one-fifteen, he fell asleep against the shoulder of a B-girl as they
rode through the streets of the city in a sleek police vehicle.

That was al