Missouri a few
minutes after two a.m. with a new crew of pilots up ahead. The
stewardesses made the entire trip from Cheyenne to Chicago, but the
pilots changed at Omaha, unless piloting a special.

It was over this stretch of the line that Jane had encountered the
thrilling experience which had brought her front page fame in every
newspaper in the country and Sue looked out, halfway in the hope that
something unusual enough to bring her fame, would happen.

But her hopes were doomed, and they went into Des Moines on time. The
only field they missed was at Iowa City, and they sped over that one
shortly after sunrise.

East of the Mississippi, they lost the sun in a murk of smoke and fog.

Sue's light flashed, and she went forward to answer the call from the
chief pilot.

"Weather around Chicago's bad," he said. "We may not be able to get
through, so stall the passengers off if they get anxious about the time
we're due in Chicago."

"But what will I tell them?" asked Sue.

"That's your job. All I do is run this crate."

Like Jane, Sue was finding out that pilots who on the ground were the
pleasantest and most friendly flyers, were more than likely to be
martinets when they were at the controls of a big passenger plane.

Sue took the rebuff good naturedly. Of course it was her job to keep
the passengers from being alarmed.

Franklin Grove was the last of the emergency landing fields she saw,
before the "soup" swallowed them and they looked out into a solid wall
of rushing grey, so thick it almost hid the wings.

Passengers looked anxiously toward Sue, and one or two of them summoned
her. To their questions, she replied as truthfully as she could that
they had struck a bit of bad weather, but that the radio beacon was
guiding the pilot and they expected to soon be out of the fog and into
clear weather.

That explanation satisfied them for the first half hour, but after that
Sue found herself in trouble and a rising fear gripping her own heart.
The questions the passengers asked were more difficult to answer.

Why weren't they out of the fog? They were late now getting into
Chicago. Did the pilot know where he was? Why couldn't they land and
wait for the bad weather to clear?

Sue answered them as best she could and tried to remain calm, putting
on the best professional manner of a trained nurse.

Her signal light glowed again and she went forward. The chief pilot
looked years older.

"We're in trouble