m in fiery lines. It was a moment before he knew what he had
recalled. Then a slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he
turned and stared through a window that showed only blackness.

"_Cold storage!_" That was good work on Walt's part. He had been forced
to shout the directions before them all, yet tell none of those others
about him where the ship was hidden. Chet was picturing that place of
"cold storage" as he smiled. The fact that it was some thousands of
miles away troubled him not at all.

* * * * *

The great Hoover Terminal was a place where night never came. Its
daylight tubes wove a network of light about the stupendous enclosure,
their almost silent hissing merged to an unceasing rush of sound, so
soft as to be unheard through the scuffing feet and chattering voices of
the ever-hurrying crowds.

From subways the impatient people came and went, and from highway
stations where busses and private cars drove in and away. The clock in
the squat tower swung its electrically driven hands toward the figure
22; there lacked but two hours of midnight, and a steady stream of
aircraft came dropping down the shaft of green light that reached to and
through the clouds. There would be many liners leaving on the hour;
these that were coming in were private craft that spun their flashing
helicopters like giant emeralds in the green descending light, while the
noise of their beating blades filled the air with a rush of sound.

Outside the entrance to the Passenger Station, Chet Bullard withdrew
himself from the surging press of hurrying men and women and slipped
into a shadowed alcove. Two passing figures in the gray and gold of the
Air Patrol scanned the crowd closely; Chet drew himself into the deeper
shadows and waited until they were by before he emerged and followed
the shelter of a coffee-house that extended toward another entrance to
the field, where pilots and mechanics passed in and out.

* * * * *

A bulletin board showed in changing letters of light the official
assignment of landing space. And, though every passing eye was turned
toward it, Chet knew that each man was intent upon the board and not on
the shadowed niche in the building behind it. He watched his chance and
slipped into that shadow.

Unseen, he could see them as they approached: men in the multicolored
uniforms of many lines, who paused to read, to exchange bantering
s