Sharon and the manufacturer came in from the storeroom with another load of newspapers and dumped them. "All right," said Groff, "I guess that's all we'll need. They won't be very comfortable, but maybe somebody'll come by before morning." "I don't expect to sleep much anyhow," said Sharon cheerfully. She tapped Zehedi on the shoulder. "Move your feet a little, will you, Sam?" The grocer started. He picked his feet up so she could spread the newspapers, and when she was through she had to remind him he could put them down again. Five years down the drain. Five more years of hot dogs and that muddy water they call coffee. I'll be thirty-five years old, and still three or four years to go-- Everybody felt it at once. "The wind?" ventured Mrs. Goudeket. They stared at each other; the building seemed to be vibrating slightly. Dick McCue, suddenly white, stumbled across the floor and pressed his face to the door. "Take a look!" he yelled. "That ain't wind!" Even in the blackness, they could see the river that had been a road outside, the comb of current around the gas pumps, the surging water that lapped at the door. CHAPTER FIVE An air watcher, it doesn't matter which one of the thousands he was, stepped from the hospital elevator at the third, and top floor. He went through a door marked NO ADMITTANCE and climbed iron stairs to the roof. It was black and drizzling; he hoped the rain wouldn't get worse, at least not during his tour of duty. He had heard on a news broadcast that west of his area there were cloudbursts. He was tired from a long day at his appliance store on Broad Street and he was a little sorry he had signed up for this Ground Observer Corps thing, but everybody in Rotary was taking a shift so he felt he had to go along. He threaded his way around the invisible obstacles that studded the hospital roof and groped at the black-out curtain of the shack. It was dry and bright inside the little cubicle, but somewhat crowded. The man he was relieving yawned, looked at the clock--so he was two minutes late!--and said: "Howdy. Ready to go?" "Sure. Everything quiet?" "Yeah. CMA Flight 24 was early and south of their course, so I phoned in for the hell of it. Coffee's hot." "Maybe later. Well, I relieve you." The man passed over the night glasses and went yawning through the curtains. The air watcher wiped the drizzled lenses of the binoculars, sighed and stepped out onto the roof. He slumped into the swivel chair, tilted back in the patter of rain and watched the overcast sky with boredom. The little town's lights were bright; after a few minutes outside you could see how far they really shone. And a few minutes more and you could see the lights of the next little town, fifteen miles away, as a dim haze on the horizon. By the time his tour was over they would have gone out and everybody would be in bed, light rain comfortably pattering on their roofs.