"I'll put the chief operator on it, sir," the lieutenant said. "We can put the reports on the map. I'll report this to Group at once; I'm sure they can get a meteorologist here at once to try and evaluate it for you. And maybe the army will lend us an engineer officer with some experience in flood control." The night was turning out to be not so dull after all. Diplomatically--he was liaison, not command--he filled in the chief operator, and she made a little speech to the matrons and girls, detailing half of them to continue meticulously with the aircraft work and the rest to start phoning the watchers. The lieutenant rapidly devised a set of symbols to summarize the conditions at each point; his weather studies helped there. Within minutes they were jotting them down on the map table. One girl came to him with the question, what do you do when you can't get a wire through? "Put down an _F_," he said. "For flooded." The director was back on the wire, and he hadn't even called Group yet. "You'd better send a man of your own down here, sir," he advised. "Somebody from your staff who can do nothing but report to you." "Good idea. He's on his way, Lieutenant." He got through to Group, the officer of the day first and then the sleepy executive officer. The exec carefully avoided commenting on his action but said, "We'll send you a meteorologist pronto. I'll message First Army about the engineer officer. Meanwhile, keep at it--and don't forget your primary mission, Lieutenant." He would not forget. One of the girls at the plexiglas scribbled a symbol, but nobody at the table picked it up; they were too busy twittering and tutting over the grim picture shaping up along the rivers of their state. "Get that intercept!" he snapped at the girl who was responsible for the sector. "Sorry," she said, burning red, and picked out a marker to shove carefully to the right spot on the map. Multi-engine, approximately angels ten, bearing 280. The lieutenant checked his list; it was CMA Flight 24 a little off course. And the girls kept calling; from some alert watchers they got unbelievably exact information relayed from local police or newsmen--normal river depth, present river depth, rise during the past 24 hours, condition of phone and power lines. From others they got only brief impressions that there was trouble, and how much. From many they got nothing at all. Down the river valley towns on the map table crawled the menacing symbol _F_, over and over again. CHAPTER SIX The man in the winterized jeep unzipped a window, leaned out and yelled: "The burgess around here?"