He had changed his clothes at noon, and now wore garments that were heated by electricity from the battery in the basket. His oxygen mask, which he would put on when rarefied air was reached, was heated also; and his goggles likewise. His helmet was equipped with earphones, and in the wicker cage a radio was rigged to bring in entertainment from the ground when he was flying high above the earth. The _Marie_ drifted lazily into the air, looking, from the ground, like a huge gray soap-bubble on which a drop of water clung. Conway stood at the rim of his tiny car and watched the earth drop slowly away below. He was watching nothing in particular, seeing the crowd and the flying field and Greenburg through the haze abstractedly. He noticed an automobile, a cab whose vivid color was its trademark, race along the road toward the balloon hangar. It came at last to the crowd, broke through the cordon of soldiers that had surrounded the _Marie_ on the ground, raced to a spot directly underneath the balloon. A figure leaped out, waved frantically. Conway did not recognize the car as Welkfurn’s. He had been glancing at the road occasionally, hoping that the other man would arrive at the field in time. He knew the dangers of going into the cold of high altitudes with an oily clock, and he planned, if Welkfurn came in time, to return to earth to get the other timepiece. He watched the waving figure for a moment and thought: “Must be that fool reporter. Too late even for a picture!” The mottled earth dimmed slowly through the haze as the _Marie_ went skyward. Conway reached for his collar clumsily with his mittened fingers and adjusted the fur around his throat. Idly he watched a lone buzzard circle in the bleak and forlorn cold at two thousand feet. Slowly the balloon reached a level with the bird, went on up until Conway lost sight of the wheeling speck of black. The thermometer in the basket registered five degrees above zero; not cold, in comparison with the cold that would be encountered in the upper air, but cold enough that Conway’s face felt drawn and hard and bitten. In a few minutes he would put his face mask on. At five thousand feet the haze was denser; he could still see the earth below, but faintly now. The flying field stood out dimly from the other land surrounding it, but the giant hangar in its center seemed to fade imperceptibly into the haze. The radio brought a rakish melody faintly to the earphones. The music soothed Conway, though if he had listened to it on the ground he would have turned to something else. It made him forget to some extent the loneliness of the infinity that stretched away above him. The earth was invisible now. * * * * * At fifteen thousand feet the temperature had dropped to five degrees below. Conway put on his mask and adjusted it. His goggles began to fog and, reaching down, he turned on his batteries; then, picking up his log sheet, made an entry: