The day after, however, was immaculately clear and from the azure reaches above the lake there floated to and over Chicago a second giant syllable: CRAP! The formation, this time, was witnessed by the officers and crew of the _Matthew T. Handless_, a freighter. Her skipper, acting as spokesman for the group, seemed less awed by the reporters and news cameramen than by his memory. "It was an absolutely cloudless morning out there," he said. "Dry weather. Barometer at 30.46. Nothing in sight. Then clouds just seemed to appear of their own accord in the sky. Not a wave below--flat calm. They worked themselves into this here, now, word--and they started drifting for Chicago on a high-altitude breeze. I watched pretty much the whole thing with my glasses--and they're good glasses. I just had 'em checked at Davis's Optometrical, and there was no plane of any sort." The news spread across an amused United States. WRITING IN SKY PANICS CHI "Disgruntled Chicagoan" was the universal solution. Disgruntled Chicagoan with a new process for sky-writing. Somebody sore about the housing shortage, the garbage disposal, the taxes, the materials scarcities, the innumerable blanks to be made out for local, state and federal governments, the new bonus, the rising menace of prohibition, the thousand things at which people were indignant in 1953. "Chicago per se," the New York _Times_ rather uncouthly suggested. It was not until the 14th of August, however--a day much like the 9th--that the matter took on different proportions. For, by then, the marshaled resources of science were as ready as set rattraps. When the clouds began to churn significantly, no less than one hundred and eighteen planes, not counting the planes of photographers and mere sightseers, climbed to the region from fields all around the Windy City, which, of course, as on the ninth, was enjoying a mild zephyr. A huge S took shape. Traffic stopped. Customers and employees poured out of stores like lava, offices regurgitated their hordes, housewives left bacon burning and babies sodden; all were witness to an impromptu air circus. It had three phases, or acts. First, police planes and military aircraft drove off unofficial spectators--light planes and helicopters belonging to the curious and two or three commercial pilots who carried their fares off the flyways for a closer look. Second, science went to work.