But he didn't get his wish. For the next three days, the men passed the time in various ways. Some went fishing through the ice on the lake, others watched television, still others played cards or pool in the game room. During this time the police were not idle. They staked out the house in Denver and waited. Their patience was rewarded when, on the second night, a small plane came down out of the dark sky and hovered over the landing area. A man dropped to the ground and headed toward the house, and the plane rose into the night with blue flame dancing from the ends of the wing cylinders, and headed back toward the mountains. A large police plane high above traced the flight of the small ship with infra red detectors and spotted the hideout of the fugitives. On the third night Miguel Gomez arrived. He was a big, strapping man unusually light complected for a South American. His greetings were loud and boisterous. "Well, Juarez," he said loudly, "I see that you have our prisoner in good condition. But we can do nothing for awhile. A new plan has been developed. In one week, a rocket carrying high officials from our Republic will take off from the Chicago spaceport. These officials go to inspect the Lunar atomic laboratories. That rocket will crash, and the North Americans will be blamed. There will be evidence of general negligence with hints of sabotage. So! the fun will begin. If that does not work, we will use our friend, Lorin, here to top it off." That night they listened to a late newscast before going to bed. The situation was tense. The presidents' meeting had been postponed until after the inspection of the moon laboratories by the South American officials. There was talk of a general mobilization and a tightening of discipline at the military stations along the Mexican border and the gulf coast. * * * * * Five hundred miles above the Earth, the polar weather station wheeled silently through space. A sphere two hundred feet in diameter, it was girded by a ring deck that was home to forty men and women. The big observation room was the real reason for the space station's existence. Here, the weathermen kept watch over the movements of Earth's atmosphere. The fluffy white clouds that appeared on their screens told a tale of mass air movements that meant stormy or clear weather for the Earth below. An almost blinding white mass of cloud over Canada told of a cold front moving southward to collide with warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and unleash a blizzard over the plains of the Midwest. Tumbling clouds hid a storm that whipped the North Atlantic into a raging fury of white water. Clear areas showed where snow sparked under the winter sun or where soft tropical breezes ruffled the fronds of palm trees.