Where would he go? He did not know; he had been bluffing a bit and the
Commander had called him when his hand was weak; he had no least idea
where he could find their ship. If only he had had a chance for a word
with Walt Harkness: Walt had been flying it; he had left it apparently
in a storage hangar.
But where? And what was it that Walt had called out? Chet was racking
his brains to remember.
"The ship is yours," Walt had shouted ... and something about "storage."
But why should he have laid up the ship; why should he have stored it?
Chet saw the lights of subterranean stations flashing past as the car
that held him rode silently through a tube that it touched not at all.
He knew that magnetic rails made a grillwork that surrounded the car and
that drew it on at terrific speed while suspending it in air. But he
would infinitely have preferred the freedom of the high levels, and his
own hand on a ship's controls.
A ship!--any ship!--but preferably his ship and Walt's. And Walt had
said something of "_storage--cold storage_." The words seemed written
before him in fiery lines. It was a moment before he knew what he had
recalled. Then a slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he
turned and stared through a window that showed only blackness.
"_Cold storage!_" That was good work on Walt's part. He had been forced
to shout the directions before them all, yet tell none of those others
about him where the ship was hidden. Chet was picturing that place of
"cold storage" as he smiled. The fact that it was some thousands of
miles away troubled him not at all.
* * * * *
The great Hoover Terminal was a place where night never came. Its
daylight tubes wove a network of light about the stupendous enclosure,
their almost silent hissing merged to an unceasing rush of sound, so
soft as to be unheard through the scuffing feet and chattering voices of
the ever-hurrying crowds.
From subways the impatient people came and went, and from highway
stations where busses and private cars drove in and away. The clock in
the squat tower swung its electrically driven hands toward the figure
22; there lacked but two hours of midnight, and a steady stream of
aircraft came dropping down the shaft of green light that reached to and
through the clouds. There would be many liners leaving on the hour;
these that were coming in were private craft that spun their flashing
helicopters like giant emeralds in the green descending light, while the
noise of their beating blades filled the air with a rush of sound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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