Morrow spoke quietly and succinctly, pausing only for a sip of coffee or a pull on his cigarette, and gave a concise briefing of his discovery and its implications. The dishes of an early breakfast had been cleared away, so no waitress bothered them and the few other patrons in the restaurant were out of ear-shot. Across from him, ex-Captain D.P. Smith sprawled laconically on the cushioned seat, listening. The expression on his lean, brown face was thoughtful, intent. He sipped his coffee and flicked the ashes of his cigarette into the saucer. He was a small, slender man dressed in a conservative, pin-stripe business suit. There was nothing dare-devil about his attitude, nor were his movements deft or quick. He was slow, cautious; his attitude was a reserved calmness. It was immediately noticeable. His carefully groomed black hair and his small, black mustache gave his features a mischievous look. There was something satanic about his small stature, his long hands, and his lean, handsome appearance. One would expect a bright, hand-painted tie and a roving, speculative eye. His utter calmness and reserve seemed incongruous. Only the faint, white scar along his jawline might have indicated a devil-may-care experience. Morrow had mentioned it, remembering that Smitty had written about the crash last year--he was making a pass over a field, spreading bug-killer spray over a farmer's potato crop, when a sudden down-draft caught his plane and he couldn't pull up in time to avoid the neighboring orchard. He'd crashed through the apple trees, snapping them like kindling. The plane was completely demolished. _When I woke up_, he'd written, _they had me spread out on a silver tray with an apple in my mouth!_ Crop-dusting was a hard, dangerous job. The pilots did most of their flying before dawn or in early afternoon, when the air was calm; but they had to fly at other times, too, to make enough to meet expenses. They'd take off in small, worn-out planes, loaded beyond safety flight limits with bug-killer, and fly to some farmer's fields. Then they'd make passes back and forth over the fields, flying below-treetop, leap-frogging barbed-wire fences, zooming under telephone lines, and dodging trees and farm buildings, their eyes stinging as the spray billowed back into the cockpit. The pay they received was small, mostly because there were so many skilled pilots looking for work and so few civilian flying jobs. Smitty could easily reenlist in the Air Force, of course, but they wouldn't give him a flying job; at thirty-two, he was too old for military flying. They took the eighteen-year-olds for that. And Smitty wouldn't reenlist to sit behind a desk. So he dusted crops. It was no job for a dare-devil, either. A pilot had to know his limitations, the limitations of his plane, and what he was doing every second. * * * * *