Then the breaking rockets were kicking, the high thin wail as the thickening atmosphere scratched along the black ship's bulk was deepening, and the deceleration was pushing lazy hands against him, urging him against the duralloy bulwark at his back. "Gosh," Dead-Eye said, gaping open-mouthed into the visaplate. "Cap, looky here, the whole city is blue." It _was_ blue--this White City which in the long ago had been New York. A blue visible with an inner light of its own that absorbed the white moon beams and made even black shadows turn blue. * * * * * The city was like some huge blue flower, sunset blue for stamen and pistil, its hue lightening to aquamarine, cerulean, and pastel as its petals stretched farther out over the city. It was pulsing and each pulsation swelled its circumference. Then the visaplate was flickering and the tiny red bulb centered in its plastic base began to blink, signaling power trouble. Then the screen went blank. "What is it?" Packer exclaimed. His voice was loud and harsh in the plotting room now. The incessant signal six-two ... signal six-two ... had ceased. The instrument panel lights went dark, the rockets cut off abruptly, the only sound was the scrabbling fingers of the outside.... "Force field," Curt Wing said. "Something we've never been able to develop. But there it is. That's the catastrophe. It's swallowing White City, and if there's an intelligence behind it or not, mankind is done if we can't stop it." "Force field?" Packer asked. "But didn't you...?" "Yes," Wing said. "I created one once. A little thing less than an inch square. Balanced one magnetic field against another by firing four atomic guns at a coincident point. But a funny thing, the longer the field held the more power I had to shove into it. "Then I didn't have any more power to give, and Dead-Eye says, 'Gee, what's happening to all those atoms?' So I grabbed him and ran like hell for the nearest sub-basement. When those compressed atoms let go it tore everything loose from the experimental station. "When Dead-Eye and I crawled out, all it was was a desert. There wasn't a tree, a bush, a rock or a hill for ten miles around. It was the flattest place I ever saw, or hope to see again." He was staring blankly at the insentient visaplate. "But, hell, I talk too much." Jake Wilson, landing supervisor, pushed open the oval hatch, said: "Hang on, sir, we're volplaning in. It's lucky we got the vanes out before the power quit." The shock spilled the chunky Wilson into the plotting room, clipped the legs out from under the three already there. There was a moment of lift, then another shock a little less severe. The ship lifted again, struck, lifted once more and settled with an audible groan of metal stress. They hurried from the plotting room, heading for the exit lock.