importance.
The sergeant was very helpful now; the name of Matt Hawthorne was magic.
He escorted David through the Forty-ninth Street entrance, hailed an
Army car, gave the corporal driving it an order.
"Take this man to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Corporal." He turned
to David. "There's a staging point there for Army vehicles moving to
the island, sir. If you'll show your priority to the officer in charge
at the bridge, I'm sure you'll be able to get a hitch."
An hour later David walked into the terminal at Idlewild. He had just
reached the reservations counter when he heard:
"David!"
He whirled and saw Carol running toward him. Stunned, unable to believe
that it was she, he stood there, gaping foolishly. And then she was in
his arms.
"Carol, what happened? How did you get here?"
"Darling, darling, I thought I'd go out of my mind. I didn't know what
happened to you." She was crying on his shoulder. "All I knew was that
you were coming out here to the airport. But the) didn't have any record
of your leaving -- and I waited and waited, and finally I thought, back
in town, maybe you'd been hurt, maybe you were dead. Oh, David!"
It was a little while before she was coherent enough to tell him the rest.
"I'd just gone out for breakfast, David. With our announcer, Ray
Graves. We usually do that between rehearsal and broadcast on a morning
show. Anyway, we went over to Sixth Avenue, and we'd just gone into
the restaurant when it happened. Everything. After that I knew there
wouldn't be any broadcast or anything else. And I kept thinking of you.
You'd be out here at the airport, or on the way out. I had to meet you
then, to go out with you to California, and Ray -- Ray was wonderful.
First we went to his place to see if his wife was all right, and she
was. Then he drove me out here, went way up to the Triborough Bridge and
up the parkway, that way, because the Army wouldn't let any civilian cars
cross the Fifty-ninth. Oh, David, I was so afraid something had happened
to you. I've been here, waiting and waiting for -- well, it seems years!"
There was still the problem of getting a seat on a plane for Carol.
David had his reservation and priority, but the reservations clerk swore
that he couldn't assign another seat on the next plane going to the Coast.
At the last moment, however, there was a cancellation. One of the
passengers hadn't been able to make it, had been delayed in town for a
reason unknown. But it could be guessed at, and the guess was pretty grim.
At Chicago they had been delayed for three hours. Now it was just getting
dark as the stratocruiser glided across the Arizona border and began to
eat up the last lap to San Diego.
The radio was on in the lounge cabin, and an announcer was broadcasting
from a Chicago origin. Suddenly he was cut off, and an announcer from
New York came in, told his listeners that the transmitters were working
again from that city. The passengers in the cabin sat up and listened
as he gave them the first news fragments from the metropolis:
". . . the over-all damage to New York, it can now be re-ported, was
surprisingly small. The modern structures in the city stood firm,
although a few antiquated wooden buildings collapsed. Casualties,
according to early estimates, amounted to some five thousand persons,
killed and injured, for the most part, from flying glass.
"The main damage has been to morale. The vibrations, although doing
little damage in a material sense, caused panic among those still left
in the city. The Army has declared the city under martial law and has
ordered the population evacuated.
"The rumor spread through the shaken city that the Russians had struck
with an atom bomb buried deep underground, that they would strike
again. Army authorities deny this, pointing out that an atomic underground
explosion would cause far more serious effects. They report,
The sergeant was very helpful now; the name of Matt Hawthorne was magic.
He escorted David through the Forty-ninth Street entrance, hailed an
Army car, gave the corporal driving it an order.
"Take this man to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Corporal." He turned
to David. "There's a staging point there for Army vehicles moving to
the island, sir. If you'll show your priority to the officer in charge
at the bridge, I'm sure you'll be able to get a hitch."
An hour later David walked into the terminal at Idlewild. He had just
reached the reservations counter when he heard:
"David!"
He whirled and saw Carol running toward him. Stunned, unable to believe
that it was she, he stood there, gaping foolishly. And then she was in
his arms.
"Carol, what happened? How did you get here?"
"Darling, darling, I thought I'd go out of my mind. I didn't know what
happened to you." She was crying on his shoulder. "All I knew was that
you were coming out here to the airport. But the) didn't have any record
of your leaving -- and I waited and waited, and finally I thought, back
in town, maybe you'd been hurt, maybe you were dead. Oh, David!"
It was a little while before she was coherent enough to tell him the rest.
"I'd just gone out for breakfast, David. With our announcer, Ray
Graves. We usually do that between rehearsal and broadcast on a morning
show. Anyway, we went over to Sixth Avenue, and we'd just gone into
the restaurant when it happened. Everything. After that I knew there
wouldn't be any broadcast or anything else. And I kept thinking of you.
You'd be out here at the airport, or on the way out. I had to meet you
then, to go out with you to California, and Ray -- Ray was wonderful.
First we went to his place to see if his wife was all right, and she
was. Then he drove me out here, went way up to the Triborough Bridge and
up the parkway, that way, because the Army wouldn't let any civilian cars
cross the Fifty-ninth. Oh, David, I was so afraid something had happened
to you. I've been here, waiting and waiting for -- well, it seems years!"
There was still the problem of getting a seat on a plane for Carol.
David had his reservation and priority, but the reservations clerk swore
that he couldn't assign another seat on the next plane going to the Coast.
At the last moment, however, there was a cancellation. One of the
passengers hadn't been able to make it, had been delayed in town for a
reason unknown. But it could be guessed at, and the guess was pretty grim.
At Chicago they had been delayed for three hours. Now it was just getting
dark as the stratocruiser glided across the Arizona border and began to
eat up the last lap to San Diego.
The radio was on in the lounge cabin, and an announcer was broadcasting
from a Chicago origin. Suddenly he was cut off, and an announcer from
New York came in, told his listeners that the transmitters were working
again from that city. The passengers in the cabin sat up and listened
as he gave them the first news fragments from the metropolis:
". . . the over-all damage to New York, it can now be re-ported, was
surprisingly small. The modern structures in the city stood firm,
although a few antiquated wooden buildings collapsed. Casualties,
according to early estimates, amounted to some five thousand persons,
killed and injured, for the most part, from flying glass.
"The main damage has been to morale. The vibrations, although doing
little damage in a material sense, caused panic among those still left
in the city. The Army has declared the city under martial law and has
ordered the population evacuated.
"The rumor spread through the shaken city that the Russians had struck
with an atom bomb buried deep underground, that they would strike
again. Army authorities deny this, pointing out that an atomic underground
explosion would cause far more serious effects. They report,
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