“Now up ahead,” Cornelius interrupted, “it’s not a little patch of yellow.  It looks like the whole ground is turned bright yellow. Never never saw that before. I’d land to see what it is, but there’s nowhere out here flat enough for an Oriole to set down, not without crashing and wrecking the plane. You would not enjoy walking twenty miles back to town, especially not with not a lot of water on board.”

“I’ll try to get photos,” Andrew said, “though it’s someday in the future some clever Yankee will invent honest-to-God color film that would let my readers see the images.”

“Change will be obvious,” Charles said. “A couple of pictures now, showing all the brush, because I see no brush at all in that yellow area.”

“Am doing. I’m playing with the exposure time, because that yellow stuff looks bright. At worst my editor has to spring for another plane trip.” He focused on his work.

“Hey!” Cornelius sounded excited. “Up ahead, the rails just stop. Never seen anything like that, either! I’ll slow up and try to stay right above the rails, Andrew, so you can get a good picture of that. I guarantee the rail company and the Governor will want to see it.”

“Got it!  Can’t see anything of the ties, either.”

“OK, I’m pulling up.  I like more ground clearance for when we hit turbulence.”  The Oriole’s engine roared as Cornelius took it to full throttle.  Several minutes and a thousand feet of altitude later, he leveled off.  Ahead, left and right, the ground was a mottled orange. Rising hills then blocked the field of view.

When they crested the hill, the tangled ruins of a freight train were seen below them.

“Descending for a better look, ” Cornelius announced.  “This is not a fighter-interceptor, so we get to circle for a time until we reach a better altitude.”

“Major,” Andrew asked, “what do you make of the wreckage?”

“Cars scattered left and right, what’s left of the engine on its side, scars in the ground where the engine rolled on its side and skidded for a piece?” Charles observed, half to himself.  “They were proceeding at speed, and suddenly the sky fell in on them.  No rails, no ties, something did massive damage.  Never saw anything like it when I was over there, and we did a lot of recon and photo recon of German rail systems.”