“To answer your question, I don’t think the Governor believed me. We’re good friends, and he knows the medals I won over there, but what could do that? He just doesn’t believe it. ” Andrew pointed over the side of the plane at the chrome-yellow sand.
“Been pondering the same,” Charles said. “I have my photos. I’m taking more. I really wish someone made useful color film.”
“You can make color photographs at all?” Cornelius said. “That’s amazing. It’s an age of wonders we live in. Mentioning wonders, I keep following this color border, changing course as we go, I gather Andrew keeps marking things on his map, but that line between yellow and not yellow is perfectly sharp.”
“The border looks to be a simple circle,” Andrew said. “If I’m right, in a couple minutes we pass over Wilhoit.”
“Meanwhile,” Charles said, “if I could have your attention for a moment, knowing you’re busy with that map?”
“We’re doing the amazing speed of 60 mph, give or take, but it still takes a little while for us to get someplace,” Andrew answered.
“That star you said wasn’t Venus,” Charles answered. “When we started following the sand area, headed more or less west, that star was more or less at nine-o-clock from us, and well above the horizon. We’ve gone far enough and turned enough that the sun, instead of being right behind us, is now over my left shoulder, at about 8 o’clock. But if I look out at 9 o’clock and up, that star is in exactly the same place. It can’t be a star, can it? It must be some sort of airplane.”
“Good eyes,” Andrew said. He fumbled with his map for a moment. “And if the sand area is some sort of a circle, which I’ll have checked by tonight, it must be sort of in the middle, give or take.”
“Checked?” Cornelius said.
“I anticipate the Governor wants to know the complete border of this whatever-it-is, meaning I get to go off and talk to him, Charles goes to his newspaper with all his film to develop, you get to have a full lunch, though by the way whoever made the sandwiches did a truly fine job, and that coffee is the best in town, but later this afternoon, say around three, I’m going to want to fly the other half-circuit, and probably take another observer along.”
“It pays for my house,” Cornelius said. “Every so often I have enough cash to do some more work on it and a full day here makes a certain contribution to that.”
“You’re building it yourself?” Charles asked.
“I paid a good carpenter to put up the shell and floor,” Cornelius answered, “and I’m doing the rest. I love flying, but I also love fine carpentry.”
“You keep writing notes to yourself, Charles,” Andrew observed. “I’m staring at the sand, and see nothing different.”
“All the same, “Charles agreed. ” ‘A zone of total devastation’, I call it. Nothing remains. No trees, no brush, no houses — I spotted a couple more foundations – no watercourses, except outside there are rivulets going dry. And back inside no tracks, no ties, no phone poles, trains smashed flat. I can write all the graphic details, but my editor will demand that I explain what happened. I am at wit’s end.”
