adequate warning? Or–had the upheaval been even more widespread? Perhaps the
war, crawling to an exhausted close when he left, had flared again. But what war
weapon could wipe out a city so cleanly, melt it to glassy puddles like this?
He thought for a moment of going on to Chicago, in what he strangely felt to be
a hopeless quest for life, but his fuel meter warned him he could stay in the
air only a few minutes longer. Desperately he swung the ship south and up, and
moved the little metal oval almost halfway forward in the cage. The Icarus
roared and he was forced into his seat.
Then the rear tubes began to cough. He searched the board for the valve of
Keller’s favorite and much-discussed emergency pump (“Only thirteen pounds,” he
could hear the little man pleading, “and so handy for accidents.”), twisted it
hard, and the reserve in the forward tubes was forced back. Again the Icarus
bucked and bounded upward, but the coughing began again and black smoke began to
pour from the Venturi orifices, wreathing the tail of the ship in a trailing
dense pall. Oxygen gone. The fuel was useless now–might as well save it;
without oxygen the tubes had no more thrust than a blowtorch. He cut the feed
throttles.
The Icarus was falling now in a great arc, gliding on its truncated wings,
losing speed rapidly. He searched the horizon, but if he were anywhere near
Philadelphia, it must have been destroyed as well; there was nothing but the
endless scrub forest. Bitterly he watched the speed, and when the ship could no