Saturday. More rain. Wetness was all. The entire east side had been shored with sand bags. In some places they served only to create sandy waterfalls, where otherwise the streams would have flowed more evenly and perhaps a trifle more clearly. In other places they held it all back, for awhile. By then, there were six deaths as a direct result of the rains. By then, there had been fires caused by the lightning, accidents by the water, sicknesses by the dampness, the cold. By then, property damages were beginning to mount pretty high. Everyone was tired and angry and miserable and wet, by then. This included me. Though Saturday was Saturday, I went to work. I worked in Eleanor’s office, with her. We had the big relief map spread on a table, and six mobile eyescreens were lined against one wall. Six eyes hovered above the half-dozen emergency points and kept us abreast of the actions taken upon them. Several new telephones and a big radio set stood on the desk. Five ashtrays looked as if they wanted to be empty, and the coffee pot chuckled cynically at human activity. The Noble had almost reached its high water mark. We were not an isolated storm center by any means. Upriver, Butler Township was hurting, Swan’s Nest was adrip, Laurie was weeping the river, and the wilderness in between was shaking and streaming. Even though we were in direct contact we went into the field on three occasions that morning–once, when the north-south bridge over the Lance River collapsed and was washed down toward the Noble as far as the bend by the Mack steel mill; again, when the Wildwood Cemetery, set up on a storm-gouged hill to the east, was plowed deeply, graves opened, and several coffins set awash; and finally, when three houses full of people toppled, far to the east. Eleanor’s small flyer was buffeted by the winds as we fought our way through to these sites for on-the-spot supervision; I navigated almost completely by instruments. Downtown proper was accommodating evacuees left and right by then. I took three showers that morning and changed clothes twice. Things slowed down a bit in the afternoon, including the rain. The cloud cover didn’t break, but a drizzle-point was reached which permitted us to gain a little on the waters. Retaining walls were reinforced, evacuees were fed and dried, some of the rubbish was cleaned up. Four of the six eyes were returned to their patrols, because four of the emergency points were no longer emergency points. …And we wanted all of the eyes for the org patrol. Inhabitants of the drenched forest were also on the move. Seven _snappers_ and a horde of panda-puppies were shot that day, as well as a few crawly things from the troubled waters of the Noble–not to mention assorted branch-snakes, stingbats, borers, and land-eels. By 1900 hours it seemed that a stalemate had been achieved. Eleanor and I climbed into her flyer and drifted skyward. We kept rising. Finally, there was a hiss as the cabin began to pressurize itself. The night was all around us. Eleanor’s face, in the light from the instrument panel, was a mask of weariness. She raised her hands to her temples as if to remove it, and then when I looked back again it appeared that she had. A faint smile lay across her lips now and her eyes sparkled. A stray strand of hair shadowed her brow. “Where are you taking me?” she asked. “Up, high,” said I, “above the storm.” “Why?” “It’s been many days,” I said, “since we have seen an uncluttered sky.” “True,” she agreed, and as she leaned forward to light a cigarette I noticed that the part in her hair had gone all askew. I wanted to reach out and straighten it for her, but I didn’t. We plunged into the sea of clouds. Dark was the sky, moonless. The stars shone like broken diamonds. The clouds were a floor of lava. We drifted. We stared up into the heavens. I “anchored” the flyer, like an eye set to hover, and lit a cigarette myself. “You are older than I am,” she finally said, “really. You know?” “No.” “There is a certain wisdom, a certain strength, something like the essence of the time that passes–that seeps into a man as he sleeps between the stars. I know, because I can feel it when I’m around you.” “No,” I said. “Then maybe it’s people expecting you to have the strength of centuries that gives you something like it. It was probably there to begin with.” “No.” She chuckled. “It isn’t exactly a positive sort of thing either.” I laughed. “You asked me if I was going to run for office again this fall. The answer is ‘no’. I’m planning on retiring. I want to settle down.” “With anyone special?” “Yes, very special, Juss,” she said, and she smiled at me and I kissed her, but not for too long, because the ash was about to fall off her cigarette and down the back of my neck. So we put both cigarettes out and drifted above the invisible city, beneath a sky without a moon.