"Fine," Morrow said. "If the weather forecasts for tomorrow night pan out, we'll get in and out without any trouble."
Smitty frowned worriedly. "It's still a big risk to take, Bill. We'll be flying into the Coastal Radar-Defense Zone, you know, and we can't just file a flight-plan at an airport for an unauthorized, illegal ship. I'd hate to look up and see an F-140 night-fighter with its nose-cannon blazing at me!"
"That ground radar isn't effective below three thousand feet," Morrow reminded him. "I think we can sneak in at treetop-level without being detected."
"That's all right, unless we fly into a power-line in the dark," Smitty grumbled. "It's still risky as hell—"
"We've got to have Foster," Morrow said firmly. "I can't say for sure whether he'll join us or not, but we've got to try!"
"Okay!" Smitty signed resignedly. "We'll try."
The following night, Morrow left Smitty checking over their ship and flight equipment and drove the truck down to a gas station on the highway, thirty miles west of their sawmill-workshop. He parked beside the gas pumps, told the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil, and went inside to the pay-phone booth.
He called Sacramento Long Distance and gave them Foster's home videophone number.
There was some fault in calling from a pay-phone, of course—and a Long Distance call on a rural pay-phone at that. Neither Long Distance calls nor pay-phones nor rural phones had the new videophone accessories. Videophones, involving two-way television transmission via a camera-screen installation, were still in the development stage. Metropolitan and suburban phones had the video screens. Long Distance coaxial transmission was still too costly to merit the installation of the screens on rural phones—which also ruled out Long Distance video calls. To install the screens in pay-phones would, as yet, triple the cost of the calls.
Naturally, the Sacramento operator would inform Foster this was a Long Distance call; Foster's screen would remain blank. The gas station's pay-phone had no screen. This was a disadvantage to Morrow: not seeing Foster's face, he wouldn't be absolutely certain he was speaking to Foster. He'd have to rely on his memory of Foster's voice, and it had been more than two years since he'd met Foster.