He'd watched aircraft, V-2's and various missiles too long to miss the significance of the object's glide angle. Unless it lifted under power it would surely descend in the Flushing area. He turned, raced across the roof, and descended quickly to the street, his heart beating like a bass drum. Ten minutes later, as he swung his car toward Grand Central Parkway, he felt time's urgency, the beating pulse that had measured out minutes that so often could have been the last minutes—when he'd perched upon high towers removing the connecting plugs of fission bombs that had failed to detonate—
Oh, God! Not this stomach-wrenching nervousness again!
His eyes flicked momentarily to the dashboard's vacant panel which had held the clock he'd smashed that day when time's pressure had grown too great....
Forget it! he told himself almost frantically. You're over that! You're well again!
He sped past the airport, curved under the bridge where Northern Boulevard's eastbound lane crosses the parkway, and found the heavy late evening traffic out of Manhattan stalled, blocking all three lanes ahead.
It must have landed in Flushing Meadow Park!
On impulse, he swung right and up around to Northern Boulevard, crossing over the parkway. He cut left through a half-moon turn-around—the wrong way—and swung deftly through the westbound traffic into the Boat Basin, and then back under the boulevard on the undulating road through the park.
Passing under the towering elevated structure and the railroad overpass, he discovered with a strange mixture of exultation and apprehension that his deduction had been correct. The cylinder lay in smothering folds of darkness on the gently rising slope near The City of New York Building.
He stopped, leaving the car's motor running, its headlights on high beam. Quickly he took a Geiger counter from the glove compartment and, dismounting, approached the object.
The counter failed to respond. There was not even heat radiation. To his cautious touch the stern was neither warmer nor cooler than the night.