The day after, however, was immaculately clear and from the azure reaches above the lake there floated to and over Chicago a second giant syllable:
CRAP!
The formation, this time, was witnessed by the officers and crew of the Matthew T. Handless, a freighter. Her skipper, acting as spokesman for the group, seemed less awed by the reporters and news cameramen than by his memory. "It was an absolutely cloudless morning out there," he said. "Dry weather. Barometer at 30.46. Nothing in sight. Then clouds just seemed to appear of their own accord in the sky. Not a wave below—flat calm. They worked themselves into this here, now, word—and they started drifting for Chicago on a high-altitude breeze. I watched pretty much the whole thing with my glasses—and they're good glasses. I just had 'em checked at Davis's Optometrical, and there was no plane of any sort."
The news spread across an amused United States.
WRITING IN SKY PANICS CHI
"Disgruntled Chicagoan" was the universal solution. Disgruntled Chicagoan with a new process for sky-writing. Somebody sore about the housing shortage, the garbage disposal, the taxes, the materials scarcities, the innumerable blanks to be made out for local, state and federal governments, the new bonus, the rising menace of prohibition, the thousand things at which people were indignant in 1953. "Chicago per se," the New York Times rather uncouthly suggested.
It was not until the 14th of August, however—a day much like the 9th—that the matter took on different proportions. For, by then, the marshaled resources of science were as ready as set rattraps. When the clouds began to churn significantly, no less than one hundred and eighteen planes, not counting the planes of photographers and mere sightseers, climbed to the region from fields all around the Windy City, which, of course, as on the ninth, was enjoying a mild zephyr.
A huge S took shape. Traffic stopped. Customers and employees poured out of stores like lava, offices regurgitated their hordes, housewives left bacon burning and babies sodden; all were witness to an impromptu air circus. It had three phases, or acts. First, police planes and military aircraft drove off unofficial spectators—light planes and helicopters belonging to the curious and two or three commercial pilots who carried their fares off the flyways for a closer look. Second, science went to work.
The letter S was photographed. Samples of it were taken. The air currents in and around it were measured by instruments operated through ports in airplanes readied just for the task. Various tagged atoms were then dusted into the letter and their courses were pursued by scientists in helicopters, armed with counters. From the ground, spectroscopes were trained upon the initial and diffraction gratings laid bare its spectrum. Everything was done that had been planned at the University of Chicago—and elsewhere in the city—and by a variety of physical scientists who phoned and wrote in their suggestions. Meantime, an H formed next to the S and subdued titter filled the watching streets.
The third plane followed when an ineluctable I was added to the throbbing sky-scene. As if this was carrying cosmic anagrams too far, military aircraft undertook to break up the phenomenon—also according to plan.