The mood vanished as soon as he was outside and saw the gray-suited Jaffers operative waiting with stolid patience on the ramp of a department store across the street.
The shock of reminder brought on a giddy recurrence of his hallucination.
The polar plain yawned before him. The silent machines crept over their snow-packed ways, the faceless people stood in frozen groups.
He emerged from the seizure, shaken and sweating, to find that the Jaffers man had crossed the street and was waiting a safe distance behind. Alcorn fought down a panic desire to run away blindly only because Kitty would be waiting for him at Consolidated—Kitty, his bulwark of reassurance.
The gray-suited man was a deliberate hundred feet behind him when he boarded a tube-car.
Kitty was not in his office and there was no time to ring for her.
Instead, he went through the long accounting room beyond, answering automatically the smiles of a suddenly genial staff and headed for O'Donnell's office.
He saw at once that he was too late.
The CA manager's door was open and O'Donnell and Mulhall of Irradiated Foods were emerging. Both wore street jackets and both men had the unmistakable air of euphoric calm that came within seconds of Alcorn's approach.