"Is there something wrong?"
"They took…” Wilson began and stopped.
What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across the world had robbed him?
The three traveling men were looking at him.
"I'm sorry, miss,” he stammered. “I really am. I fell asleep and dreamed."
He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner of his seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, high in the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin… stranded without money, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and the few personal effects in his bag.
Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The plane was entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, was no place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They might think he was a spy. He might be cited for illegal entry. He might be framed by secret police.
Terror perched on his shoulder and whispered to him. He shivered violently and drew farther back into the corner of the seat. He clasped his hands, beat them against his huddled knees.
He would cable friends back in America and have them identify him and vouch for his character. He would borrow some money from them, just enough to get back to America. But whom would he cable? And with aching bitterness in his breast. Harry Wilson came face to face with the horrible realization that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the Solar System, was there a single person who was his friend. There was no one to help him.
He bowed his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders jerking spasmodically, the sobs racking his body.