The stratoship from Cairo was late, and I was wondering whether the newsreel theatre or a couple of drinks would make time pass faster. It was early dusk. Through the immense, curved wall-window of the Manhattan Port Room I could see the landing field, with a silvery ship being rolled over the tarmac, and the skyscrapers of New York beyond.
Then I saw Arnsen.
If ever I saw hell in a man's face, I saw it in Arnsen's then. There was a dreadful longing, and an equally horrible hopelessness, the expression one might see on the face of a damned soul looking up from the pit at the shining gates forever beyond his reach.
And Arnsen's face had been—ravaged.
The searing mark of some experience lay there, branded into his furrowed cheeks, his tightened lips, into his eyes where a sickness dwelt. No—this was not Steve Arnsen, the boy I had known at Midwestern. Youth had left him, and hope as well.
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