Lookout Cartridge

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It is a silent flash there in the city’s grid, and as I happen to look down at that precise point I am thinking of real estate prices.

From my height the detonation noise is a signal of light only. My cabin responds by at once easing its forward motion so we’re barely moving. We hover level with the goo-foot tower at 40 Wall Street, three quarters of a mile to our right. We have a new purpose.

We dip, and the controls alter the tilt of the rotor head’s swash-plate ring, which is above my head out of sight in the open air.

Had I been watching left or right of where the flash appeared, I would have seen it more clearly still.

Up in the cockpit the flash has been seen and the man in the right-hand seat is reporting it. But something is happening to our prop blades, the cadence is gone. Something is wrong, we throb, we rock, we drop, we wait. The pilot is rubbing his head against the side window, he is peering up.

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