Sedately the word moved toward the city area. People began to
speculate about the product thus being advertised. Two or three of
the quicker-thinking formed hat-pools for dimes and quarters--best
guess to take all. At the same time, a considerable discussion arose
over the fact that these letters were not being formed by a plane--a
glinting speck at the head of a comet of smoke--but were the result of
a composing of clouds which had thitherto appeared to be in the random
distribution familiar to all. A vague alarm became observable in the
voices and the postures of the beholders although it was suggested by
the calm among them that the sky-writer had lost the first part of
his message--a PEA, for example, or a GRAPE. At the same time, the
discomforting fact remained that no performer, and no aerial equipment
of any nature, could be descried.
The growing strain--and strain came easily amongst persons who
had lived through eight years of the Atomic Age--rather suddenly
diminished. Clouds boiled, rotated and stretched out to make what
people began to recognize (in the order of individual percipience) as
a pluralizing S and an exclamation point. The great letters on the sky
said: