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committee came up with a plan, and it was quickly approved by the President. It included instructions for air traffic controllers, airport managers, and all government agencies, civil and military, in every state in the Union. The orders were sealed in containers that were not to be opened, under any circumstances, without an OK from the Oval Office.
    Those who held the containers knew that in certain undisclosed circumstances they would receive a code word and a telephone number. They were to call the number immediately, acknowledging receipt of the code word. Once the container was unsealed, Envelope One was to be opened. This gave the recipient general instructions that varied according to his job. It added that detailed orders would be obtained by calling the same telephone number. There were also Envelopes Two, Three, and Four, none to be opened without additional authority. The beauty of the system was this: Up to and including the opening of Envelope One, neither the recipients nor the telephone control would know more than the simple fact that an air emergency existed. Should it turn out to be a false alarm, no great damage would be done.
    Control was a small operations room manned continuously by ranking Air Force officers responsible to the ICARUS committee — on whose orders they would originate the code word, relay instructions, and update the file of missing planes. Hooked into the air defense teletype network, they would know at once if a missing aircraft turned up, and would promptly alert the ICARUS committee. This was all Control knew and they were not encouraged to speculate.
    Arcasso and his fellow members set up a four-day roster. On a duty day the committee member kept close contact with the duty officer. For the other three days he was free to move wherever he liked or needed to be — provided he maintained communications and could be back in the Pentagon within three hours. In their different ways, all four men prayed it would never happen. It would have surprised the others, had they known, that tough old Arcasso — the sloppiest dresser ever to make lieutenant-colonel — had taken to saying his prayers in church.
     

 
    VII.
     
    The twentieth century has seen the gradual erosion of the importance of the family in America. A weds B, both leave their parents, set up home, raise kids — who repeat the pattern, leaving A and B to their own devices, free to visit their children’s families, but preferably not too often. Then A or B dies. The survivor is left alone, often with no function or purpose in life.
    Which is why parts of Florida are the way they are, and why Social Circles are so popular, especially with widowed grandmothers, deprived of their ancient right to boss the family from the fireside while keeping an eye on the stew pot.
    The Social Circle of Abdera Hollow, New York, was a lot more than a geriatric get-together: Imbued with the good old American spirit of get-up-and-go, it took full advantage of cheap globe-trotting packages for organized groups, and traveled as often as possible.
    Seventy-two Circle members had organized a European tour (“Five Countries and Four Capitals in Ten Days”) in September, 1982. The last stop was Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France.
    Forty were widows or footloose wives; fourteen retired couples, two adventurous widowers, and two single females — who ruined the average age — completed the party. One of the younger women, thirty and newly divorced, came because she couldn’t think of anything better to do. The other, twenty, was the niece of one of the widows; she went along, all expenses paid, in return for a little light donkey-work. It was better than staying home and mulling over a disastrous love affair. These two apart, the age scale began at forty-seven and ended at an energetic eighty-two. Most were in their early seventies.
    The party had at last been corralled for the return flight by that modern cowboy, the courier.