what to say when he landed. He would have to tell them, of course.

He wondered who would be at the dock to meet him, besides his family.
Lynne Fawzi, he hoped. Or did he? Her parents would be with her, and
Kurt Fawzi would take the news hardest of any of them, and be the first
to blame him because it was bad. The hopes he had built for Lynne and
himself would have to be held in abeyance till he saw how her father
would regard him now.

But however any of them took it, he would have to tell them the truth.

* * * * *

The ship swept on, tearing through the thin puffs of cloud at ten miles
a minute. Six minutes to landing. Five. Four. Then he saw the river
bend, glinting redly through the haze in the sunlight; Litchfield was
inside it, and he stared waiting for the first glimpse of the city.
Three minutes, and the ship began to cut speed and lose altitude. The
hot-jets had stopped firing and he could hear the whine of the cold-jet
rotors.

Then he could see Litchfield, dominated by the Airport Building, so
thick that it looked squat for all its height, like a candle-stump in a
puddle of its own grease, the other buildings under their carapace of
terraces and landing stages seeming to have flowed away from it. And
there was the yellow block of the distilleries, and High Garden Terrace,
and the Mall....

At first, in the distance, it looked like a living city. Then, second by
second, the stigmata of decay became more and more evident. Terraces