Chapter 13

TUESDAY 2:50 P. M. CST Office of Henry Donaldson, City Hall, Chicago, IL

Henry breezed in the front door of his office and as he pulled up by Alice's desk, he asked, "Well, Alice, anything scheduled for this afternoon?"

"Well, not officially, but unofficially it might be a good thing if you gave a heads up call to someone in the Harbormaster's office.

You can call it female intuition if you want, but I have this gut feeling we're due for a follow up Dragon launch. A call now just might go a long way toward cementing relations with that department when you take over the Mayor's slot. Besides, it will start off your first term with them owing you and wondering how deep your sources reach. That's always a good place to deal from, Sir."

"You really think so, Alice?"

"Yes Sir, I do. I've always had a knack for being far away from trouble spots and right now, that knack is screaming at me to not be anywhere near the basin on anything that floats. I'd stake my job on it, Sir."

"You know, if you're right, the best part will be them thinking they have my back end strapped to a barrel and then having the tables turned on them. Bet no one ever figured they were electing Nostradamus for the office of Mayor," Henry chuckled as he headed toward his inner sanctum.

Turning as he opened the door, Henry tossed out, "You're sure, right?"

"Absolutely, Sir. You can even offer up my head if it falls through."

"God, you're just amazing, Alice. I sure hope Rick knows how lucky he is."

"I'm pretty sure he does, but it's really me that's the lucky one."

The call from Henry's office was taken seriously and the subsequent radio chatter was overheard by the professional snoopers. After that, events resembled a free-for-all, as every news agency in existence scrambled for a ringside seat at what was bound to be The News Story for the next two weeks.

By 3:15 P.M. everything official that could float was in the basin urging people to re-anchor outside the area. In some cases manually hoisting anchors and towing craft to a safe distance. Needless to say, this activity drew a heck of a lot of attention, even after officials tried to pass it off as just a precautionary measure. After all, folks weren't quite as dumb as city officials thought they were and they could still add two and two together.

When 4:00 P.M. rolled around, Michigan Ave. was gridlocked once again and the shore line was crammed elbow to elbow with every type of video equipment ever invented. Every local TV station with a traffic chopper had them in the air and the other stations rented. All were jockeying for position just outside the harbor basin airspace.

By 4:30 P.M. the vendors had shown up including the Chicago Dragon Dog man and an almost carnival like atmosphere descended over the area. Yes, folks still thought the Chicago Dragon Dog was palatable with enough onions and relish.

At 5:05 P.M. Lake Michigan exploded in multiple, multihued streams of living color. All streaking for the sky and being tracked by every piece of video equipment present. This was still an interesting phenomenon to those that had seen the original Dragon Diaspora, but the item that caught most people's eyes were the gold colored Dragons. No one had seen these before and speculation was running rampant as to what their function would turn out to be.

Even in the midst of the cheering throngs, pointing fingers were raised and shouts of amazement were heard.