The child’s eyes went wide with terror. For a moment she tried hard not to cry, but it was too much for her. She burst into a wild, high-pitched scream. Tears poured down her cheeks and past her open mouth.

“Shut up!” her mother hissed at her, glancing around at the crowd. Ron saw that everybody on the moving stairway was looking the other way, trying hard to ignore them.

Ron wanted to bend down and tell the little girl that she didn’t have to be afraid. But he didn’t know if he should or not. So he just stood there while the child cried and the mother glared and threatened. He felt confused and sad, and a little guilty about not doing anything to help the child.

At the top of the long moving stairway the crowd was broken into smaller groups by still more policemen and set up into dozens of lines. The woman and her child disappeared somewhere in the confused, chaotic mass of people. Ron found that the line he was shunted into wasn’t terribly long, only about twenty people ahead of him. But it moved very slowly.

It was hot and Ron felt sweaty. The noise that pounded in from everywhere in this huge cavern of a room made it feel even hotter. Echoes bounced off the vast ceiling, high overhead. It felt as if all the people in the world were in there, shouting at each other and heating up the station to the boiling point.

Ron leaned out to see around the people in front of him. The line ended at an entrance booth. He remembered the entrance booths from the time before.

People jostled and grumbled and looked at their watches and wiped their brows and complained. But the line moved slowly, slowly. Finally Ron was standing at the booth. He slid his credit card and ID card across the counter to a tired-looking man with narrow, bloodshot eyes and tight, thin lips.

“Fullamnt?” the man mumbled.

“What?” Ron asked.

Looking disgusted, the man said more slowly, “Full amount? Ya want the full amounta cash dat the credit card covers? Dat’s two towsan dollahs.”

“Oh.” Ron finally understood. “Yes, two thousand dollars, please.”

The man touched a button and a neatly, wrapped package of bills popped up from a little trapdoor in the counter.

“Y’ alone?” the man asked.

“Yessir.”

“How old are ya?”

Ron suddenly noticed the sign on the back wall of the man’s booth: CHILDREN UNDER EIGHTEEN NOT ADMITTED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY PARENT OR GUARDIAN.

“Uh . . . I’m eighteen.”

The man’s sour face turned even more sour. “Fifty bucks,” he said.

“What?”

“Fifty,” he pronounced carefully. “Gimme—give me fifty dollahs.”

Ron tried to remember if his father had paid anything at the entrance booth. “But why?”

“Look kid, you ain’t eighteen. Ya want me to believe you’re eighteen, gimme fifty. Otherwise, go home. Now c’mon, you’re holdin’ up the line.”

Ron blinked at him. “But that’s illegal! You can’t—”