Only a voice whispered from the ceiling: "One thirty-five a.m. Thursday morning, October 4th, 2052, A.D.... One forty a.m.... one fifty..." Mr. Montag sat stiffly among the other firemen in the fire house, heard the voice-clock mourn out the cold hour and the cold year, and shivered. The other three glanced up. "What's wrong, Montag?" A radio hummed somewhere. "… War may be declared any hour. This country stands ready to defend its destiny and..." The fire house trembled as five hundred jet-planes screamed across the black morning sky. The firemen slumped in their coal-blue uniforms, with the look of thirty years in their blue-shaved, sharp, pink faces and their burnt-colored hair. Stacked behind them were glittering piles of auxiliary helmets. Downstairs in concrete dampness the fire monster itself slept, the silent dragon of nickel and tangerine colors, the boa-constrictor hoses, the twinkling brass. "I'm thinking of our last job," said Mr. Montag. "Don't," said Leahy, the fire chief.
