As the motors died and the propellers spun slower and slower, the complex services of the airbase, set in motion by the responses of the instruments in the darkened control room to the invisible image of the returning bomber, began to function. From the fuel storage an apparently endless hose snaked across the field, and reaching the bomber, became even more reptilian as it raised its head in response to electronic impulses, then crawling up the plane's towering side, blindly sought the intake leading to the empty gas tanks. A minute radio receiver responded to the message of an equally minute transmitter; the cap popped open and the nozzle of the hose slid into place. Far back in the fuel storage the contact was noted; pumps started up and the long hose stiffened as the aviation gasoline pulsed through it. The pumps lowered the level of the reservoirs; many miles off other pumps began working and pushing their load through the waiting pipeline, the machinery of a refinery came to life, sucking crude oil in and sending out high octane gas. Half a continent away a well drew more crude from deep in the shale and spewed it into an emptying tank. The gasoline hose, being a fundamental, was the simplest contrivance among the resources of Fuel Control. The tanks filled, the nozzle retracted, the cap snapped into place, the hose reeled back into its nest, more complex engines appeared.