Washington, D.C. is the urban setting in which Jill gets Valentine Michael Smith away from the hospital and tries to keep him out of the authorities’ hands. The city first reaches Smith as a spectacle of sky and unfamiliar life; to Jill, it is a dangerous network of routes, records, and places the police might search.

The City Seen from Above

After leading Smith through the hospital corridors and up to the roof, Jill finds that the taxis have gone, and she will not risk an air bus with him. A cab arrives, but its attendant explains that it may already have been called for Dr. Phipps. The small logistical crisis unfolds against Smith’s radically different experience: delighted to see a sky again after Mars, he finds beauty in Washington’s ordinary overcast gray. To him the view is a wealth of new things to understand, and the aerial journey offers a pleasure that the Martian apportation he knows does not provide.

The cab carries them over the city while Smith is content to wait and take in the scenery. Jill, by contrast, recognizes that their apparent escape has not made them safe. The movement that opens the city to Smith’s curiosity also forces her to reckon with its practical dangers.

Flight and the Problem of Home

When Jill realizes the cab is heading toward her apartment building, she sees that going home would be a mistake: it is the first place the authorities are likely to search once they discover Smith has escaped and identify his helper. She assumes she may have left fingerprints in his hospital room, and that witnesses saw the pair leave. She has also heard that a technician might read the cab’s pilot tape to reconstruct its trips, including where and when it traveled.

Jill slaps the order keys and cancels the apartment destination. The cab rises out of the traffic lane and hovers while she tries to decide where in the sprawling city she can conceal a vulnerable man who cannot dress himself and is being sought worldwide. Her predicament is sharpened by Ben Caxton’s absence: she wishes he were there, but cannot turn that wish into help.

Ben Caxton’s Apartment as Refuge

Jill briefly considers asking Osbert Kilgallen for assistance, but his suspicion that she is one of the people who call Ben frantically when he leaves town makes her abandon the idea. Instead, she reasons that if Ben is missing and the authorities are involved, his apartment may be the last place they would expect her to take Smith—unless they connect her with Ben, which she doubts.

The choice is practical as well as strategic. Ben’s buttery can supply food without requiring an order from the basement, where people might know he is away, and his clothes can serve Smith. Those necessities settle Jill’s decision: she redirects the cab to Ben’s apartment building. At the flat’s door she identifies herself with the emphatic password, "Karthago delenda est!"

Narrative Significance

Washington’s contrasting meanings converge in this escape. For Smith, the city viewed from the air is a beautiful, unfamiliar world to be explored; for Jill, the same city is a pursuit environment in which routes can be traced, witnesses can matter, and a home address can become a trap. The shift from the open roof and moving cab to the concealed possibility of Ben’s apartment gives the flight its governing tension: Smith can wait in wonder, while Jill must keep choosing before the authorities catch up.