The Ferris wheels appeared like glittering crystal in the sultry night, two dazzling helms, one atop the other, shimmering with a white corona, towering high above the people walking on the carnival grounds below.

"Isn't this romantic?" Sue Todd said, holding her husband's arm while they sat in the seat stopped at the very top of the upper wheel.  The round structures looked like a luminous figure 8, and they sat there in the warm air looking out at the flat desert.  The strip of thin black highway in the distance stretched east to west, and various game stalls and canvas tents were spread out below them in all directions, lit in multi-colored lights.  People looked like animated dolls no bigger than mice, and stars flickered like winking diamonds in the dark sky.

John Todd kept silent as he wondered if he could get away with pushing his wife out of their seat to the ground 150 feet beneath them.