II

Life had become hard enough for Eileen Dukas and her son. While most

people treated them all right--from some they even received exaggerated

kindness--there was, very often, a certain disturbing expression in

eyes that looked at them.

Les Payten, Eddie's friend said once, "I promise, Ed. No more talk

about your uncle from me. Finished, see? You've had enough."

Eddie suppressed the anger which sprang from loyalty to Mitchell Prell,

for he understood Les Payten's good intentions.

At regular intervals there were police visits at the house, and

questioning. "It's partly for your protection, Mrs. Dukas," was one

honest comment from the detectives. But Eddie sensed that there was

more to it than that. Subtly, the interpretation of law had changed

since the lunar blowup. It went backward, as grief sought people to

blame. Catastrophe had been too big for reason or fairness. And the

scapegoat himself was not around to be mobbed.

A freckle-faced brat from the Youth Center--her name, Barbara

Day, had been drawn out of a hat, for of course she had no known

parents--offered advice: "You ought to go far away, Eddie, where folks

don't know you. It would be better."

Ed knew that this was good advice. Many people were saying and shouting

and whispering that too much knowledge was a dangerous possession. And

Ed's uncle still represented such a thing. More than once Ed had to run

fast, with some big lug chasing him. Black eyes he collected with great

frequency, and delivered some, too. Still, he ached inside. It was as

if Uncle Mitch were part of him.

The world began to look normal and green again. But the undercurrents

of memory were still there. And Ed Dukas began to answer hate with

hate, though he didn't like to.

There was a crowd of young toughs with rocks to throw, in front of the

house one night. "This is the place," Eddie heard one of them say.

"Both my parents are gone. And the bums that live here were in on the

reason."

Ed had seen the boy around before: Ash Parker. Now the rocks flew for a

while, and Ed and his mother crouched behind locked doors. There might

have been a lynching, except that Les Payten found a neighbor with a

tear-gas vial and some other neighbors with sharp tongues and courage.

It was the final straw, however. "Will we have to leave, Eddie?" his

mother asked.

"It's best," he growled. "But I'll be back!"

Next day the house was being boarded up. Packing began even before the

colonial travel permits were prepared.

It was goodbye to Les Payten and Barbara Day, and the newly ringed

planet, Earth, with its billions of inhabitants and its great shops

that still worked to give the whole solar system to mankind and maybe

a segment of the larger universe as well. The pattern of the future

seemed set, and specialists still didn't think that there was any

real reason to make a change. In fact, they denied that any change

was possible. Nobody would give up the threshold of immortality, once

it was gained. Nor would they relinquish other triumphs that could

bring idleness and decay if they were not used to accomplish bigger

and bigger tasks. So, even the fearful ones were caught in the rushing

current of the times.

Ed Dukas was soon on a crowded liner. Because she might need him, he

kept close to his mother. Around them were other colonists--young

graduates from technical schools, newlyweds and people who were

physically young, too, though they were fresh from the rejuvenation

vats. They were the aged, awed by another lifetime before them.

The liner blasted off. A week later it landed on an asteroid of

middling size. The Dukases were assigned to one of a group of trim

cottages that were not even all alike. Under the great glass roof,

which kept in the synthetic air, the new gardens and fruit trees were

already growing. And in coiled tubes of clear plastic filled with

water, circulated green algae from which almost any kind of basic food

could be made.

To Eddie it was a satisfying dip into space that he had so much

anticipated. Amid great heaps of steel and plastic and house parts and

atomic machines to maintain a normal temperature so far from the sun,

life went on. Eddie's mother worked in the office of a shop for robot

machines. He worked too--when and where he could--when he was not at

school.

There was a little more of peace, for a while anyway. There was the

usual psychological treatment to subdue possible devils of the lunar

catastrophe which might remain in his mind. There were sports and an

artificial lake to swim in with his companions. However, Ed Dukas was

wary of making deep friendships.

He was then a sullen, overly matured youth of thirteen, earnest about

everything he did--for he knew that the years ahead were grimly

earnest. Carefully he kept up with the reports in scientific journals:

about the laying of the keel of the first star ship on a minute

asteroid with only a number and no name. Harwell was in charge. The

propellant would be pure radiant energy--the best of them all; energy

so concentrated that it would be truly massive and hurled at the speed

of light, which was not remarkable, since it _would_ be light, far more

intense per unit area than the noval explosion of a star!

This was by no means the only major advance that had been accomplished

and was reported. Technological progress was steady in all fields,

across the board, making a solid front. Others of its facets also

had a special appeal to Ed Dukas. Biological science, in its newest

interpretations, he knew to be the most important of these. Now it was

no longer just simple rejuvenation--restoring rusty organs. It was a

thing that could start from a single cell, in warm, sticky fluids,

giving rebirth to something that had already been. And it had a further

development--bringing the same results but more swiftly and easily,

and with different, far more rugged flesh. It was frightening and

fascinating. Knowing was like feeling the shadow of a demon or an angel.

* * * * *

Ed Dukas and his mother spent four years on their asteroid. Then one

day a letter fluttered in her hand. And she seemed not to know whether

to look happy or terrified. She did not show her son the letter.

"We've had enough of being here," she stated. "We're going home."

So they went back across the millions of miles. They cleaned up the

house, on which obscene insults had been scribbled in chalk. On two

successive days Eddie was jumped by gangs. He fought free and escaped.

But on the third evening he was cornered. This time Ash Parker was the

ringleader. Ed battled like a bobcat, but eight opponents were too

many. He was flat on his back, and they were kicking him. His own blood

was in his mouth. What might happen when he blacked out was anybody's

guess. Once, before medical knowledge had advanced to where it was, it

would have been murder for sure.

Somebody intervened--a big guy in a gray business suit who had come

striding along the block with an eager attention.

He didn't say anything at first. He just collared the toughs, two at a

time in swift succession, and thrust them away.

Eddie staggered up and faced his benefactor, intent on giving him

sincere thanks. "Mister ... I ..."

"Hello, Eddie!" the man said, chuckling. "I see you turned out hardy.

Seventeen you'd be now."

Young Ed Dukas heard the voice and looked at the face. He stiffened.

Then he made a statement in a flat tone that sounded very formal and

unemotional, which it was not: "Sir, you're my father."

The man nodded. "Just off the assembly line, pal. The same guy--because

you and your mother, and some other people, remembered what I was like.

There was no record of me or of my mind. So, okay, they made one,

fella. From the memories of me left in other minds. Thanks, Eddie."

"Thanks?" Ed Dukas said in a choked voice.

Bloody and dirty, he stepped forward. Father and son clung to each

other. It was a moment of great triumph.

Ed's mind pictured filaments, as fragile at first as pink spiderweb

but already outlining a human shape, held suspended in a kind of

jelly--growing there, forming according to a record. Now even the

record could be synthesized. It seemed like real freedom from death at

last.

Ash Parker had not fled. Now he spoke, sounding awed, "Jeez, Mr. Dukas.

I didn't believe it. Maybe my folks can come back, too."

"Your parents _will_ come back," Jack Dukas affirmed. "I am the first

'memory man' to be resurrected. Among those killed who had had their

bodies and minds recorded as was recommended, about a hundred thousand

are alive again, as I think you know. Millions more are in process. One

way or another, by record or by the memories of others, in flesh of the

old kind or the new, almost everyone will return."

Ed felt his father's hand. As far as he could tell, it _was_ of flesh.

Yet it could be something else; Ed nearly trembled with excitement as

his eager wonder and primitive dread of the strange battled inside him.

He thought again of Mitchell Prell's first samples of vitaplasm.

"Of which flesh are you, Dad?" Ed asked anxiously.

His father studied him there in the twilight of the day, while the

silvery ring of lunar wreckage brightened in the sky.

"The old kind, Eddie," he answered.

"I'm glad," Ed said, feeling greatly relieved, a reaction which he knew

was odd for one who loved the thought of coming miracles.

Jack Dukas sighed as if he had escaped a terrible fate. "So am I glad,

pal," he said. "I guess I was favored by family connections." Here he

paused, but his wink meant Uncle Mitch. "However," he continued, "the

old flesh takes so much longer. That's why in many cases it won't be

used. There must be thousands of androids already among us, living like

everybody else. Since personal concerns are involved, statistics are

kept rather confidential. These synthetic people have organs the same

as we have. And you can't recognize them just by looking. Only they're

thirty per cent heavier, stronger, and they don't tire. There was a

thought, once, that robots would make human beings obsolete and replace

them. Sorry, Eddie. Why be gruesome at a time like this? Let's patch

you up and then find your mother."

* * * * *

Young Ed Dukas was happier than he had ever been before. For quite a

while he found peace. Maybe that was true of most of humanity now--for

the past three or four years at least. There was no sharp delineation

of an interval before the smokes of doubt began to come back.

Les Payten was still around. And Barbara Day continued to live at the

Youth Center on the hill. Often the three would meet. Their childhood

was behind them. Barbara Day's freckles had faded. Her dark hair had a

coppery glint. A promise of beauty had begun to blossom. And her talk

expressed many whimsical thoughts.

"We all know each other, Eddie," she once said. "So don't be offended.

I sometimes think that you wonder whether your father is really the

same person that he was--whether he ever could be more than a careful

duplicate."

Les Payten frowned. "You're speaking to me, too, Babs," he pointed out.

"I also have a 'memory father.' He's good to me, and mostly I like him.

But sometimes I get scared, though I don't always know why."

Ed's skin tingled. "Could I be myself now and still be myself

in another body, years later? Could there ever be two of

me--truly--constructed exactly the same? I don't deny such a thing. I

simply don't know."

But Ed Dukas continued to wonder about his father. There were several

occasions when his dad was supposed to recognize certain people,

casually encountered in the street. For they knew him.

Ed was present on one of these occasions. "Sorry, friend," Jack Dukas

apologized to a burly, jovial man. "I guess they forgot to put a

picture of you inside my head."

Les Payten's father was also subtly different from his original--though

in a somewhat different way. The change was even very dimly apparent

in his face. He had once been a big, easy-going, timid soul, nagged by

his wife. Now his features bore a hint of brutality. He walked with a

slight swagger. He did not roar, but the aura of power was there.

Ed's mother explained the change to his father: "Memory seems not

always to match facts, Jack. Mrs. Payten fooled herself into believing

that Ronald Payten used to be a bully. So she even fooled Schaeffer's

mind-machines. And lo! Ronald Payten _is_ a bully now, as far as she is

concerned. No, don't worry about her too much, Jack. She may even like

being pushed around."

* * * * *

In the months that passed, from out on an asteroid came the

step-by-step reports of the building of the first huge star ship. At

home, one by one, old acquaintances--or was it just their reasonable

facsimiles?--reappeared. Gradually most of the dead of the lunar blowup

were restored to life--except for certain scientists who remained

unforgiven.

But a new type of population was creeping into the fabric of human

society. Its humanness, in an old sense, could be debated. Its first

quiet intrusion was marked by an awe that faded into a shrug; it began

to be accepted casually and somewhat dully, as most past novelties had

been accepted before. Foresight could extend into tomorrow, but its

pictures remained not quite real. The skills of cool, clear thinking,

which education tried to impart in an era that needed it so much, fell

short again. No doubt it should have been remembered that the shift

from inattention to unreasonable panic can often be swift.

Even young Ed Dukas, though dedicated in his heart to New and Coming

Things, sometimes lost sight of these deeper concerns because of his

lighter interests. Without much help from art, Barbara Day turned out

to be beautiful. She had a pair of suitors automatically. Ed could

have had his stocky frame lengthened. Les Payten could have had his

big ears trimmed. But young men often frown on the vanity of tampering

with one's appearance. Sometimes there is even a certain pride in minor

ugliness.

They all had their dates, their dancing, their canoe rides--traditional

pleasures, inherited from generations past. And they had the

age-old problems of youth approaching adulthood. But now, for them

and for their increasingly complex civilization, there was a new

problem--vitaplasm, which could be grown like flesh, though faster,

impressed with a shape, personality and memories. It was said that

30 per cent of those who died in the explosion of the Moon lab were

brought back in this firmer, cheaper medium. But its use did not stop

here. For one thing, there were certain adventurous persons, alive and

healthy, who changed the character of their bodies willfully.

One fact some might forget: there were other dead from years before,

but remembered and still loved--parents, grandparents. Besides, there

were historical characters--Washington, Lincoln, Edison, Cleopatra.

Possibly Joe Doakes could awaken from extinction, puzzled, wondering,

frightened, but finding himself at least superficially the same, eating

much the same food, enjoying much the same things. Then something super

in his body would dawn on him, scaring him more or making him exultant.

But it all seemed good at first glance, so a joyful world forgot its

times of suspicion, even against the warnings of specialists, and

released the new processes to almost any operator who could construct

the needed equipment.

The solar system was big; the universe, optimistically promised, seemed

endless. There was plenty of room. And the task of bringing back just

those who had perished with the Moon was enormous and slow. So in

cellars and out-of-the-way places countless biological technicians

tried their skill. They could not have made the grade at all if they

were stupid, and their results, generally, were good.

The various Julius Caesars and Michelangelos really came into being

as novelties, side-show pieces. All were reasonable likenesses,

physically. From existing minds such traits and skills as each was

supposed to possess could be copied more or less accurately. But

none of the pseudo-great amounted to very much. They enjoyed a brief

popularity; then, assuming the costumes and customs of a changed world,

they sank into nonentity among the populace. Like most of those of the

new flesh, they kept this secret as if by intuitive prudence. The many

people restored in normal protoplasm were less reticent.

That there were androids around him, known, suspected and unrecognized

as such, was a thrilling idea to Ed Dukas. It was part of the onward

march to greater wonders--or so it seemed to him most of the time.

Eager to understand how they thought and felt, he sought them out

cautiously, not wishing to offend. Usually his efforts were met with

coolness and evasion--which perhaps gave them away.

But then Ed met a very special memory man. He wasn't the copy of

somebody famous. He was just a humorous legend. Yet now perhaps he

was the right kind of personality striking against the right sort of

circumstances to produce the type of action and fire that could affect

the existing era.

Ed and his two friends, Les Payten and Barbara Day, found him in a

little park feeding pigeons. Or, rather, _he_ found them. For in

conformity with an ancient village belief that no one should be a

stranger to anyone else, he grinned at them and said, "Hello, there!

Nice young fellers. Nice girl! Sit and gab a while? I keep gettin'

lonesome. Mixed up. Got to get straightened out. Or try, anyway. Put

yourselves down? That's fine!"

Abashed and curious after that, Ed and Barbara and Les sat and mostly

just listened.

"Been around these times three months. Scared stiff at first. Thought

I was addled. Know somethin'? I can remember all the way back to

1870. It's a fake, sure. No, they didn't make me look young, or

even give me all my teeth. Afraid of spoiling 'verisimilitude,' my

great-great-great-something-grandson-supposed-to-be said. I'm a family

brag. Look what I keep carrying around with me. One of the first

editions of _Huck Finn_. They found this tintype of a feller inside

it. Illinois farmer. And look at this here writing in the front of the

book. 'Property of Abel Freeman.' So I'm supposed to be him, slouch hat

and all--funny, I can't get used to anything else. So I write just like

that. This tintype and the writing are the only solid clues about what

the original Abel Freeman was really like. Up to there, I'm him. The

rest is mostly storybook stuff, and the idea the family has that their

ancestor was a kind of pixilated hellion--the sort some folks like to

tell about. Some way for a man to be born, huh? Shucks, I can even

remember the night I was supposed to have died. Drunk, and kicked in

the belly by my own mule, because he didn't like my smell. Hell, I bet

in real life that mule would of plum enjoyed whisky!"

Abel Freeman stopped talking. He turned pale gray eyes set in a face

that looked like brown leather toward his audience with expectant

amusement, as if he understood the eerie impression he'd made on them

and was curious about their reactions.

Barbara took the lead. "We're surely glad to know you, Mr. Freeman,"

she said, shaking his big brown paw and unconsciously aping his manner

of speech. "I'm sure you could tell us plum more. What's the world ever

coming to?"

His grip, for an instant, was almost literally like that of a vise. But

when Barbara winced with pain, his hand relaxed, and his look became

honestly gentle and apologetic, though it retained a certain slyness of

tricks being played or unprecedented power being demonstrated.

"Oh, excuse me, lady!" he drawled. "This first Abel Freeman--he was

supposed to be a very strong and vigorous man. Me--naturally I'm even a

lot stronger. Sometimes I just forget. But I try to be right courtly.

There, I'll rub your fingers. Hope I didn't break no bones."

Barbara laughed a bit nervously. "No, Mr. Freeman--I'm fine," she

assured him, nodding her dark head. "Now, if you'll tell us--"

"Oh, yes--about what the world and everything is coming to," Abel

Freeman went on, his tone more languid than his eyes. "Well, matters

could get mighty rough. I've been studying up--thinking. When I first

got to these times, I didn't like them. Everything seemed addled.

Guess I was homesick. I kind of resented being made the cheap way,

too. But even way back in the years I remember, they used to say that

maybe there'd be flying machines or even balloons to the Moon. So I

perked up and got acclimated, and said to myself, 'Abel, my boy, take

what's given to you and don't whine, even though you weren't asked if

you wanted to come here. And with all that can be done now, why not

bring your old woman and her chewing tobacco? And your four ornery

sons? Nat was the worst. And Nancy, your daughter, who was an unholy

terror? Of course this family that you recollect so good probably don't

match historical fact so much, being just romanticized, mostly made-up

memories put into your head. But they're plum real to you. Guess when

they synthesized you, they should have left those recollections out.

Because you love that family of yours, ornery or not, and would be

happy to see its members again.' And I said to myself besides, 'Abel,

bein' made the cheap way has got plenty of advantages. You're strong

as a dozen regular men, and you won't need rejuvenation, because

you'll never get any older. You'll heal even if you're hurt something

terrible. Trouble is, your kind'll be some mighty stiff competition for

the present holders of the land. Of course people want to get along

peaceably--even your sort, Abel. But plenty of folks will wind up

trusting your sort no more than they'd trust a billygoat under a line

of wash. Yep, I'm afraid there's gonna be some mighty interesting days

coming!'"

Abel Freeman ended his conversation almost dreamily. He'd hung his

slouch hat on the corner of the bench back. In his iron-gray hair, the

sun picked out reddish glints. His gaze, which might have been designed

especially for precision squirrel-shooting, wandered down a path that

curved along the park lake.

Ed Dukas found him a fascinating mixture of old romance and comedy,

artfully concealing the most recent of wonders, the dark channels of

which held the potentials of great centuries to come, or mindless

silence after destruction. The treachery was not in Abel Freeman

himself but in the fact of his being.

Ed's mouth was dry. "You're honest, Mr. Freeman," he said.

Abel Freeman answered this with a nod and a shrug. "Funny," he drawled.

"Thought I saw a young feller I was sort of expecting. A congenial

enemy, name of Tom Granger. Look, suppose you three sidekicks of mine

get on your feet nice and easy, and walk the other way on that path. It

would be safer. Not too far. Just a piece."

This might have been an armed robber's command, but Ed sensed that it

was nothing like that. Without a word, he led Les and Barbara away.

There was a blinding, blue-white flash. The bench on which they had

been sitting was gone--vaporized by fearful heat. Incandescent vapors

rose from a big hole in the turf. When condensed and solidified, they

would show little flecks of gold transmuted from soil. These were the

effects of the familiar Midas Touch pistol. It used lighter atoms to

form heavier ones, while it converted a little of the total mass into

energy.

Freeman must have leaped away at just the right instant to avoid

destruction. With astonishing agility, he was pursuing his intended

murderer. As Freeman sprang to the youth's shoulders, they both fell

in a heap on the walk and slid to a stop. Freeman's hand flicked, and

the weapon flew into the bushes.

By then Ed and Barbara and Les were standing over the prone forms.

Freeman was unruffled.

"Friends," he said, laughing, "meet up with a young one with a sharp

viewpoint and lots of guts in his own way. Yep, Tom Granger."

Granger was panting heavily. His mass of black hair streamed down over

his thin face. He looked scarcely older than Ed or Les, but these

days that meant little. In repose, his large, dark eyes might have

been limpid and idealistic; now they flashed fury. His shabbiness was

affected. Certainly, in this era, there were no reasons for poverty.

Now he began to struggle again, in Freeman's grasp. Futilely, of

course. "Yes, I have guts!" he declared. "I wanted to kill you,

Freeman--with whatever means that are left that can still accomplish

that with things like you! I wanted the incident to get into the

newscast--yes, to give me public attention. And not for any stupid

vanity, but for the best purpose there ever was. I wanted a chance to

be listened to, while I tell what everyone must have begun to sense by

now. Damn you, Freeman! Let me up!"

Abel Freeman smirked indulgently and obliged.

Granger rose lamely but gamely. "You seem to be impromptu acquaintances

of this Abel Freeman," he said to Ed and his companions. "He has

feelings, he thinks; he's even a good person. In some ways he's just

an interesting rogue of the nineteenth century. But he's a device. And

unless something is done, we'll be as obsolete as the dinosaur! Our

science serves us no longer. It serves other masters, nearer to its

meaning. Others than I have realized it. In every two houses this side

of the world there is already an average of one of these creatures of

vitaplasm. Is Earth to be kept for us, and for the joy of being human;

or are we to become--basically, and no matter how humanized--mere

synthetic mechanisms, trading our birthright for a few mechanical

advantages?"

The shot from the Midas Touch pistol was drawing a crowd. An

approaching police siren wailed.

Suddenly Granger fixed his eyes on Ed in surprise and recognition.

"Dukas," he said. "Let me see--Edward Dukas. At a time when the world

was more reasonably watchful, your house was under surveillance. As a

possible means of contacting one Mitchell Prell--who had his hand in

what once happened to us, and perhaps in what is happening now. How

does it feel, Dukas, to be so close to such a celebrity? Ah, maybe

you're shy!"

Flattening out Granger again would have been no useful answer to Ed's

memories of bitter wrongs. He smiled briefly at him.

"Come see me some evening when you don't feel so much like making a

monkey of someone, because someone has just made a monkey out of you,"

he said.

Then he hustled his companions away. "There's no good in getting

involved in public confusion," he told them. "Anyhow not till we talk

things out and get them straight."

Ten minutes later they were in a quiet restaurant.

"Abel Freeman," Les Payten said. "He was quite a surprise at that."

"Rather, more of a pointing out of facts we already knew," Barbara

remarked.

"The old robot-peril come true," Less said pensively. "Humanity

threatened to be replaced, not by clanking giants of metal, simple and

melodramatic, but by beings much more refined--though they are perhaps

much the same thing. My own father is one of them."

"There's truth in what Granger said," Ed pointed out. "There's that

dread of being shouldered out of the way by something strange and

tougher. I can feel it too. Granger can certainly make use of it,

preaching. He's clever. But he's the worst kind of fool."

"Yeah, hammering on the detonator cap of the entire Earth," Les said,

breathing softly.

The three friends, sitting around a table under soft lights and in

pleasant surroundings, looked at one another. The food before them was

good, the music was quiet and soothing. But at eye level, in the air

where their glances passed, seemed to hang all the elements of the

complex civilization to which they belonged: its luxury and beauty, its

climbing technology that could conquer death and reach for other solar

systems, but by the same or related forces could dissolve worlds,

especially if mankind, at the top, lost control of itself.

"I thought things would go along smoothly and reasonably," Barbara

offered. "There's certainly plenty of room for both people and

androids. I took all of that more or less on faith. But I'm afraid I'm

wrong. After all, how can human beings live beside beings that blend

indistinguishably with the mass and yet are stronger, quicker?"

Ed remembered signs of friction that he'd heard about. A minor riot

here or there. He remembered public statements by specialists like

Schaeffer admitting that some confusion was on the way but declaring

that in the end everything should be better for everyone. Those

specialists had the calculators, the great electronic thought-machines,

digesting trends, making profound predictions. But then there was

another thought--had many of those scientists already converted their

own bodies to a stronger medium?

Ed saw that Les Payten had a faint sweat of strain on his forehead,

though he knew that Les was no nervous coward. His sullen poise just

after the lunar explosion long ago had proved that.

"Maybe the worst of all," Les was saying, "is the sense of being

carried along, swiftly and helplessly, by things that are too big

and complicated. You wish you could find a ledge somewhere in the

time-stream and stop for a while to get your bearings. Sometimes you

feel that you are in a one-way tunnel where you have to keep moving.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe it's just a matter of

personal adjustment--a taking of whatever comes."

"I feel as though we're at the threshold of some terrible danger, Ed,"

Barbara said. "What can we do about it?"

He saw how strong and earnest she looked, and it reassured him. He

touched her hand briefly. "I don't know exactly," he said. "But

I'm for holding course toward the bigger future that stirred me up

with big dreams of the planets, of the stars. And I'm in favor of

being _reasonable_. I've seen too much hate and fear and unreason in

people. The way things are, it doesn't have to be a lot of people any

more--just a few gone a little crazy. The Moon blew up by accident.

A world was gone. But what happened by accident can certainly happen

by design or with the aid of fury. So, everywhere we go we can talk

against fury and panic, and _for_ reason. To our friends, and in the

streets. Everywhere that we can, and to everyone. Small as that effort

is, it might help."

Solemnly the three friends shook hands and agreed to work out the

details of a plan.