person and belongings rayed. After that, keep walking, but
stick to the road. You'll be shot if you're caught off it.'
The road was crowded with fleeing people. Their way was
lighted by piles of cadavers writhing in gasoline flames. The
Medicorps was everywhere. Those who stumbled, those who
coughed, the delirious and their helping partners . . . these
were taken to the side of the road, shot and burned. And
there was bombing again to the south.
Bill stopped in the middle of the road and looked back.
Clara clung to him.
'There is a plague here we haven't any drug for,' he said,
and realized he was crying. 'We are all mad.'
Clara was crying too. 'Darling, what have you done?
Where are the drugs?'
The water of the Hudson hung as it had in the late after-
noon, ice crystals in the stratosphere. The high, high sheet
flashed and glowed in the new bombing to the south, where
multicoloured pillars of flame boiled into the sky. But the muf-
fled crash of the distant bombing was suddenly the steady
click of the urgent signal on a bedside visiophone, and Bill
was abruptly awake.
Clara was throwing on her robe and moving towards the
machine on terror-rigid limbs. With a scrambling motion, Bill
got out of the possible view of the machine and crouched at
the end of the room.
Distinctly, he could hear the machine say, 'Clara Manz?'
'Yes,' Clara's voice was a thin treble that could have been
a shriek had it continued.
'This is Medicorps Headquarters. A routine check discloses
you have delayed your shift two hours. To maintain the sta-
tistical record of deviations, please give us a full explanation.'
'I . . .' Clara had to swallow before she could talk. 'I must
have taken too much sleeping compound.'
'Mrs. Manz, our records indicate that you have been de-
laying your shift consistently for several periods now. We
' made a check of this as a routine follow up on any such
deviation, but the discovery is quite serious.' There was a
harsh silence, a silence that demanded a logical answer. But
how could there be a logical answer.
'My hyperalter hasn't complained and Iwell, I have just
let a bad habit develop. I'll see that itdoesn't happen again.'
The machine voiced several platitudes about the respon-
sibilities of one personality to another and the duty of all to
society before Clara was able to shut it off.
Both of them sat as they were for a long, long time while
the tide of terror subsided. When at last they looked at each
other across the dim and silent room, both of them knew
there could be at least one more lime together before
they were caught.
Five days later, on the last day of her shift, Mary Walden
