In the momentary glare, however, he saw something: an upward twisting of shadows, patterned but obviously unfinished, fluttering in silhouette against the lurid light of the hydrogen cataract.

The end of the Bridge.

Wrecked.

Helmuth grunted involuntarily and backed the beetle away. The flare dimmed; the light poured down the sky and fell away into the raging sea of liquid hydrogen thirty miles below. The scanner clucked with satisfaction as the beetle recrossed the danger line into Sector 113.

Helmuth turned the body of the vehicle 180 degrees on its chassis, presenting its back to the dying orange torrent. There was nothing further that he could do at the moment for the Bridge. He searched his control board a ghost image of which was cast on the screen across the scene on the Bridge for the blue button marked Garage, punched it savagely, and tore off his fireman's helmet,

Obediently, the Bridge vanished.

CHAPTER THREE: New York

Does it not appear as if one who lived habitually on one side of the pain threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lives on the other?

WILLIAM JAMES

The Girl whose full name, Paige found, was Anne Abbott looked moderately acceptable in her summer suit, on the left lapel of which she wore a model of the tetracycline molecule with the atoms picked out in tiny synthetic gems. But she was even less inclined to talk when he picked her up than she had been in Pfitzner's reception room. Paige himself had never been expert at making small talk, and in the face of her obvious, continuing resentment, his parched spring of social invention went underground completely.

Five minutes later, all talk became impossible anyhow. The route to the restaurant Paige had chosen lay across Foley Square, where there turned out to be a Believer Mission going. The Caddy that Paige had hired at nearly a quarter of his leave pay, for commercial kerosene fueled taxis were strictly a rich man's occasional luxury was bogged down almost at once in the groaning, swaying crowd.

The main noise came from the big plastic proscenium, where one of the lay preachers was exhorting the crowd in a voice so heavily amplified as to be nearly unintelligible. Believers with portable tape recorders, bags of tracts and magazines, sandwich boards lettered with fluorescent inks, confessions for sinners to sign, and green baize pokes for collections were well scattered among the pedestrians, and the streets were crossed about every fifteen feet with the straight black snakes of compressed air triggers.

As the Caddy pulled up for the second time, a nozzle was thrust into the rear window and a stream of iridescent bubbles poured across the back seat directly under Paige's and Anne's noses. As each bubble burst, there was a wave of perfume evidently it was the "Celestial Joy" the Believers were using this year and a sweet voice said:

Brothers S1!ters

'l'\ N/N

\J/'J/"\l/ \I/ NV

have on the Liginri.