The girl exhibit had been a sort of all-man's land between freak and talent. Beyond the stage of girls stood the booth of the first fortuneteller, one of several.

"They're charlatans," the portly curly-haired man revealed to him; he was standing with his family by a dart-throwing booth, a handful of darts clutched, trying to win a twenty-pound Dutch ham. "Nobody can read the future; that's for suckers."

Cussick grinned. "So's a twenty-pound Dutch ham. It's probably made of wax."

"I'm going to win this ham," the man asserted good-naturedly. His wife said nothing, but his children displayed overt confidence in their father. "I'm going to take it home with me, tonight."

"Maybe I'll get my fortune told," Cussick said.

"Good luck, mister," the curly-headed man said charitably. He turned back to the dart target: a great eroded backdrop of the nine planets, pitted with endless near-misses. Its virgin center, an incredibly minute Earth, was untouched. The portly, curly-headed man drew back his arm and let fly; the dart, attracted by a deflecting concealed magnet, missed Earth and buried its steel tip in empty space a little past Ganymede.

At the first fortunetelling booth an old woman, dark-haired and fat, sat hunched over a squat table on which was arranged timeless apparatus: a translucent globe. A few people were lined up on the stage, crowded in among the tawdry hangings waiting to pay their twenty dollars. A glaring neon sign announced:

YOUR FORTUNE READ

MADAME LULU CARIMA-ZELDA

KNOW THE FUTURE