Willy and Samuel felt themselves hurried forward. Two already neat customers leapt out of the barber chairs without being asked. As they stepped into the chairs, the two miners glimpsed their own images in the flyspecked mirror.

'Samuel, there we are! Look! Compare!'

'Why.' said Samuel, blinking, 'we're the only men in Rock Junction who really need a shave and a haircut.' Strangers!' Antonelli laid them out in the chairs as if anaesthetize them quickly. 'You don't know what strangers you are!'

'Why, we've only been gone a couple of months…' A steaming towel inundated Willy's face; he subsided with muffled cries. In steaming darkness he heard Antonelli's and urgent voice.

'We'll fix you to look like everyone else. Not that the you look is dangerous, no, but the kind of talk you miners talk might upset folks at a time like this…'

'Time like this, hell!' Willy lifted the seething towel. bleary eye fixed Antonelli. 'What's wrong with Rock Junction?'

'Not just Rock Junction.' Antonelli gazed off at some incredible mirage beyond the horizon. 'Phoenix, Tucson, Denver. All the cities in America! My wife and I are going as tourists to Chicago next week. Imagine Chicago all paint–and clean and new. The Pearl of the Orient they call it! Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Buffalo, the same! All because… well… get up now, walk over, and switch on that television set against the wall.'

Willy handed Antonelli the steaming towel, walked over, on the television set, listened to it hum, fiddled with the dials, and waited. White snow drifted down the screen

"Try the radio now,' said Antonelli.

Willy felt everyone watch as he twisted the radio dial station to station.