"Steamboat Springs, the Sawtooth Mountains, Big Timber, Aztec, Durango, Spanish Fork, Monument Valley."

"I hear America singing," she said, but not as if she meant it.

"I know a guy with a camp trailer. He's living in Maine somewhere. We can pick him up and then all head west in the camper.

"All I need is an hour's notice."

"Blasting through New Mexico in the velvet dawn."

"I'm late for an appointment," Sullivan said.

I tried to get some work done. It was dark now and I went to the window. Looking south, from as high as we were, I could see the stacked lights extending almost the entire length of Manhattan, and that delicate gridiron tracery in the streets. I opened the window slightly. The whole city was roaring. In winter, when the darkness always comes before you expect it and all those lights begin to pinch through the stale mist, New York becomes a gigantic wedding cake. You board the singing elevator and drop an eighth of a mile in ten seconds flat. Your ears hum as you are decompressed. It is an almost frighteningly impersonal process and yet something of this kind seems necessary to translate you from the image to what is actually impaled on that dainty fork.

I strolled around to Carter Hemmings' office. He was at his desk, smelling the nicotine on his fingers. When he saw me he tried to neutralize the flow of panic by standing up, absurdly, and spreading his arms wide, an Argentinian beef baron welcoming a generalissimo to his villa.

"Hey Dave," he said. "What's happening, buddy?"

"I understand Mars Tyler got the sack," I said.

"No kidding. No kidding. Jesus."

"There's a big purge on. The tumbrels are clattering through the streets."

"Sit down," he said. "I'll get Penny to order some coffee."

"Can't spare the time, Carter. All the circuits are overloaded. How's that laser beam project shaping up? They're starting to put pressure."

"I'm trying to hammer it into workable form, Dave."