had
given up trying. It was the wrong way. The others hadn't tried. It had
just come to them out of a clear sky.

Some day it would come to him that way, and he would welcome it.

He drove downtown and parked. A block away was a show he wanted to see.
He started toward it. Abruptly he stopped. In front of him was a
bookstore. In its window was a large display, and every book had his
father's picture on the front under the title THEORY FOR THE MILLIONS.

In back of the display was a large poster with a still larger picture,
and the teaser--(DO YOU DARE READ THIS BOOK?)

Anger flamed in Fred's mind. The anger died as abruptly as it had come.
It was replaced by a homesickness, a longing. Unconsciously his
footsteps carried him into the store.

A man had the book in his hands.

"You aren't going to buy _that_, George," the woman beside him was
saying.

"And why not?" the man asked, laughing. "I've never turned down a dare
in my life!" He looked at the girl waiting on him. "Do you think I'll
vanish, Miss?"

The clerk smiled. "I wouldn't know. I have strict orders not to read the
book."

A solemn-faced man appeared out of nowhere and thrust a copy of the book
at the clerk. "I want this, please," he said.

"I'll be with you in a moment, sir," the clerk said.

Others were waiting also.

Fred stumbled from the store, bumping into someone in the doorway as he
went through, and too confused and frightened to stop and apologize.
There was no way of stopping it. Maybe the police would become alarmed
at the disappearances.

"What's wrong with me?" he mumbled, walking blindly in the crowds on the
sidewalks. "Maybe I do lack the ability to believe. I _think_ I believe.
What have I missed?"

Only he, of all those who had learned the theory, had not vanished. Was
faith, then, something so common, and yet impossible for he, himself, to
reach?

Ahead was another bookstore. In its windows were the same displays.

He stopped. People were pushing through the doors. Inside they were
picking up the book and looking for a clerk.

The clerks were smiling and saying things Fred couldn't hear, and
wrapping the books and handing them to their new owners--people who
would take them home and read--and vanish.

Into what? Something they would see, and smile at, and say, "Why, of
course!" And with a simple acceptance they would enter it.

He watched them.

And from the depths of his being Fred longed to be one of them; to be