ve vaccine for all
of you. I don't know how much good it will do against this brand of bug
that's loose now, but we can give it a chance."

"Is everyone in town getting it?" Professor Maddox asked.

Dr. Adams snorted. "Do you think we keep supplies of everything in
emergency proportions? College Hill gets it. Nobody else."

"We can't go on taking from everyone else like this!" protested Mrs.
Maddox. "They have as much right to it as we. There should be a lottery
or something to determine who gets the vaccine."

"Hilliard's orders," said Dr. Adams. "Besides, we've settled all this.
You first, Ken."

For a few days after the battle with the nomads, it had seemed as if the
common terror had welded all of Mayfield into an impregnable unit.
There was a sense of having stood against all that man and nature could
offer, and of having won out against it. However, the penetrating
reality of impending competition among themselves for the necessities of
life, for the very right to live, had begun to shatter the bonds that
held the townspeople as one.

The killing of the college student in protest against the partiality to
College Hill was the first blast that ripped their unity. Some protested
openly against the viciousness of it, but most seemed beyond caring.

There were two events of note in the days following. The first was a
spontaneous, almost valley-wide resurgence of memory of Granny Wicks and
her warnings. Everything she had said had come true. The feeling swept
Mayfield that here in their very midst was an oracle of truth who had
been almost wholly ignored. There was nothing they needed to know so
much as the outcome of events with respect to themselves and to the town
as a whole.

Almost overnight, streams of visitors began to pour toward the home for
the aged where Granny lived. When they came, she smiled knowingly and
contentedly, as if she had been expecting them, waiting for them.
Obligingly, and with the peaceful aura of omniscience, she took them
into her parlor and told them of things to come.

At the same time, Frank Meggs felt new stirrings within him. He sensed
that he had been utterly and completely right in all his years of
criticism of those who managed the affairs of Mayfield. The present
condition of things proved it. The town was in utter chaos, its means of
survival all but destroyed. Incompetently, its leaders bumbled along,
not caring for the mass of the people, bestowing the people's goods