ything like it before in his life, except maybe the
time when he was 6 years old and he had climbed to the top of a very
high tree when the wind was blowing, and he had been afraid to come
down.

It was hitting him, he thought. He was just beginning to understand what
this stoppage of machinery really meant, and he wondered if there was
something wrong with him that he had not felt it earlier. Was he alone?
Had everyone else understood it before he had? Or would it hit them,
one by one, just as it was hitting him now, bringing him face to face
with what lay ahead.

He knew what had done it. It was his father's expression and his words
in the laboratory the night before.

Ken recognized that he had never doubted for an instant that scientists
and their tools were wholly adequate to solve this problem in a
reasonable time. He had been aware there would be great hardships, but
he had never doubted there would be an end to that time. He had believed
his father, as a scientist, had the same faith.

It was a staggering shock to learn that his father had no faith in
science; a shock to be told that science was not a thing that warranted
a man's faith. Ken had planned his whole life around an avid faith in
science.

He tried to imagine what the world would be like if no engine should
ever run again. The standards of civilized existence would be shattered.
Only those areas of the world, where people had never learned to depend
on motor transportation or electric power, would be unaffected; those
areas of China, India and Africa, where men still scratched the ground
with a forked stick and asked only for a cup of rice or grain each day.

This would become the level of the whole world. Until last night, Ken
had never believed it remotely possible. Now, his father's words had
shaken him out of the certainty that science would avert such
consequences. It _could_ happen.

He thought of his own plans and ambitions. There would be no need for
scientists, nor the opportunity to become one, in a world of men who
grubbed the land with forked sticks. He felt a sudden blind and bitter
anger. Even if the disaster were overcome in a matter of years, his
opportunity would be gone.

He knew at once that such anger was selfish and futile. His own personal
calamities would be the least of the troubles ahead, but, for the
moment, he could not help it. In a way, it felt good because it
overshadowed the dark fear that still throbbed in his