scrap of white paper fluttered across the field in a stir of air. He
saw another, more, blowing along in the fitful gusts. He ran a few
steps, caught one, smoothed it out.

BUY NOW--PAY LATER!

He picked up another.

PREPARE TO MEET GOD

A third said:

WIN WITH WILLKIE

* * * * *

The wall loomed above him, smooth and grey. Dust was caked on his skin
and clothes, and as he walked he brushed at himself absently. The
suitcase dragged at his arm, thumped against his shin. He was very
hungry and thirsty. He sniffed the air, instinctively searching for the
odors of food. He had been following the wall for a long time, searching
for an opening. It curved away from him, rising vertically from the
level earth. Its surface was porous, unadorned, too smooth to climb. It
was, Brett estimated, twenty feet high. If there were anything to make a
ladder from--

Ahead he saw a wide gate, flanked by grey columns. He came up to it, put
the suitcase down, and wiped at his forehead with his handkerchief.
Through the opening in the wall a paved street was visible, and the
facades of buildings. Those on the street before him were low, not more
than one or two stories, but behind them taller towers reared up. There
were no people in sight; no sounds stirred the hot noon-time air. Brett
picked up his bag and passed through the gate.

For the next hour he walked empty pavements, listening to the echoes of
his footsteps against brownstone fronts, empty shop windows, curtained
glass doors, and here and there a vacant lot, weed-grown and desolate.
He paused at cross streets, looked down long vacant ways. Now and then a
distant sound came to him: the lonely honk of a horn, a faintly tolling
bell, a clatter of hooves.

He came to a narrow alley that cut like a dark canyon between blank
walls. He stood at its mouth, listening to a distant murmur, like a
crowd at a funeral. He turned down the narrow way.

It went straight for a few yards, then twisted. As he followed its
turnings the crowd noise gradually grew louder. He could make out
individual voices now, an occasional word above the hubbub. He started
to hurry, eager to find someone to talk to.

Abruptly the voices--hundreds of voices, he thought--rose in a roar, a
long-drawn Yaaayyyyy...! Brett thought of a stadium crowd as the home
team trotted onto the field. He could hear a band now, a shrilling of
brass, the clatter and thump of percu