ped and hid her face. The Superfather, scowling, made a
motion.

The two dark men took hold of Twenty-three. They lifted him into the
tube.

The Superfather dropped the second pack of cards into the panel and
pressed the button. The top closed silently, like a mouth.

Twenty-three's eyes closed; his body waited.

* * * * *

For an instant--blackness, and silence, like a moment after death, or a
moment before birth. Then twilight, or dusk, over an ocean. A sky of
pale blue. A shine on the gently surging waters. A scent of clean air.
Sea spray. The cool sound of wind.

Then a man's voice, deep and flowing: "You know that there is no
entrance or exit to this city. It is sealed off and will always be so.
But the dream machine in which you lie has been changed by our agents
inside the city. The last card you dropped into it is different from the
others. These changes have been made so your dream will become a
reality. Your mind will be transmitted to us here among the hills and
under the trees and by the ocean. And a new body, that we have grown,
artificially, from all the elements, a body like the one you will leave
behind, will be waiting for you. You need not be afraid."

Twenty-three felt himself moving forward. Sight and hearing and
sensation, without a body. Time dropping away, like a forgetting of
yesterday and tomorrow. There was only this moment. And then he felt the
great humming surging power of the machine, like an ocean rushing him
toward some unseen shore. He was caught in a gigantic tingling shock
wave, and felt like a tremendously outsized torch, lit and flaming, and
carried, still burning, in the green tide of sizzling electricity. The
machine screamed. The machine chanted. The machine raved. Dimly, he
heard his wife cry, and above him felt the Superfather scrabbling at the
machine, the guards shouting. The machine shrieked and the great tidal
wave of power jolted and flung him, white-hot kindling, through air,
through sky, up and down! Down upon a white shore, upon creaming sands,
leaving him to quiet, to silence, to a pulling away of the tide....

Now the scent of sea came strong into him. He heard the crash and roar
of surf and the rustling of leaves and the sweep of wind. There were
bird songs and the cries of animals. He saw the spread of rolling hills,
saw a stream searching its way among great rocks and swelling and
rolling full into a river and the river flowin