em were just being polite and trying to cheer
Harry up. They knew damned well that he wasn't living in one room
through any choice of his own. The Housing Act was something you just
couldn't get around; not in Chicagee these days. A bachelor was
entitled to one room--no more and no less. And even though Harry was
making a speedy buck at the agency, he couldn't hope to beat the
regulations.

There was only one way to beat them and that was to get married.
Marriage would automatically entitle him to two rooms--_if_ he could
find them someplace.

More than a few of his feminine visitors had hinted at just that, but
Harry didn't respond. Marriage was no solution, the way he figured it.
He knew that he couldn't hope to locate a two-room apartment any
closer than eighty miles away. It was bad enough driving forty miles
to and from work every morning and night without doubling the
distance. If he did find a bigger place, that would mean a three-hour
trip each way on one of the commutrains, and the commutrains were
murder. The Black Hole of Calcutta, on wheels.

But then, everything was murder, Harry reflected, as he stepped from
the toilet to the sink, from the sink to the stove, from the stove to
the table.

Powdered eggs for breakfast. That was murder, too. But it was a fast,
cheap meal, easy to prepare, and the ingredients didn't waste a lot of
storage space. The only trouble was, he hated the way they tasted.
Harry wished he had time to eat his breakfasts in a restaurant. He
could afford the price, but he couldn't afford to wait in line more
than a half-hour or so. His office schedule at the agency started
promptly at ten-thirty. And he didn't get out until three-thirty; it
was a long, hard five-hour day. Sometimes he wished he worked in the
New Philly area, where a four-hour day was the rule. But he supposed
that wouldn't mean any real saving in time, because he'd have to live
further out. What was the population in New Philly now? Something like
63,000,000, wasn't it? Chicagee was much smaller--only 38,000,000,
this year.

_This_ year. Harry shook his head and took a gulp of the Instantea.
Yes, this year the population was 38,000,000, and the boundaries of
the community extended north to what used to be the old Milwaukee and
south past Gary. What would it be like _next_ year, and the year
following?

Lately that question had begun to haunt Harry. He couldn't quite
figure out why. After all, it was none of his bu