ms
in lath and a paper-thickness of paint.

The wrought-iron railings were gone, too.

On Fourth Avenue, bookseller's row, you could almost persuade yourself
that nothing had happened, provided you did not look down. The
buildings had been made of wood, and wood they remained. The
second-hand books in their wooden racks would have been comforting
except that they were so clean. There was not a spot of dirt anywhere;
the air was more than country-pure.

There was an insane selective principle at work here, Herman realized.
Everything from bedrock to loam that belonged to the Earth itself had
disappeared. So had everything that had a mineral origin and been
changed by refinement and mixture: concrete, wrought iron, brick, but
steel and glass, porcelain and paint remained. It looked as if the
planet had been the joint property of two children, one of whom didn't
want to play any more, so they had split up their possessions--this is
yours, this is yours, this is _mine_....

The two little men popped into view not six feet in front of Herman as
he was passing a sidewalk bookstall. Both were dressed in what looked
like workmen's overalls made of lucite chain-mail, or knitted
glow-worms. One of them had four eyes, two brown, two blue, with
spectacles for the middle pair. Ears grew like cabbages all over his
bald head. The other had two eyes, the pupils of which were
cross-shaped, and no other discernible features except when he opened
his gap-toothed mouth: the rest of his head, face and all, was
completely covered by a dense forest of red hair.

As they came forward, Herman's control of his body suddenly returned.
He was trying his best to turn around and go away from there, and that
was what his body started to do. Moreover, certain sounds of a
prayerful character, namely "Oh dear sweet Jesus," which Herman was
forming in his mind, involuntarily issued from his lips.

Before he had taken the first step in a rearward direction, however,
the hairy little man curved around him in a blur of motion, barring
the way with two long, muscular, red-furred arms. Herman turned. The
four-eyed little man had closed in. Herman, gasping, backed up against
the bookstall.

People who were headed directly for them, although showing no
recognition that Herman and the little men were there, moved stiffly
aside like dancing automatons, strode past, then made another stiff
sidewise motion to bring them back to the original line of march