* * * * * Clocker's bank balance was sick, the circulation of his tip sheet gone. But he didn't worry about it; there were bigger problems. He studied the newspapers before even giving himself time to think. The news was as bad as usual. He could feel the heat of fission, close his eyes and see all the cities and farms in the world going up in a blinding cloud. As far as he was concerned, Barnes and Harding and the rest weren't working fast enough; he could see doom sprinting in half a field ahead of the completion of the record. The first thing he should have done was recapture the circulation of the tip sheet. The first thing he actually did do was write the story of his experience just as it had happened, and send it to a magazine. When he finally went to work on his sheet, it was to cut down the racing data to a few columns and fill the rest of it with warnings. "This is what you want?" the typesetter asked, staring at the copy Clocker turned in. "You _sure_ this is what you want?" "Sure I'm sure. Set it and let's get the edition out early. I'm doubling the print order." "Doubling?" "You heard me." When the issue was out, Clocker waited around the main newsstands on Broadway. He watched the customers buy, study unbelievingly, and wander off looking as if all the tracks in the country had burned down simultaneously. Doc Hawkins found him there. "Clocker, my boy! You have no idea how anxious we were about you. But you're looking fit, I'm glad to say." "Thanks," Clocker said abstractedly. "I wish I could say the same about you and the rest of the world." Doc laughed. "No need to worry about us. We'll muddle along somehow." "You think so, huh?" "Well, if the end is approaching, let us greet it at the Blue Ribbon. I believe we can still find the lads there." They were, and they greeted Clocker with gladness and drinks. Diplomatically, they made only the most delicate references to the revamping job Clocker had done on his tip sheet. "It's just like opening night, that's all," comforted Arnold Wilson Wyle. "You'll get back into your routine pretty soon." "I don't want to," said Clocker pugnaciously. "Handicapping is only a way to get people to read what I _really_ want to tell them." "Took me many minutes to find horses," Oil Pocket put in. "See one I want to bet on, but rest of paper make me too worried to bother betting. Okay with Injun, though--horse lost. And soon you get happy again, stick to handicapping, let others worry about world." Buttonhole tightened his grip on Clocker's lapel. "Sure, boy. As long as the bobtails run, who cares what happens to anything else?" "Maybe I went too easy," said Clocker tensely. "I didn't print the whole thing, just a little part of it. Here's the rest." * * * * * They were silent while he talked, seeming stunned with the terrible significance of his story. "Did you explain all this to the doctors?" Doc Hawkins asked.