The captain stepped into the road again. "We'll have to burn your car. You passed through a Plague Area and it can't be sterilized on this route. About a mile up this road you'll come to a sterilization unit. Stop and have your person and belongings rayed. After that, keep walking, but stick to the road. You'll be shot if you're caught off it." The road was crowded with fleeing people. Their way was lighted by piles of cadavers writhing in gasoline flames. The Medicorps was everywhere. Those who stumbled, those who coughed, the delirious and their helping partners ... these were taken to the side of the road, shot and burned. And there was bombing again to the south. Bill stopped in the middle of the road and looked back. Clara clung to him. "There is a plague here we haven't any drug for," he said, and realized he was crying. "We are all mad." Clara was crying too. "Darling, what have you done? Where are the drugs?" The water of the Hudson hung as it had in the late afternoon, ice crystals in the stratosphere. The high, high sheet flashed and glowed in the new bombing to the south, where multicolored pillars of flame boiled into the sky. But the muffled crash of the distant bombing was suddenly the steady click of the urgent signal on a bedside visiophone, and Bill was abruptly awake. Clara was throwing on her robe and moving toward the machine on terror-rigid limbs. With a scrambling motion, Bill got out of the possible view of the machine and crouched at the end of the room. Distinctly, he could hear the machine say, "Clara Manz?" "Yes." Clara's voice was a thin treble that could have been a shriek had it continued. "This is Medicorps Headquarters. A routine check discloses you have delayed your shift two hours. To maintain the statistical record of deviations, please give us a full explanation." "I ..." Clara had to swallow before she could talk. "I must have taken too much sleeping compound." "Mrs. Manz, our records indicate that you have been delaying your shift consistently for several periods now. We made a check of this as a routine follow up on any such deviation, but the discovery is quite serious." There was a harsh silence, a silence that demanded a logical answer. But how could there be a logical answer? "My hyperalter hasn't complained and I--well, I have just let a bad habit develop. I'll see that it--doesn't happen again." The machine voiced several platitudes about the responsibilities of one personality to another and the duty of all to society before Clara was able to shut it off. Both of them sat as they were for a long, long time while the tide of terror subsided. When at last they looked at each other across the dim and silent room, both of them knew there could be at least one more time together before they were caught. * * * * *