Lansing cleared his throat, looked slowly from the somber-faced clergyman, to the fidgeting medico, to the burly captain, still staring impassively at the general, to, finally, the quiet, smiling warden. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "it occurs to me that the situation hasn't actually registered on you. The earth is really doomed, you know. This dust simply won't tolerate organic life. In some way--we have not had time to discover how--it's self-multiplying, so, as I said, it spreads. Right now, not a tenth of this entire continent--from the pole down to the Panama Canal--is capable of supporting any kind of life as we know it. And that area is diminishing hourly." "No way of checking it?" Slade asked. His tone was one of idle curiosity, nothing else. "No. It's death, gentlemen. As deadly as your ... ah, gallows." "We use the gas chamber," Halloran corrected him. His mouth twisted. "More humane, you know." There was brief quiet, then the warden said, "Well ... now that we've finished philosophizing, let's get back to the matter at hand. We can have everyone that's going ready to leave by seven tonight. Will that be satisfactory?" "It'll have to be," Knox grunted. "Thank you." Halloran reached for his phone, then dropped his hands on his desk. "I'd like to ask you a question," he said. "Perhaps it's presumptuous, but I'm rather curious about the ... er, last workings of our government. Tell me, don't you really have room for our inmates? You haven't told us how many ships you've built. Or how big they are." Lansing looked at Knox. The general flushed, then stared at the floor. Lansing shrugged tiredly. "Oh, we've plenty of room," he sighed. "But ... our orders are to take only those completely fit to build a new world. We've ... well, we have practiced a lot of euthanasia lately." "Judges," murmured Goldsmid. "If you had come sooner," there was no anger in Halloran's voice, "couldn't you have selected some of our people, those that I ... all of us know are ready for rehabilitation--even on another planet?" "Perhaps. But no one remembered there was a prison nearby." The warden looked at the rabbi. Goldsmid raised his heavy shoulders in an ancient Hebraic gesture. "That was always the trouble, wasn't it, Pete?" Halloran murmured. "People never remembered the prisons!" The telephone beside him shrilled loudly, urgently. * * * * * The inmate mopping the floor of Condemned Row's single corridor slowed in front of Bert Doyle's cell. Doyle was slated for a ride down the elevator that night to the death cell behind the gas chamber. At the moment, he was stretched out on his bunk, listening to the soft voice of Father Nelson. "Sorry to interrupt," the inmate said, "but I thought you'd like to know that all hell's busting loose down in the yard." Father Nelson looked up. Doyle, too, looked interested. "A riot?" he asked. "Yessiree, bob!" "Nonsense!" snapped the priest. "This prison doesn't have riots!"