"Hm-m," he breathed in satisfaction. "That's the way to go about it. Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. If you guys would read your history of how police enforcement officers got things back under control each time some idealist started squawking about human rights, you'd think of these things, too. "Now don't go off half-cocked. Just stand by. Keep me posted on every move. If I've got to do the thinking on how to get those E's back under police control, the way scientists were before, I've got to have information. "And keep taking pictures!" 16 "After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship, everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any clothes on--what then?" "That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun." Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now he could be more comfortable. One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort. Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth, claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea that clothes encouraged immorality. "It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin' like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of, but, believe me ..." He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of perplexity.