The legs around him shifted and stamped and ran away over the pavement. A woman screeched thinly in fear. He was alone in the dark. He didn't think he would be left alone for long. He started to scramble to his feet, beside the curb, and his hand went into an opening--a long curbside storm-sewer drain. A building was what he had had in mind, but this was better. He got down on his belly and wormed sidewise into the drain. He lay quiet, in a concrete cave smelling of old mud. Feet came pounding back along the streets, he glimpsed beams of light angling and flickering. Angry voices yelled back and forth. "He's not here. He's got away. But there must be other goddamned Evacuation men around. They're going to round us up--" "By God, nobody's going to round _me_ up and take me to Mars!" said a deep bass voice right beside Wales. Somebody else said, "All that nonsense about Kendrick's World--" and added an oath. Wales lay still in his concrete hole, nursing his bruised shoulder. He heard them going away. He waited, and then crawled out. In the dark street, he stood, muddy and bruised, conscious now that he was shaking. What in the world had come over these people? At first, five years ago, it had been difficult to convince many that an errant asteroid would indeed ultimately crash into Earth. Kendrick's first announcement had been disbelieved by many. But when all the triple-checking by the world's scientists had confirmed it, the big campaign of indoctrination that the UN put on had left few skeptics. Wales himself remembered how every medium of communication had been employed. "Earth will not be destroyed," the UN speakers had repeated over and over. "But it _will_ be made uninhabitable for a long time. The asteroid Nereus will, when it collides, generate such a heat and shock wave that nothing living can survive it. It will take many years for Earth's surface to quiet again after the catastrophe. Men--all men--must live on Mars for perhaps a whole generation." People had believed. They had been thankful then that they had a way of escape from the oncoming catastrophe--that the colonization of Mars had proceeded far enough that it could serve as a sanctuary for man, and that modern manufacture of synthetic food and water from any raw rock would make possible feeding all Earth's millions out on that arid world. They had toiled wholeheartedly at the colossal crash program of Operation Doomsday, the building of the vast fleet of rocket-ship transports, the construction and shipping out of the materials for the great new prefab Martian cities. They had, by the tens and hundreds of millions, gone in their scheduled order to the spaceports and the silver ships that took them away. But now, with millions still left on Earth, there was a change. Now skepticism and rebellion against Evacuation were breeding here on Earth. It didn't, Wales thought, make sense! He was suddenly very anxious to reach New York, to see Fairlie.