That made him think a little. Everybody was dead, even the redhead in the Golden Bubble who couldn't lose. "What the hell am I doin' alive, then?" he asked himself. There was no answer to that. He thought of his mine, _The Lousy Disappointment_, and wondered if, living most of the time below the surface as he did, he had been protected from some sort of purple gas or something that seemed to have killed off everybody else. It could be. Some very light gas, maybe, that wouldn't seep below the surface. "Aw, for cripe sakes!" he grunted disgustedly. He dressed and left the room. He went downstairs. There was the lobby, all soft, quiet carpeting and soft, quiet furniture and soft, quiet drapes. A sheet of paper on a writing desk said _Grand Pachappa_. He was in a hotel, then. He must have wandered into it after he left the Golden Bubble. He carefully avoided looking at two well-dressed women who sat in lobby chairs, staring off into nothing, but he felt their presence chillingly. He shivered. He made his way outside, the purple snow coming down and giving his cheeks wet, cold caresses. He angrily brushed them off, but they came down anyway. Above the snow, the sky was a sodden mass of purplish gray. He found a restaurant that was open. A few customers sat on the stools like statues in a museum. All the coffeemakers were on the electric stove, but they were dry and clean except one that had no bottom in it any more and was quite discolored. Beneath it, the round electric coil still glowed faithfully. He grabbed up one of the clean pots and took it to the metal rinse sink and reached for the faucet. And then his hand froze. What if the water was tainted? He had no way of finding out if it didn't carry that identifying purplish tint. He tried the faucet. It did. The milk in the refrigerator was three weeks old, of course. Gannett ended by opening a bottle of Pepsi Cola for breakfast. The sky stayed leaden, but even so there were many things apparent now that he hadn't seen the night before. A lack of heavy traffic on the streets would seem to indicate that what had happened--purple gas or whatever--had been very late at night; even so, traffic accidents were everywhere. There was one big sedan with its front end crushed against the First Olympic Bank. There was one cop who had died trying to tie his right shoe--his fingers still clutched the laces. There was a doctor (his car had a caduceus emblem on the windshield) who had just stepped down to the street, his bag in his left hand and his right hand on the door, ready to slam it shut. He had a serious, purposeful look on his face that even the falling purple snow couldn't quite eradicate. Despite the cold, sweat frosted Gannett's forehead. He made his way to a radio and television store and kicked in a glass panel of the front door. Stepping through to the clamor of the suddenly aroused night-warning bell, he went directly to a TV set and turned it on.