"Right. We had nearly a million people in the last three years visiting. A good revenue. But--a government order is an order. The government says no more morbidity, so flush her out we do! Here we go. Hand me that spade, Bill." * * * * * William Lantry stood in the autumn wind, on the hill. It was good to walk again, to feel the wind and to hear the leaves scuttling like mice on the road ahead of him. It was good to see the bitter cold stars almost blown away by the wind. It was even good to know fear again. For fear rose in him now, and he could not put it away. The very fact that he was walking made him an enemy. And there was not another friend, another dead man, in all of the world, to whom one could turn for help or consolation. It was the whole melodramatic living world against one William Lantry. It was the whole vampire-disbelieving, body-burning, graveyard-annihilating world against a man in a dark suit on a dark autumn hill. He put out his pale cold hands into the city illumination. You have pulled the tombstones, like teeth, from the yard, he thought. Now I will find some way to push your damnable Incinerators down into rubble. I will make dead people again, and I will make friends in so doing. I cannot be alone and lonely. I must start manufacturing friends very soon. Tonight. "War is declared," he said, and laughed. It was pretty silly, one man declaring war on an entire world. The world did not answer back. A rocket crossed the sky on a rush of flame, like an Incinerator taking wing. Footsteps. Lantry hastened to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers, coming back to finish up their work? No. Just someone, a man, walking by. As the man came abreast the cemetery gate, Lantry stepped swiftly out. "Good evening," said the man, smiling. Lantry struck the man in the face. The man fell. Lantry bent quietly down and hit the man a killing blow across the neck with the side of his hand. Dragging the body back into shadow, he stripped it, changed clothes with it. It wouldn't do for a fellow to go wandering about this future world with ancient clothing on. He found a small pocket knife in the man's coat; not much of a knife, but enough if you knew how to handle it properly. He knew how. He rolled the body down into one of the already opened and exhumed graves. In a minute he had shoveled dirt down upon it, just enough to hide it. There was little chance of it being found. They wouldn't dig the same grave twice. He adjusted himself in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Fine, fine. Hating, William Lantry walked down into town, to do battle with the Earth. II