The people of the world took the story with an unexpected calm. Like Hiroshima, it was too unexpected, too big, too unimaginable. There was a hooker somewhere, and they went about their business annoyed, angry, worried, but quiet. The papers editorialized on the question of who cleaned up Formosa--who had the answers?--and left the subject of what the possession of such a clean-up force could mean to the world, to the statesmen. They turned as quickly as possible to other matters, for nobody was sure what to think, and nobody told them what to think. Bill Howard was off the air, of course. It didn't bother him. He had a real problem now. We've bought a little time, he thought. A little time to grow in. We've bought a little time from the fanatics and their statesmen, from the eggheads and their politicians, from the military and the industrial and the just generally foolhardy. We, the people of the world, have a little time now that we didn't have yesterday. How much? He didn't know. On this one, there'd been time to get together. On this one, there'd been weeks, while the crisis built and the world faced a horrible death. This crisis had been a lengthy one. There'd been time for a man to make up his mind and try a solution. The next one might be different. There might be a satellite up there waiting, with a button to be pushed. There were an awful lot of buttons waiting to be pushed, he told himself, buttons all over the world, controlling missiles already zeroed in on--well, on the people of the world. The next one might occur in hours, or even minutes. The next one, the bombs might be in the air before the people even knew the buttons were for pushing. Bill Howard got out his typewriter. You've got a problem, you talk to a typewriter, if that's the only thing that will listen. What's the problem? he asked himself, and he wrote it down. He started at the beginning and he told the story on the typewriter. He told it the way it had been happening. Now, he thought, you've got to end the story. If you leave it just "to be continued," it'll be continued, all right. Somebody will push a button one day, and that will write 30 at the end for you. Conclusion. The problem was, in essence, quite simply stated in terms of miracles. The way things were stewing, it'd be a miracle if the world held together long enough for unity to set in. It'd take a miracle to bring about the necessary self-restraint, which was the only possible substitute for the imposed restraint of war. The witch power was, quite clearly, a power of the people--of the people who needed that protection, needed those miracles. And it was the power that had worked miracles.