No traffic cops either. That had changed too. One thing you had always been sure of seeing and that was a cop in New York. When Kane asked about it, the smiles almost fled from every face, and the moment of silence seemed like a form of shock. Kane realized then that there hadn't been even a second of silence before then. "It's hard to realize we've been away so long," Phil finally said. "I'm really tired," Kane said to Phil as they went on past the Midtown Hotel toward Lucille's apartment. "I was intending to go directly to the hotel and rest up a while--" "We'll relax at Lucie's," Jenny said. "We got music, we got music, we got music, who could ask for anything more?" "But--" Kane started to protest at least mildly, but the rest of the sentence was blotted out by a long kiss from Laura. * * * * * They had all crowded into an elevator, and then rushed into Lucille's apartment on a high level of The Sunny Hill building near Washington Square. The apartment consisted of one huge room with a circular couch in the middle upon which everyone immediately sat. Laura sat beside Kane who was getting more tired every minute. There was just enough room for the gang to squeeze up tight to one another in a circle around a table supporting some kind of machine with wires that were immediately run from it and attached to everyone's wrist, and to a narrow metal headband with which everyone's head was crowned. Kane was listening to music. It was like being dropped unexpectedly into the middle of a large symphony orchestra. The sound seemed to pulse and vibrate gigantically all around him. It was more than merely listening. He was in it. He felt himself a part of it, swimming in it, and almost fighting to keep from being carried away by what seemed to be perfectly recorded music that was now being delivered by some final form of hi-fi. The music itself was familiar enough. Instrumentalized opera arias orchestrated on a fantastic scale. The quantity was so great that sensitivity as to quality was dulled. Kane, shocked by thunderous sweeps of sheer volume gave way before the sound. It wasn't sleep. He could hardly say he rested, but he was in a semi-stupor. When he glanced at his watch sometime later, two hours and some minutes had passed. The wires were being removed from wrists, headbands from heads. Kane's head ached slightly. Everyone was reaching as cards fell out of the machine in the middle. Laura handed one to Kane. It was covered with symbols in the form of some kind of graph, but he couldn't decipher it. There was a great deal of chatter, musical jargon, colloquial in both space and time, most of it eluding comprehension. Kane stood there holding his card as everyone milled around one another. Phil said, "Let's see how we liked it, Prof?" That seemed to have been the general idea--how much everyone liked the music. And each one looked at his card, and they were all comparing cards and exclaiming over them.