They'd left him an old car that wasn't worth shipping to the stars. How long it would last was anybody's guess. The government hadn't been deliberately illiberal in leaving him such a shabby vehicle; if there had been any way to ensure a continuing supply of fuel, they would probably have left him a reasonably good one. But, since only a little could be left, allowing him a good car would have been simply an example of conspicuous waste, and the government had always preferred its waste to be inconspicuous. He drove slowly through the broad boulevards of Long Island, savoring the loneliness. New York as a residential area had been a ghost town for years, since the greater part of its citizens had been among the first to emigrate to the stars. However, since it was the capital of the world and most of the interstellar ships--particularly the last few--had taken off from its spaceports, it had been kept up as an official embarkation center. Thus, paradoxically, it was the last city to be completely evacuated, and so, although the massive but jerry-built apartment houses that lined the streets were already crumbling, the roads had been kept in fairly good shape and were hardly cracked at all. Still, here and there the green was pushing its way up in unlikely places. A few more of New York's tropical summers, and Long Island would soon become a wilderness. The streets were empty, except for the cats sunning themselves on long-abandoned doorsteps or padding about on obscure errands of their own. Perhaps their numbers had not increased since humanity had left the city to them, but there certainly seemed to be more--striped and solid, black and grey and white and tawny--accepting their citizenship with equanimity. They paid no attention to Johnson--they had long since dissociated themselves from a humanity that had not concerned itself greatly over their welfare. On the other hand, neither he nor the surface car appeared to startle them; the old ones had seen such before, and to kittens the very fact of existence is the ultimate surprise. The Queensborough Bridge was deadly silent. It was completely empty except for a calico cat moving purposefully toward Manhattan. The structure needed a coat of paint, Johnson thought vaguely, but of course it would never get one. Still, even uncared for, the bridges should outlast him--there would be no heavy traffic to weaken them. Just in case of unforeseeable catastrophe, however--he didn't want to be trapped on an island, even Manhattan Island--he had remembered to provide himself with a rowboat; a motorboat would have been preferable, but then the fuel difficulty would arise again....