retfully toward the fireplace. "Oh dear, that paper,
the television schedule ... oh well, after the Jones leave there won't
be time for anything but the late-late movie and.... Don't just sit
there, Henry, hurrreeee!"

Henry was hurrying now, but hurrying too much. He cut his leg on a
twisted piece of metal that had once been an automobile fender. He
thought about things like lock-jaw and gangrene and his hand trembled
as he tied his pocket-handkerchief around the wound. In his mind, he
saw the fire again, licking across the face of last night's newspaper.
He thought that now he would have time to read all the newspapers he
wanted to, only now there wouldn't be any more. That heap of rubble
across the street had been the Gazette Building. It was terrible to
think there would never be another up to date newspaper. Agnes would
have been very upset, no television schedule. But then, of course, no
television. He wanted to laugh but he didn't. That wouldn't have been
fitting, not at all.

He could see the building he was looking for now, but the silhouette
was strangely changed. The great circular dome was now a ragged
semi-circle, half of it gone, and one of the great wings of the
building had fallen in upon itself. A sudden panic gripped Henry
Bemis. What if they were all ruined, destroyed, every one of them?
What if there wasn't a single one left? Tears of helplessness welled
in his eyes as he painfully fought his way over and through the
twisted fragments of the city.

* * * * *

He thought of the building when it had been whole. He remembered the
many nights he had paused outside its wide and welcoming doors. He
thought of the warm nights when the doors had been thrown open and he
could see the people inside, see them sitting at the plain wooden
tables with the stacks of books beside them. He used to think then,
what a wonderful thing a public library was, a place where anybody,
anybody at all could go in and read.

He had been tempted to enter many times. He had watched the people
through the open doors, the man in greasy work clothes who sat near
the door, night after night, laboriously studying, a technical journal
perhaps, difficult for him, but promising a brighter future. There had
been an aged, scholarly gentleman who sat on the other side of the
door, leisurely paging, moving his lips a little as he did so, a man
having little time left, but rich in time because he could do w