knew you and Jo as I
knew you it was abundantly clear that nothing could be said." Two hands
gripped and held. "For the future, though, four words were uttered long
ago, that have never been improved upon. 'This, too, shall pass.'"

"You think so?"

"I don't think so, Storm--I know so. I've been around a long time. You
are too good a man, and the world has too much use for you, for you to
go down permanently out of control. You've got a place in the world, and
you'll be back--" A thought struck the Lensman, and he went on in an
altered tone. "You wouldn't--but of course you wouldn't--you couldn't."

"I don't think so. No, I won't--that never was any kind of a solution to
any problem."

Nor was it. Until that moment, suicide had not entered Cloud's mind, and
he rejected it instantly. His kind of man did not take the easy way out.

After a brief farewell Cloud made his way to an elevator and was whisked
down to the garage. Into his big blue DeKhotinsky Sixteen Special and
away.

Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side-bumpers almost
touched he drove with his wonted cool skill; even though, consciously,
he did not know that the other cars were there. He slowed, turned,
stopped, "gave her the oof," all in correct response to flashing signals
in all shapes and colors--purely automatically. Consciously, he did not
know where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbed
brain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter imaging--which,
if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a hopeless task. But
he did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw,
optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain was
completely in abeyance.

Into a one-way skyway he rocketed, along it over the suburbs and into
the transcontinental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, he
reached the "unlimited" way--unlimited, that is, except for being
limited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfect
mechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at speeds not
less than one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour--flashed his
registry number at the control station, and shoved his right foot down
to the floor.

* * * * *

Now everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do a
hundred and forty honestly-measured miles in one honestly measured hour;
but very few ordinary drivers have ever found out how