thing real good."

"Your inventing days are over," Fay brilled gleefully. "I mean, you'll
never equal your masterpiece."

"How about," Gusterson bellowed, "an anti-individual guided missile?
The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to float
and fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that even
though it's a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keying
such a missile to a man's finger-prints--or brainwaves, maybe, or his
unique smell!--so it can spot and follow him around then target in on
him, without harming anyone else? Long-distance assassination--and the
stinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some disgusting
goo and key it to teen-agers as a group--that'd take care of them.
Fay, doesn't it give you a rich warm kick to think of my midget
missiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evil-doers, like
a swarm of angry wasps or angelic bumblebees?"

"You're not luring me down any side trails," Fay said laughingly. He
grinned and twitched, then hurried toward the opposite wall, motioning
them to follow. Outside, about a hundred yards beyond the purple
glass, rose another ancient glass-walled apartment skyscraper. Beyond,
Lake Erie rippled glintingly.

"Another bomb-test?" Gusterson asked.

Fay pointed at the building. "Tomorrow," he announced, "a modern
factory, devoted solely to the manufacture of ticklers, will be
erected on that site."

"You mean one of those windowless phallic eyesores?" Gusterson
demanded. "Fay, you people aren't even consistent. You've got all your
homes underground. Why not your factories?"

"Sh! Not enough room. And night missiles are scarier."

"I know that building's been empty for a year," Daisy said uneasily,
"but how--?"

"Sh! Watch! _Now!_"

The looming building seemed to blur or fuzz for a moment. Then it was
as if the lake's bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundred
yards away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls,
became higher, higher ... and then suddenly the glass cracked all over
to tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmented
concrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left was
the nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almost
invisible against the gleaming lake.

* * * * *

Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only a
long-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors