. There the
bread was baked in a matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front browning the
crusts, and the piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent plastic bearing
the proud Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs circling a floating loaf) and
ejected onto the delivery platform at each serpent's rear end, where a
cluster of pickup machines, like hungry piglets, snatched at the loaves
with hygienic claws.

A few loaves would be hurried off for the day's consumption, the
majority stored for winter in strategically located mammoth deep
freezes.

But now, behold a wonder! As loaves began to appear on the delivery
platform of the first walking mill to get into action, they did not
linger on the conveyor belt, but rose gently into the air and slowly
traveled off down-wind across the hot rippling fields.

* * * * *

The robot claws of the pickup machines clutched in vain, and, not
noticing the difference, proceeded carefully to stack emptiness, tier by
tier. One errant loaf, rising more sluggishly than its fellows, was
snagged by a thrusting claw. The machine paused, clumsily wiped off the
injured loaf, set it aside--where it bobbed on one corner, unable to
take off again--and went back to the work of storing nothingness.

A flock of crows rose from the trees of a nearby shelterbelt as the
flight of loaves approached. The crows swooped to investigate and then
suddenly scattered, screeching in panic.

The helicopter of a hangoverish Sunday traveler bound for Wichita shied
very similarly from the brown fliers and did not return for a second
look.

A black-haired housewife spied them over her back fence, crossed herself
and grabbed her walkie-talkie from the laundry basket. Seconds later,
the yawning correspondent of a regional newspaper was jotting down the
lead of a humorous news story which, recalling the old flying-saucer
scares, stated that now apparently bread was to be included in the mad
aerial tea party.

The congregation of an open-walled country church, standing up to recite
the most familiar of Christian prayers, had just reached the petition
for daily sustenance, when a sub-flight of the loaves, either forced
down by a vagrant wind or lacking the natural buoyancy of the rest, came
coasting silently as the sunbeams between the graceful pillars at the
altar end of the building.

Meanwhile, the main flight, now augmented by other bread flocks from
scores and hundreds of walking mills that had s