playing into my hands. As America prepares for
the Third World War, the general staff, the most outstanding scientists,
production managers, engineers, inventors; all combine their efforts to
eliminate the uncertain human factor from war-essential industries."

At that point Gus came careening down the aisle with his inseparable
thermos bottle in hand and that was the end of it.

"Why are you fumbling with that old pulsemeter all the time?" he
exclaimed: "Come on, have a cup of coffee. I've just got a breathing
spell."

There was a vortex in my mind and it whirled around and around with just
four words:

"_What has Man wrought? What has Man wrought?_"

I must have said them aloud, for Gus, always a stickler for exactitude
corrected me.

"You mean: what has _God_ wrought."

I shook my head.

"No Gus, I mean what I say; it's Man who has wrought this time."

He gave me a sharp glance.

"You sure look as if you'd seen a ghost."

"I wish I had," I said. "Lord knows _how_ much I wish I'd seen a ghost."

"You're crazy, Aussie."

And that's the worst of it: that's what they are going to say: _all_ of
them.

CHAPTER VI

Oona Dahlborg's jetticopter hovered over the Grand Canyon at the sunset
hour. She had let the controls go so that the little ship drifted with
the wind like one of the clouds which sailed a thousand feet or so over
the canyon rim. The disk of whirling gas which kept the teardrop of the
fuselage suspended shone in all rainbow colors; it reflected through the
translucent plastics top of the fuselage and played over the golden
helmet of the girl's hair and over the greying mane of the gaunt man at
her side.

Lee had been talking intensely, almost desperately for quite some time,
watching her as she lay back in her seat, her eyes half closed, hands
folded behind her neck, the perfect hemispheres of her breasts caressed
by the rainbows as they rose slowly with the even rhythm of her breath.

"And now you know everything, Oona," he ended, "do you think I'm mad?"

"No."

Her eyelids fluttered like wings of a butterfly as she turned to him.
Her right arm came down upon Lee's shoulder in a gesture of confidence.
He breathed relief as he saw no fear, not even uneasiness in the blue
depths of those beautiful eyes. Her hand upon his shoulder felt soothing
and at the same time electrifying; like the purple descending upon the
shoulder of a king.

"No," she repeated slowly: "the fact that yo